Dan and Susan Are the Tip of Linda McMahon’s Iceberg in State Politics

I want to call attention to Hartford Courant columnist Rick Green’s useful blog item yesterday, “When Dan and Susan Loved Linda and the WWE,” http://blogs.courant.com/rick_green/2010/01/when-dan-and-susan-loved-linda.html.

I defer to Green and other Connecticutans on all the inside baseball involving Linda McMahon’s relationship with state political figures Susan Bysiewicz and Dan Malloy. The former is about to announce her candidacy for attorney general; the latter is running for governor.

What I do know is that Green, like a number of other reporters, is wedging open the window on Linda and Vince McMahon’s longstanding connections with the state political establishment, in both parties. This calls into question Linda’s “outsider” credentials in her race for the U.S. Senate. But it also leads us to the fingerprints of Connecticut leaders on the growth and export of World Wrestling Entertainment (and, by association, the culture of death and depravity that WWE represents).

As the McMahon campaign proceeds, I’ll hope to find time to record more of this history, which starts with WWE board member Lowell Weicker. To his credit — out of personal loyalty and because they both support health-care reform — Weicker had endorsed Chris Dodd, not Linda McMahon, for Senate. But there may not have been anyone in elective office who did more than Weicker to nurture the McMahons through tough times.

The cast of characters goes on and on, extending — of course — to none other than Joe Lieberman, another lightning rod for all things Democratic, Republican, Independent, and just perverse in Connecticut politics.

It’s a story of state government dysfunction at the highest level. And as someone who lives in California, I know from state government dysfunction.

Irv Muchnick