Her loyalty to the Republican Party was challenged last week when two of her Republican opponents criticized her donations to the Democratic Party while she was CEO of the WWE.
Now the state’s Democratic Party is taking on Linda McMahon, questioning the simulated sex and violence prominently featured in WWE’s televised product.
Colleen Flanagan, spokeswoman for Connecticut’s Democratic Party, said as CEO of the WWE, McMahon “presided over programming that showed simulated rape, public sex and necrophilia.”
“People across this state, not to mention the millions of women who are the victims of sexual violence every year, would be horrified and embarrassed to know that the person who seeks to represent them condones this kind of behavior,” she added.
McMahon’s campaign spokesman Ed Patru countered that “Every American understands the difference between scripted television entertainment and real life betrayal of trust by Washington politicians.”
“With 15 million Americans out of work, a jobless rate in Connecticut pushing 9 percent, people want a Senator who knows how to fix the economy and put people back to work,” Patru said. “It’s stunning that Chris Dodd’s supporters are more concerned with PG TV programming than fixing this economy.”
It’s unclear if McMahon was CEO of the WWE when the videos of wrestling matches Flanagan highlighted in the email were created.
The videos have since been taken down from You Tube for copyright violations, but one depicted a WWE wrestler having stimulated sex on a bed in the center of the ring, one included McMahon’s daughter being thrown down on a desk by wrestler Scott Steiner, and yet another depicted a WWE wrestler having sex with a corpse.
Other shortened versions of the videos, like this one and this one that Flanagan highlighted in her email Friday afternoon exist on the web, but the ones she specifically linked in her email have since been taken down for possible copyright violations.
In addition to the ones highlighted in Flanagan’s email, at least two other videos that showed McMahon herself in the ring have been taken down.
The discovery prompted Flanagan to question if the campaign had asked the WWE to ask You Tube to take down the unflattering clips. If the campaign had asked the WWE to have them taken down it could be considered a campaign violation since under federal elections laws corporations are prohibited from giving both monetary and in-kind contributions to campaigns.
Patru said the campaign did not ask WWE to contact You Tube to take down the videos. “No, we can’t do that,” he said.
However, Flanagan said she’s still suspicious since if the company really cared about copyright violations, then why haven’t the other 516,000 WWE videos been flagged for possible copyright violations?
