Barring cataclysm, Connecticut Republicans will nominate Linda McMahon to run for Chris Dodd’s vacant Senate seat on August 10. McMahon is a political neophyte. Her chief credential is that
lvyunsshe was CEO of America’s largest professional wrestling outfit, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE).
McMahon is not the first figure from professional wrestling to enter politics. In 1974, Jim Crockett, who ran the National Wrestling Alliance, ran for the Senate in North Carolina. He finished sixth in a field of six in the GOP primary. And, in 1990, Jesse “The Body” Ventura was elected mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. Eight years later, he was governor of the state.
But McMahon may be the first person to run for office for whom wrestling is not merely a name-recognition bonus, but rather the raison d’être of her campaign. It is both McMahon’s signal achievement and her most glaring vulnerability.
Connecticut has been tough sledding for Republicans for more than half-a-century. Since 1953, Connecticut has sent just one Republican to the Senate: Lowell Weicker. A very liberal Republican, Weicker served three terms in the Senate before being elected governor in 1990. McMahon and her husband Vince have known Weicker for many years. In 1999, when the WWE went public, Weicker was appointed to the company’s board of directors.
In the mid-1980s, the McMahons became friendly with NBC producer Dick Ebersol and his wife, the actress Susan Saint James. James got Linda McMahon involved with the Special Olympics, a cause which she and her husband have vigorously supported ever since. This involvement formed another bond with Weicker, whose son, Sonny, is both developmentally disabled and a big wrestling fan. Weicker named McMahon to
lvyunsthe governor’s council for the World Special Olympics.
