Powell: Shays Stronger Than McMahon In A General Election

Insightful column from Chris Powell, managing editor of the Journal Inquirer.

Are Connecticut’s Republicans really going to nominate Linda McMahon for U.S. senator again? It could seem so, as she has collected endorsements from dozens of party leaders, if Connecticut’s Republican Party can be said to have leaders. Maybe “officials” would be more accurate.

For how could leaders want the party to risk another humiliation like McMahon’s campaign for the Senate two years ago? She spent $50 million from her personal fortune, many times more than had ever been spent in a political campaign in Connecticut, only to run next to last on the Republican state ticket, just a few votes ahead of a candidate who spent nothing at all, losing by double digits to a Democrat, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, whose frequent exaggeration of his military record might have made him beatable by a credible Republican rather than one whose poll negatives always exceeded her positives.

How could any Republican have much hope that it will be different this time?

Is it because this is supposed to be a Republican year? As weak as the economy remains and as lukewarm as the public is toward President Obama, the polls show no more enthusiasm for the Republican presidential aspirants, most of whom Connecticut regards as hateful, wacky, or both. Two years ago was a Republican year–everywhere except in Connecticut, where McMahon dragged the whole ticket down, having no qualification for office except her money and vanity and having nothing to say except the script offered by national party headquarters and pollsters.

Connecticut remains a Democratic state and that party will nominate a well-known and experienced Senate candidate, either U.S. Rep. Christopher Murphy or former Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz. The Democratic nominee’s campaign will be amply funded and he or she will be the favorite in the election.

Maybe in time Connecticut will consider the pornography and mock violence of the wrestling business from which McMahon draws her fortune to be as legitimate as any other business. Maybe Republicans will find a way of squaring that business with the family values they purport to uphold, or the time will come when they don’t have to, since social disintegration is the trend in Connecticut, as throughout the country.

But more likely, for the present, Republican leaders supporting McMahon are simply engaging in another default, as they have done many times in recent years, aiming to give the Senate nomination to a self-funding candidate with no record in public life and little familiarity with public policy because this seems to relieve the party of its own responsibility to be a party. Such an attitude has left the party at its lowest point in Connecticut’s history.

If Republican expectations are no higher than extravagantly catered campaign events and advertising overkill that only emphasizes that someone is trying to buy an election, McMahon may do just fine again as the nominee. But former U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays says McMahon can’t win and he can–polls indicate as much–so he’s seeking the Republican Senate nomination too.

With three years in the Peace Corps, 12 years in the state House of Representatives, 20 years in the U.S. House of Representatives, and two years on the U.S. Commission on Wartime Contracting, Shays is, depending on one’s point of view, either an experienced public servant or a career politician. In any case he lost only one election in 17 and was considered a moderate Republican of some independence, as when he confronted corruption in the state probate court system in the 1980s. He was the last Republican in the U.S. House from New England.

Some find Shays preachy but he speaks with restraint and never raises his voice even as he doesn’t need a script to know what he thinks. Formally announcing his candidacy the other day, he pledged to work to control federal spending and to “take the country back” from special interests. He soon may be reminded that Connecticut is planted thick with them, like military contractors whose products the president suddenly has found expendable. Does anyone in Connecticut really want to control federal spending that much?

But at least until the Republican primary in August, McMahon herself and what she inevitably represents–buying an election in the absence of any other qualifications–probably will remain the biggest issue of the Senate campaign.