Linda McMahon is out to defuse what could be her biggest liability in her U.S. Senate campaign in Connecticut: her old job as chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment. In a new political ad, the Republican hopeful casually mentions that she had a "regular job" before running for Senate. The ad then quickly cuts to footage of massive explosions and a wrestler leaping out of the ring toward an opponent. "OK," McMahon smiles. "Maybe not a regular job." You can watch the spot here:
The WWE, McMahon says, is a "soap opera that entertains millions every week." And in a clear attempt to beat her critics to the punch, she acknowledges, "Everyone gets in on the action." Cut to several seconds of footage of McMahon in the ring pitted against towering wrestlers. (Sadly, there are no clips of McMahon slamming anyone with a steel chair.)
"This isn't real, but our problems are," McMahon tells the viewer, as she launches into an attack on Washington's excessive spending as it relates to job loss in the state.
The ad is a testament to one of the most important rules of politics: Identify your weaknesses and define them for voters before your opponents can exploit them. Already Democrats have been looking to undermine McMahon by tying her to the excessive violence of the WWE. But McMahon is the first to use actual footage not only of the WWE but of herself in the ring — an obvious target for negative messaging that Democrats had been saving to break out in the fall. Her decision to call the WWE a "soap opera" likely won't please the millions of fans who have made McMahon a rich woman, but it could help her standing with voters, who, according to polls, have a largely negative opinion of her.
Still, the move is risky, in part because McMahon's WWE background has already stymied the progress of her campaign in a few respects. Recently, for instance, she was named a defendant in a civil suit seeking damages for the accidental death of WWE wrestler Owen Hart, who died in an aerial stunt gone awry. And in an interview, she deemed the adverse health effects of steroid use "inconclusive" — thereby reminding voters of the controversial use of steroids and other banned performance-enhancing substitutes in the WWE.
— Holly Bailey is a senior politics writer for Yahoo! News.
