(Updated) Former wrestling executive Linda McMahon, may not be holding any more press conferences, but she’s not opposed to giving the media a sneak peak of her third quarter financial report—proving that Connecticut’s U.S. Senate contest may be one of the most expensive in the country.
According to the four-page summary McMahon released Tuesday she’s loaned her campaign $41.5 million through the end of September and seems to be on pace to spend the $50 million she pledged. To date McMahon has spent $39.5 million and lent her campaign $20 million between July 22 and Sept. 30, the end of the reporting period.
McMahon’s Democratic opponent, Richard Blumenthal, released the summary of his financial report Tuesday too showing that he has raised about $4.4 million since entering the race in January. Blumenthal also personally loaned his campaign $500,000 and has spent a little more than $3 million over the past three months.
“Linda McMahon is well on her way to spending $50 million dollars on a politics as usual negative attack campaign to try and tear Dick Blumenthal down,” Mindy Myers, Blumenthal‘s campaign manager, said Tuesday. “But no amount of money can whitewash her record of consistently putting profits before people.”
McMahon’s campaign, which is operating under an earned media blackout, put out a press release Tuesday calling Blumenthal a “rubber stamp” for the Democratic Party.
“At a time when voters are looking for a different kind of Senator, Dick Blumenthal is promising Connecticut more of the same economic policies that have failed to put people back to work,” said McMahon’s spokesman Shawn McCoy. “Washington and the special interests are rushing to support Dick Blumenthal because they know he will be a rubber stamp for policies like the national energy tax.”
But McMahon’s spending on the race has hardly gone unnoticed. From mailers to television commercials, voters have been inundated by McMahon’s paid advertisements.
However, there is one ad McMahon’s campaign didn’t buy. It’s a billboard on I-95. The billboard says it was paid for by Brothers for Intelligent Government. The brothers in this case are John and his brother Bruce Barrett who own a billboard company.
In a phone interview Wednesday morning John Barrett said he wanted voters to know McMahon was trying to “buy their vote” every time they saw one of her signs. But not everybody got that message so Barrett said within the next few days a big yellow “Not” will appear in the right hand corner of the billboard.
A self-described, non-militant Democrat, Barrett said they initially thought about putting up a Blumenthal billboard, but thought stealing the McMahon brand was more effective. Since Barrett and his brother own the billboard the total cost of putting it up was about $670.
The accompanying web site www.itsallaboutlinda.com says “Anyone aspiring to the U.S. Senate should have a long track record of service above self. In her life thus far, Linda has done nothing that demonstrates a continued and sustained interest in serving others. As far we can see, her campaign is All About Linda.”
The photo of the billboard was submitted to us Oct. 14 by a CTNewsjunkie reader.
