She’s back. The New York Times reports that former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon, who ran unsuccessfully as the Republican nominee in the 2010 Connecticut Senate race, will try again in 2012, for the seat being vacated by Democrat-aligned independent Joe Lieberman.
A big difference this time, the paper reports from sources close to McMahon, is that she will raise money from private donors instead of relying on her own money. McMahon self-financed her 2010 campaign to the tune of $50 million, an amount that may have over-saturated the political market and driven up her own negative ratings.
McMahon will face a primary against former Rep. Christopher Shays, who served in Congress for 21 years before losing his seat in the 2008 Democratic wave, and has recently declared his Senate candidacy for 2012.
McMahon won the Republican nomination in the 2010 election, defeating former Rep. Rob Simmons and Peter Schiff, a financial analyst and Ron Paul adviser. However, despite the year’s overall strong Republican wave, she lost the general election to Democrat Richard Blumenthal by a 55%-43% margin.
By the end of the campaign, polling consistently showed that McMahon had become personally unpopular with the voters. This occurred for several reasons, ranging from a backlash against her heavy personal spending on the race, and attacks on WWE for its lewd programming content and health problems among its actors attributed to performance-enhancing drugs.
Her husband, WWE Chairman and CEO Vince McMahon, also popped up frequently in the campaign — responding to political attacks on WWE, and handing out WWE merchandise near polling places. There was also an amusing election-eve comedy sketch in which he played his fictionalized self-character “Mr. McMahon,” waking up from a coma and being horrified to discover that his wife had spent $50 million on the campaign.
