Mark Cuban: A Man for the Moment?

This week, Mark Cuban announced that the upcoming season of Shark Tank would be his last. The news comes on the heels of Cuban entering a deal to sell off a majority stake in his beloved NBA Franchise, the Dallas Mavericks, to a Las Vegas-based casino company. Since the billionaire business mogul has previously flirted with the notion of running for president as an independent, many political analysts have wondered aloud this week whether the shedding of such holdings might be related to possible plans for a 2024 run.

For his part, Cuban said he has “no plans” to run for president at the moment. However, such non-committal responses are par for the course when such questions are posed to aspiring candidates before they have made their big announcement. Ordinarily, the idea of a billionaire businessman considering an independent bid this late in the cycle would be less than interesting. However, given the broad distaste that a majority of voters continue to express toward the two parties’ presumptive nominees—along with the shockingly high poll numbers RFK Jr. has been putting up—it is all but certain that Cuban, 65, will never again encounter circumstances in which an independent run would be as viable as it currently appears.

I’m not big on either celebrities or billionaires as potential presidential candidates. Still, I have always found Cuban to be far more interesting than other such figures when the conversation comes up. For starters, he has consistently demonstrated a willingness to engage in discussions on thorny issues from economic policy to social issues and even foreign policy, and in a candid and open manner that most figures in his position tend to avoid, lest they alienate potential customers. Compared to other billionaire celebrities who do have an extensive record of public positions, such as Elon Musk and Donald Trump, Cuban comes off as much more of a deep thinker, a pragmatist who is far more interested in viable solutions than ideological dogma or culture war fodder.

Most notably, Cuban studied the many problems associated with America’s deeply flawed approach to pharmaceutical medicine and ultimately backed a radiologist’s pitch to create a generic drug-driven company that would cut out the pharmacy benefit managers who have long manipulated the insurance-based model to capture sizable sums of money that have nothing to do with the manufacturer or consumer. He also founded Cost Plus Drugs as a public benefit company, a form of for-profit incorporation that protects against rogue shareholders by defining the goal of positively impacting society, as opposed to the concept of shareholder supremacy.

Cost Plus Drugs offers unprecedented transparency, with drugs sold for a price equivalent to the company's cost plus a 15% markup, a $5 pharmacy service fee, and a $5 shipping fee. The results have been staggeringly good, with over 350 generic drugs currently being produced and four non-generic drugs in just under two years of operations. This proven ability to examine a problem and its potential solutions and then quickly assemble a working operation—and in a field heavy on regulation, no less—would be a welcome change from the slow slog of beltway foot-dragging that has become the norm.

Cuban has demonstrated other visionary qualities, including being far ahead of the curve regarding streaming technology. In fact, I first became interested in his perspective in the early aughts when he made the case that, with the advent of high-quality home entertainment systems, many people would pay the equivalent of two tickets to the movies in order to enjoy a new release in the comfort of their own home.

Cuban was ultimately unsuccessful in that effort to disrupt and transform, but only because the major studios—who themselves were heavily invested in theater chains—boxed him out, even though research data suggested that most people would still engage in the theater experience just as often, but would spend more money in total, were the in-home option available. Nevertheless, the attempt changed how others viewed the entertainment landscape, and his vision ultimately came to be, again showing him to be someone with a keen ability to imagine alternatives to stagnant norms. We could certainly use that sort of vision regarding things like immigration policy and the solvency of Social Security.

It indeed says something about where our democracy currently resides that the only likely way a presidential candidate could emerge from outside the two-party duopoly is to be both rich and famous, but that seems to be where the post-Citizens United landscape has left us. Not unlike a majority of Americans, I do not believe that Joe Biden is up to the task of four more years, while also believing that Donald Trump—a man who recently referred to his political opponents as “vermin” and used “threat from within” rhetoric in promising to “root them out”—is unfit to serve as either president or commander in chief. At the same time, it would take an entire column to explain why I find it impossible to take RFK Jr.’s candidacy seriously.

In other words, if it were a four-way race between those candidates, I would eagerly pull the lever for Cuban, even if the potential outcome was a contingent election (no candidate gets to 270 electoral votes, and the selection is thrown to the House). And before the dyed-in-the-wool party voters issue the associated Chicken Little warnings on that front, I’ll remind them that both the Democrats and Republicans have fought to keep states from using Rank Choice Voting, favoring the power of the duopoly over the power of democracy at every turn. If the parties want our vote, it is incumbent upon them to give us better candidates. Until then, I’ll take my political pragmatists wherever I can find them.

Dennis "Mitch" Maley is an editor and columnist for The Bradenton Times and the host of our weekly podcast. With over two decades of experience as a journalist, he has covered Manatee County government since 2010. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University and later served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Click here for his bio. His 2016 short story collection, Casting Shadows, was recently reissued and is available here.