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Of this season’s crazy, contentious, wide-open Senate races — in Ohio, Florida, California, Arizona, Nevada — none is as wild as what’s going on in Connecticut. In one corner: Democrat Richard Blumenthal, 64, state attorney general since 1991 and favored to win, up by over 40 points in the polls until this spring, when he was caught lying about having served in Vietnam. In the opposing corner: Republican Linda McMahon, 61, until last fall the CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), billionaire and political neophyte. Since spending $22 million of her fortune, McMahon beat out GOP contenders Peter Schiff (campaign...

Blumenthal has slipped below the 50 percent mark of support against Republican Linda McMahon in the state’s U.S. Senate race. Blumenthal, the state’s longtime attorney general, picks up 47 percent of the vote, while McMahon earns 40 percent. Five percent prefer some other candidate, and 7 percent remain undecided. Support for McMahon is unchanged from last month, despite her GOP primary win Tuesday. Blumenthal’s support is down 6 points since last month. In June, Blumenthal held a 56 percent to 33 percent lead over McMahon, the former head of Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Linda McMahon of Connecticut, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, easily won the Republican Senate nomination Tuesday night, joining the nationwide roster of political outsiders who will carry the GOP banner into the fall campaign.

If you thought the Connecticut senate race was all over when the flack over state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (D) target="_blank">lying about his military service died down, think again. According to the latest poll, Republican Linda McMahon is just 10 points behind Mr. Blumenthal (50% - 40%) and while that may seem like a pretty substantial lead for the Democrat, it has shrunk by 9 points in just 3 weeks.

HARTFORD — The widow of a World Wrestling Entertainment performer who died in a televised 1999 stunt filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the Connecticut-based company and its leaders, including Republican U.S. Senate candidate Linda McMahon. Martha Hart said she learned three months ago that McMahon, who stepped down as WWE chief executive in the fall to run for Senate, and her husband, Vince, the current chairman, for years have used the image of her late husband, Owen Hart,......

Associated Press AP Political Writer June 7, 2010 HARTFORD, Conn. Connecticut elections officials are investigating whether Weston businessman Peter Schiff violated state laws by using out-of-state workers to collect signatures to petition his way onto the Republican primary ballot for U.S. Senate. In a complain obtained Monday by The Associated Press, James Bancroft, who said he was a founding member of the Hartford tea party group, claimed he was approached by a Schiff supporter outside a store in Newington last week and asked to sign a petition. Bancroft said he struck up a conversation with the worker, who said he...

Democrat Richard Blumenthal apparently has weathered charges that he exaggerated his military service in Vietnam for years and is running as strongly as ever against both his Republican challengers in Connecticut’s race for the U.S. Senate. A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Connecticut finds Blumenthal with 56% support versus 33% for Linda McMahon, the officially endorsed GOP candidate. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and seven percent (7%) are undecided. McMahon has come under criticism recently as people have focused on her role in World Wresting Entertainment, a corporation that one conservative pundit compares to...

Hold on here a second. Will someone in the media please take a look at the polling methodology between the Quinnipiac and Rasmussen polls concerning the US Senate race in Connecticut? Why are the results so different? The Rassmussen poll was taken on May 18 and asked questions of 500 likely voters. The Quinnipiac poll was taken on May 24 and 25 and asked questions of 1159 registered voters. So we’re talking about a six to seven day gap, and the results are that different? The Rassmussen poll was a statistical dead heat with Blumenthal leading a direct race with...

Connecticut Attorney General and Democratic Senate Candidate Richard Blumenthal's lead over his most likely Republican opponent Linda McMahon has dropped 8 points since his lies about serving "in Vietnam" were exposed. But that means he still has a considerable 25 point lead (56%-31%) according to the latest poll. This strong support for a man who repeatedly traded on the service of others to enhance his own political resume is disturbing. But there is another set of numbers in this new poll that might be even more troubling and have ramifications way beyond this one election. When asked whether "misspoke" or...

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Vito Fossella running for Congress could actually help President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party hold on to the House this fall, a Republican consultant said. "If Vito runs, he instantly becomes the national Democrats' poster boy for what's wrong with the Republican Party," said Brooklyn GOP strategist Gerry O'Brien. "They'll raise millions of dollars using Vito Fossella, and hammer every Republican candidate in every state in the country." Fossella has yet to say if he will run after being endorsed by the Staten Island GOP's executive committee last week. The party's county committee would have...

