Ben Savage, who played main character Cory Matthews on ABC “T.G.I.F” staple Boy Meets World (1993-2000), has announced that he will be running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Over the past week, Savage, 42, filed with the Federal Election Commission. His paperwork shows intent to run as a Democrat for California’s 30th District in the 2024 election. Savage would take the seat of Democrat incumbent Adam Schiff, should he win.
Meanwhile, Schiff has the potential to run for a U.S. Senate seat in 2024, as its current holder, Dianne Feinstein, 89, is expected to retire. She has publicly announced neither a run, nor retirement, but her retirement has been widely speculated due to her advanced age, cognitive decline and refusal of the position of President Pro Tempore of the US Senate, a job customarily offered to the chamber’s most senior member.
This would not be the first time Savage has run for political office. In a 2022 race, the actor unsuccessfully ran to be on the West Hollywood City Council. According to his campaign website, his priorities include supporting and promoting local businesses, community safety, homelessness prevention and fighting “to protect the rights of renters.” Savage also mentioned his intent to bring down the cost of new housing.
“We need to restore faith in city government by offering reasonable, innovative and compassionate solutions to the city’s most pressing issues,” he stated. “We need to increase and expand access to all the great opportunities West Hollywood affords, by ensuring that every member of the community has the tools they need to succeed.”
After putting a temporary freeze on his education to work on Boy Meets World, Savage graduated from Stanford University in 2004 with a degree in Political Science. In 2003, he also interned for former United States Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
Adults Get Acquainted with Universe
Millennials fondly remember Savage, who also earlier appeared in Little Monsters (1989) alongside brother Fred Savage (Kevin Arnold in The Wonder Years) and Howie Mandel, most for Boy Meets World. Follow-up generations came to appreciate the continued antics of Cory Matthews, his friends and family once more with Disney Channel’s underrated, lore-expanding Girl Meets World (2014-2017) reboot.
Five years after Boy Meets World’s successor concluded, three of the four principal actors are back to reflect on how the show shaped their lives and fans’ lives alike — but noticeably without Savage. Will Friedle played Cory’s suave charmster-turned-human cartoon older brother, Eric Matthews. Danielle Fishel played Cory’s primary love interest, the iconically-named Topanga Lawrence. And Rider Strong played Cory’s bad-boy best friend, Shawn Hunter. The trio confirmed while promoting their popular Pod Meets World reunion podcast that they intended to pursue the episode-by-episode recap project with Savage involved, however, the latter elected otherwise, stating in meetings “I’m just not really sure it’s my thing.”
For lifetime fans of Boy Meets World, though, it’s most certainly theirs.
‘The Messenger’ Meets Nostalgia Shangri-La
What’s unique about Boy Meets World, a show that has very much stood the test of time, is that its style grew up along with the characters and their respective real-life actors, and fast.
“Our experience right now watching the second season,” Strong noted on the latest episode, “we’re sort of like, ‘I want the warm comfy blanket of season 1.’ It’s jarring. It seems like the show went from a kids show, a very sweet family show, to something very adolescent and teenage quickly.”
Per the trajectory of the original series, which would see characters jumping several grades ahead without explanation and, at-times, tremendously narrowing the age gap between once very-divided characters, this perhaps seemed to be the point. Especially when one recalls their own foray into puberty, that 6th-into-7th grade growth spurt during a time where, as things started to make so much sense, they therefore simultaneously began to make no sense at all.
No show prior, and maybe only Scrubs and Community since, has been able to replicate such “welcome to the world” wackiness in live-action quite like Boy Meets World. The show was, and still is a funhouse of subverted expectations and life lessons doodle-committed to memory on marble notebook paper, all while masquerading as a wee situation comedy.
When all was said and done, a twentysomething Cory met college graduation, married life, a move from Philadelphia to the Big City, and the world.
Online fan theories contend Cory’s rapid ascension through adolescence impacts his worldview, and therefore his overall impressions of people like the brother (Eric) who once towered over him, and whom he had since so surpassed in maturity that he essentially caught up to him in age.
By the time we revive their arcs a decade-and-a-half later in Girl Meets World, Cory has become the Alan Matthews-meets-Mr. Feeny paternal force in his child’s life, and in her and her friends’ classroom. Meanwhile, the back-seasons black sheep with a flair for the zany — where there’s a will, there’s a chuckle-concealing, pitchfork wielding Eric in American Gothic framing, Opangatay — has renounced his hermit ridiculousness we apparently left off on in favor of mayoral, then ultimately senatorial pastures.
One Mr. Matthews defied the odds and headed to Washington on the small screen. Could another soon follow suit in the wonderful world of reality?
What are the Odds?
Celebrities running for office is nothing new; however, there was a time when they were more successful.
Ronald Reagan (R) was an actor-turned Governor of California-turned President, from 1981-1989. Al Franken (D) was a Saturday Night Live performer and writer whose life of comedy was put on hold with a victory in the U.S. Senate from Minnesota in 2008, one of the closest elections in the history of the chamber. And of course, Donald Trump (R) served as unofficial king of the 1980s, followed by entertainment and cultural success in the 1990s-mid 2000s before being elected President in 2016, perhaps the greatest political upset in American history.
Lately, however, celebrities have not had the best luck. Caitlyn Jenner (R) ran unsuccessfully for Governor of California in the 2021 recall which saw incumbent Gavin Newsom (D) become only the second American governor to survive a recall. Singer Clay Aiken (D) made a failed bid for a U.S. House seat in North Carolina in a 2014 general election. He tried again in 2022, but lost the primary. 2022 saw failed Senate pushes from Herschel Walker (R) in Georgia and Dr. Mehmet Oz (R) in Pennsylvania.
So, it depends how far you want to look back. If you go by recent standards, Savage might not have the best of luck. But if you go by historical standards, crazier things have happened.
The big advantage Savage has on his side is that of partisan lean. The 30th District is heavily Democratic. Adam Schiff won re-election in 2022 with 72% of the vote over Maebe A. Girl (D), the first drag queen serving as an elected official.
If Schiff vacates his seat for a Senate run, Savage has a much clearer shot to Washington, as whichever Democrat clinches the nomination is virtually guaranteed victory in the general election. This is not only by virtue of partisan lean, which intensely benefits Democrats, but also that of the top-two primary system used in California. Under the system, all candidates appear on the same primary ballot, regardless of party. The top two vote-receivers advance to the general election. It’s common for many urban California House races to be decided between two Democrats.
As long as Savage is one of those Democrats, an outcome that at this point remains unclear, he should have no problem improving the win-loss ratio for celebrities-turned-politicians.
Freeze-frame, roll credits.
