After months of relying on campaign surrogates to slam chief rival Linda McMahon, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rob Simmons went on the offensive Monday, publicly questioning the character of the former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO who is also seeking the GOP nomination.
Simmons stood on the north steps of the state Capitol before a half-dozen reporters and catalogued what he called McMahon’s lack of credibility and disrespect for the law. He blasted her for painting herself as a political outsider when her company has spent $1 million on Washington lobbyists. He said her misleading answers to a questionnaire in connection with her appointment to the state Board of Education constitute lies.
And most significantly, Simmons cited McMahon’s role in a federal investigation into steroid use by professional wrestlers. According to a 1989 memo obtained by both The Day of New London and POLITICO, McMahon tipped off a Pennsylvania doctor about the impending investigation.
“This is the stuff of a mystery novel and a Hollywood thriller,” Simmons said. “It does not add credibility to a U.S. Senate campaign. These are the actions of someone who does not respect the law and it leaves one to ask the question: how can you write the laws if you don’t feel bound by them?”
McMahon was never charged with any crime in connection with the incident, but Simmons said he believes she ought to offer the voters of Connecticut a full accounting of her actions. “Mrs. McMahon is building her Senate candidacy entirely on her business experience at the WWE,” he said. “She needs to be held accountable for that very troubling record.”
Two members of McMahon’s campaign staff stood nearby and when Simmons’ was finished speaking, one of them responded to his critique. Spokesman Ed Patru borrowed a favorite phrase of the Clintons, saying Simmons’ attack smacked of “the politics of personal destruction.” He also said it represented a desperate move by a candidate whose public approval numbers had fallen sharply in the most recent Quinnipiac University poll.
“What you saw here today is the playbook of a tired and desperate politician who has no forward vision, no ideas of how to put people back to work,” Patru said. “Linda McMahon believes that what voters are entitled to and what they deserve is a substantive debate on the issues that impact them every day, not a 17-year-old court case, not 21-year-old memos but how do we best put people back to work (in this) economy.”
McMahon has said she will spend up to $50 million to win the race. She has already launched a television advertising blitz, a strategy that appears to be paying dividends: She emerged as the GOP frontrunner in the latest Q poll, though a Rasmussen poll released today found that Simmons would be the strongest Republican against Democratic frontrunner Richard Blumenthal. Simmons has yet to air a single TV commercial.
Simmons took pains to contrast his record as a former Congressman who served in the U.S. Army for 37 years and taught at Yale and UConn with McMahon’s experience at the WWE.
“My public service career is an open book,” he said. “I’ve disclosed personal finances, cast thousands of public votes…people may not agree with every vote I’ve cast but I’ve never done anything to dishonor them and the offices I have held.”