Simmons Quits Senate Race

By DANIELA ALTIMARI
Courant Staff Writer

Republican Rob Simmons, the one-time frontrunner for U.S. Senate, announced this morning that he is ending his campaign after losing his party’s nomination to multimillionaire Linda McMahon.

“This is not an easy decision,” Simmons said this morning at a press conference. “This is not a happy decision. But I believe it’s the right decision.”

Simmons is releasing his campaign staff and curtailing fundraising efforts, but his name will remain on the primary ballot. He did not say whether he would endorse McMahon or vote for her in November.

Simmons said he came to his decision “reluctantly and prayerfully.” Simmons, who had a long career in the military and is a military history buff, spent part of the weekend reading accounts of Civil War battles that showed in vivid detail the high toll that pursuing a lost cause can extract.

The former congressman and Vietnam War veteran lost the Republican convention’s endorsement on Friday to the former World Wrestling CEO.

He observed that he had more than enough support at the nominating convention to force a primary: He wound up with 46 percent of the convention vote.

“Speaking for myself and my family, however, we understand the mathematical reality of competing against an opponent with unlimited financial resources who has already invested … $16.5 million in this campaign.”

“There are few Americans who have served their country with more courage, integrity and purpose than Rob Simmons,” said state Republican Party Chairman Chris Healy in a prepared statement. “He has risked his life to preserve our freedom.”

“Rob’s decision today was difficult but speaks to all of what he has dedicated his life to — service,” Healy said.

Simmons entered the Senate race in the winter of 2009, when a politically ailing Sen. Christopher Dodd was the presumptive Democratic nominee. Throughout the spring and summer and into the fall, Simmons sat atop public opinion polls.

Then McMahon entered the race in September and began spending millions on television ads and direct mail.

Throughout the increasingly bitter campaign between Simmons and McMahon, Simmons had said he would abide by the convention’s choice and not force a primary. However on Friday he announced a change of heart and said he would primary McMahon for the party’s nomination after all.

Late Monday, the Simmons campaign sent out a press release alerting reporters to the press conference this morning at the Radisson Hotel in New London.

“If that’s the decision he’s made, I know it was a difficult decision,” said state Sen. John Kissel of Enfield, a longtime Simmons supporter. “I’m proud of Rob if he’s come to that conclusion. …It would be right for the party and right for Rob.”

McMahon, a political outsider who has never held elective office, has enormous resources. She said she would spend up to $50 million of her vast fortune on the campaign.

Peter Schiff, another Republican candidate for Senate, said Tuesday that he now looked forward to a two-person race for the Republican nomination. He did not meet the 15 percent threshold to automatically qualify for a primary at last weekend’s convention, but he intends to gather signatures to petition his way onto the Aug. 10 ballot.

“I am a true political outisder and real grassroots candidate,” Schiff said in a written statement. “There is a reason why I am the choice of Tea Party leaders, political newcomers and independents, and why Linda McMahon, the darling of the establishment, has become the ultimate insider.”

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, meanwhile, ignored Schiff’s campaign in promoting Democrat Richard Blumenthal‘s candidacy and targeting McMahon’s.

“We now likely have a race in Connecticut between a crusading attorney general with a long record of delivering for Connecticut families and a wrestling mogul who made her millions peddling violence to kids, hiding widespread steroid abuse, and sending her employees into dangerous situations in exchange for their glory and her profit,” the committee said in a release.

“But Rob Simmons is only the latest Republican moderate to fall in their bloodletting civil war. Republicans have nominated extremists in Florida and Kentucky and appear well on their way to doing so in Colorado, Wisconsin and Nevada. The battle between the Republican establishment and the fringe of their party does not seem to be a close one. The moderates keep losing.”

Full Text of Rob Simmons’ Campaign Announcement

(Above photo by ANDREW POMETTI / FOX CT)