'She's Basically in the Soft-Porn Business'

Christopher Shays comes out swinging against Linda McMahon in the Connecticut race for Senate.

By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY

Former Connecticut Congressman Christopher Shays officially launched his bid to become the Republican Senate candidate in the Nutmeg State last week. But Mr. Shays's intentions were already well-known. Ten days earlier he had come out swinging against his most formidable primary rival, former World Wrestling Entertainment executive Linda McMahon, with rhetoric that made Newt Gingrich seem like a piker.
"She's basically in the soft-porn business," Mr. Shays told the Associated Press. "I can't imagine that that doesn't matter to people. I can't imagine that how someone makes their money is irrelevant." And you thought Mitt and Newt were playing rough.


Mr. Shays's character assault can be explained in one word: money. Ms. McMahon and her husband are estimated to be worth almost $1 billion, and when she made an unsuccessful bid for former Connecticut senator Chris Dodd's seat in 2010, she spent $50 million. Most of it was hers.
She can do it again this time around if she has to. In December, Connecticut's Record-Journal reported that "in the first report the former [WWE executive] filed after announcing her new campaign in September -- covering the third quarter -- McMahon said she personally made 'in-kind' and 'pre-campaign' contributions that totaled $334,513 as well as $510,000 in zero-interest loans to her new campaign committee." In the fourth quarter she loaned the campaign $770,000.
Contrast this with Mr. Shays's balance sheet. The campaign corrected us in December when we mentioned a report in the Connecticut press that he has $300,000 of former campaign debt. Most of that -- $252,000 -- it said, is owed not by Mr. Shays but by his former campaign manager who was convicted in 2010 of stealing it. The former manager has agreed to pay the money back, but he also owes $96,000 in back taxes and fines on that stolen money and he is still in jail.
Meanwhile, financing this campaign is looking like an uphill climb for Mr. Shays. The campaign says the candidate owes $30,000 in former campaign debt, mostly from legal fees as a result of the former manager's embezzlement. And his fourth-quarter fund raising came in at $422,000, well below his $1 million goal, though he and his wife threw in another $100,000 that they borrowed.
No wonder Mr. Shays has taken the gloves off to go after Ms. McMahon's background. Yet the attacks seem to be making state Republican Party Chairman Jerry Labriola Jr. nervous. The Hartford Courant reported last week that Mr. Labriola said Mr. Shays's soft-porn comment "drew my attention" and that he called the candidate about it. "They certainly will hear from me if things go over the line," Mr. Labriola said. They may be hearing a lot from him.