Linda McMahon Will Wrestle for GOP Conn. Senate Bid With Up to $50 Million of Her Own Money

WATERBURY, CONN., Jan. 9, 2010 — -- Linda McMahon knows her way around the wrestling ring. Now the longtime CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. is plunging into the political ring.

McMahon is one of the Connecticut Republicans battling for the Senate seat now held by Christopher Dodd, a Democrat. Dodd's announcement Wednesday that he would not seek re-election in 2010 has thrust a spotlight on the race and her candidacy.

Her stunning business success, and her vast personal wealth -- she told ABC News that she will spend $50 millions of her own money on the campaign -- have made McMahon a serious contender.

"Republican activists are paying attention and are impressed," political writer Kevin Rennie said in The Hartford Courant.

But while her accomplishments and earnings from the WWE are buoying McMahon's political hopes, professional wrestling also threatens to be a burden. There are the allegations of steroid abuse, the premature deaths of some wrestlers and those high-octane WWE story lines that have featured sexist, violent and vulgar behavior in -- and out -- of the wrestling ring.

McMahon knows WWE's carefully scripted and staged plots well. She has occasionally been featured in them, as WWE's 16 million weekly television viewers can attest. She's been slapped to the ground by her own daughter and dropped on her head by a wrestler. Then there was the time McMahon kicked a WWE announcer between the legs.

McMahon, 61, dismisses the idea that wrestling's darker side might cloud her chances. She says she's the right candidate for the times.

"Talking with people all around the state, what I'm really hearing is that they want outsiders. They don't want more of the same. They want someone with fresh ideas. They want new blood, new faces," she said recently, after meeting the lunch crowd at a restaurant in this struggling former mill city.