The already divisive Republican effort to unseat freshman Rep. Mike McMahon took a bizarre turn last week, when a GOP committee on Staten Island nominated none other than Vito Fossella — the congressman who was run out of town after a drunk-driving arrest and subsequent revelations that he had a secret family in Virginia — to represent the party in the fall election. The executive committee of the Staten Island GOP nominated former Rep. Fossella — the family-values politician who values families so much that he has two of them — to reclaim the seat he left after news of...

But Simmons, who hinted in an interview earlier this week that he wouldn't continue the battle for the nomination if he lost at the convention, announced late Friday he would carry the fight into the Aug. 10 primary. ... But Schiff said that he would take advantage of Connecticut's open primary law and petition his way onto the Aug. 10 primary ballot nonetheless.

In a startling move, the Staten Island Republican Party last night nominated scandal-scarred ex-Rep. Vito Fossella for his old seat -- even though he wasn't even there. By a vote of 23-4, the GOP selected Fossella over candidates Michael Allegretti, a businessman, and Michael Grimm, a former US Marshal, to challenge Democratic Rep. Michael McMahon in November. Fossella, who served five terms in Congress, decided not to run for reelection in 2008 after he was arrested for drunken driving in Virginia -- and admitted he was there to see his mistress, a retired Air Force colonel, and their love child.

Following bombshell revelations that he claimed he served in Vietnam when he hadn't, Connecticut Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal's once-robust lead in the polls has hit record lows. The Senate hopeful now leads Republican challenger Linda McMahon by a mere three points -- a 10-point drop from two weeks ago, according to according to a Rasmussen poll conducted on Tuesday. The latest poll had Blumenthal at 48 percent compared to McMahon, the co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment, who had 45 percent of the vote. It's the closest McMahon or any other candidate has ever come to Blumenthal in the polls. Blumenthal...

Following a New York Times report that he exaggerated his military record, Democratic Senate hopeful Richard Blumenthal has lost ground in match-ups against all his potential Republican challengers in Connecticut. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Connecticut finds Blumenthal with just a three-point advantage over Linda McMahon, 48% to 45%. Two weeks ago, he led the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment by 13 percentage points. The New York Times story broke late Monday; the survey was taken Tuesday evening.

I just confirmed with a source who was at tonight's executive committee meeting of the Staten Island GOP that both Michael Allegretti and Michael Grimm were turned down for the nomination for ex-Rep. Vito Fossella's old seat (now held by Democratic Rep. Michael McMahon) in favor of... Vito Fossella. The ex-rep was not present at the meeting, but his name was put up by Chairman John Friscia, the source told me. More to follow... Both Allegretti and Grimm went through the interview process before Fossella was nominated in absentia, the source said: "There was no explanation. Everybody walked out with...

Following a New York Times report that he exaggerated his military record, Democratic Senate hopeful Richard Blumenthal has lost ground in match-ups against all his potential Republican challengers in Connecticut.

Pulling back the curtain on journalistic sausage-making usually hidden from voters, a Republican Senate candidate is taking credit for the front-page New York Times story accusing Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of “plainly untrue” remarks about Vietnam service. But a New York Times spokeswoman said: "[A]nyone reading it can tell that it was the product of extensive independent reporting — including our FOIA of his military records."

Linda McMahon, a republican candidate for the senate in Connecticut exposed Richard Blumenthal for being the liar he is, this according to her website: http://www.linda2010.com/news/2010/05/in-case-you-missed-it-mcmahon-strikes-blumenthal-in-nyt-article/ here is a link to the video she has also posted on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNhzPBn3zP0

Now it’s official. It only took a few months and a push downhill from Marco Rubio, but Charlie Crist has finally announced he will run as an independent in the Florida Senate race. “My decision to run as a says more about our nation or our state than it does about me,” said the governor at a campaign event in St. Petersburg, Fla. Crist spoke of the “broken system” that is American politics. “For me,” said Crist, “public service is more about putting the needs of the public for the needs of myself.” The announcement comes a little more than...