No-Holds-Barred Fight: Connecticut Senate Race Tightens
Amanpour interviews candidates as they spar over Dodd seat.
October 10, 2010— -- It was supposed to be an easy win in Connecticut -- holding the blue-state Senate seat held by Democrats for almost 50 years, but things went off-script when a former wresting CEO won the Republican nomination. Now the seat is a must-win for Democrats if they want to keep control of the Senate, and the Democratic candidate, a popular state attorney general who hopes to succeed Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., is facing a tough, well-funded opponent with whom he is locked in a no-holds-barred battle.
Recent polls show Richard Blumenthal, the Democratic candidate, and Linda McMahon, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, locked in a tight race. "This Week" anchor Christiane Amanpour traveled to the Nutmeg State for exclusive interviews with both Senate hopefuls.
She asked McMahon, who is running for office on her business expertise, how she would work to reduce the United States massive deficit.
"The reason I've not been specific as to particular programs and I've dealt with it in terms of rolling back non-defense discretionary spending to 2008 levels because that was an approach that I took as a CEO. You look at, OK, how are you going to cut costs and cut expenses? You can look at a 10% cut across the board ..." she said.
McMahon also said that the U.S. should freeze federal hiring and freeze wages as well as taking "the balance of the stimulus money and pay down the debt."
Amanpour asked McMahon about behavior that was demeaning to women that took place in the ring while she was CEO of WWE.
"What do you really think when you see some of that go on in the ring? The girl who is told to get on all fours, I think by your own husband, and bark like a dog? Are you comfortable with that?" Amanpour asked.
"WWE programming has changed from being TV-14 over the years, which, that's the time you were talking about, it was called the Attitude Era, into now being PG, rated by the networks as PG. I'm happy with the content today," the Senate hopeful said.
