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hannel 3 Eyewitness News will host the first United States Senate debate between Linda McMahon and United States Rep. Chris Murphy on Sunday at 11 a.m. Both of the candidates have been offered and have accepted the invitation to debate issues regarding the state. Dennis House, Eyewitness News anchor and Face the State host, will serve as moderator of the debate. A panel of journalists, Angela Dias, of WTIC Radio, Mark Pazniokas, from the Connecticut Mirror and Fran Schneidau from WCBS News Radio 880 will question both candidates. The debate will be televised live from 11 a.m. until noon without...

Women’s reproductive rights took center stage in the U.S. Senate race Monday, as a pro-choice group took aim at Republican candidate Linda McMahon over her support of a bill that would have allowed employers to refuse to cover contraception for their employees. The campaigns have been vying for the support of female voters, who did not get behind McMahon in her 2010 Senate bid. In a Monday afternoon conference call hosted by Christian Miron, the director of the NARAL Pro-Choice Connecticut, the state branch of the national pro-choice advocacy organization. Miron scored McMahon for saying she would have supported the...

Connecticut's Linda McMahon has Democrats nervous about losing another blue-state Senate seat. Connecticut might be the last place you'd expect Republicans to pick up a U.S. Senate seat this November, but it may happen. In the race for retiring Sen. Joe Lieberman's seat, Linda McMahon, the co-founder of the highly profitable World Wrestling Entertainment, leads Democratic Rep. Chris Murphy by three points, according to the latest Quinnipiac poll. Those numbers terrify Democrats, so much so that at the party's convention in Charlotte, N.C., this week they frantically shuttled Mr. Murphy around town to meet deep-pocket Democratic donors. Connecticut hasn't had...

Last week, Ramussen showed Republican nominee Linda McMahon with a 3-point edge over her Democratic opponent in the US Senate race in Connecticut, Rep. Chris Murphy, 49/46. Six days later, Quinnipiac confirms that McMahon has a slight edge over Murphy — and in fact finds the exact same result: Connecticut likely voters put Republican former wrestling executive Linda McMahon on the right side of a 49-46 percent too-close-to-call U.S. Senate race against Democratic U.S. Rep. Christopher Murphy, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. …"The poll is good news for Linda McMahon. In our first likely voter poll in...

In a startling assertion almost buried in last night’s “On the Record” interview with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa indicated he has criminal charges in store for an ATF official implicated in the Fast and Furious “gunwalking” operation. Referring to “double-dipping” by former Assistant Director William Hoover [CORRECTION: should be "McMahon"--transcription error on my part--DC], hired by the J.P. Morgan financial services conglomerate while he’s on leave from ATF and awaiting retirement, Issa let slip with what should be considered a bombshell announcement, and a precursor for things to...

(CNSNews.com) - The long-awaited inspector general's report on the Justice Department's botched gun-running scheme is finished, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said on Wednesday. But along with that news comes more questions: Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) are demanding to know why a top ATF official involved in Operation Fast and Furious remains on paid leave from ATF -- while simultaneously drawing a six-figure salary from J.P. Morgan, a major investment bank.

DEVELOPING... 55% of Indies, 16% of Democrats Poll from RasmussenReports...

Polls closed in Connecticut at 8 p.m. as voters cast ballots in the state's primary elections Tuesday. The Associated Press delcared Linda McMahon the winner of the GOP Senate race over Chris Shays about 40 minutes after the polls closed. Elections officials said turnout appears to be on track to hit 25 percent to 30 percent as Republicans and Democrats picked their candidates for the November general election. Hotly contested races for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives dominate Tuesday's ballots. Many polling places saw a slow stream of voters. Secretary of the State's office spokesman Av Harris said...

In the last election cycle, former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon spent $50 million of her own fortune in an unsuccessful quest to fill Connecticut's vacant U.S. Senate seat, losing badly to her Democratic opponent, Richard Blumenthal. With the lessons of being a novice candidate behind her, McMahon is back for Round 2, poised to enter the 2012 race to succeed retiring four-term Sen. Joe Lieberman. A source close to McMahon’s future campaign confirmed to RealClearPolitics that the Republican hopeful will make her candidacy official in the next two weeks. (News of her plans was first reported by The...

In case there was any doubt, Linda McMahon’s political career may not be over.   The former wrestling executive turned Connecticut GOP Senate candidate has scheduled a personal meeting with National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (Texas) on Capitol Hill. The date and purpose of the meeting, however, is unclear.   “I don’t know what her message is going to be, but I sort of suspect she isn’t finished,” Cornyn said in a recent Roll Call interview when asked about McMahon, who garnered 43 percent of the vote in Connecticut’s recent Senate contest against Democratic Sen.-elect Richard Blumenthal.  ...

When a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate sinks $50 million into a losing campaign, it's natural for the less-monied runners-up for the GOP nomination to wonder if they would have performed better. Neither uttered the specific words "I told you so," but in separate interviews former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons and economist/radio host Peter Schiff maintained they were better candidates than wrestling executive Linda McMahon. "There are a number of issue areas where I simply would not be subject to the kind of attacks that (Democratic foe Richard Blumenthal) leveled against Mrs. McMahon," said Simmons, who had criticized McMahon's background running...

LOS ANGELES - Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina and Linda McMahon had a lot in common. All sharp, successful businesswomen who made millions as executives in the private sector, they identified 2010 as an apt historical moment for a Republican candidate with no political experience to break into politics. In pursuit of higher office, each committed considerable resources - more than $200 million combined - to challenge seemingly vulnerable Democrats. Each risk taker came up far short of her goal. Whitman, the 54-year-old former chief executive of eBay, burned through more than $140 million of her own money in a colossal...

They roared as “Triple H” — U.S. Senate hopeful Linda McMahon’s son-in-law — pounded his opponent in the ring. They cheered as her husband Vince urged them to wear their World Wrestling Entertainment T-shirts to the polls on Tuesday. They whooped and hollered for the busty “Divas” who stomped their rival hussies. Then the diehards of World Wrestling nation filed out of the arena—some of them, at least, promising to vote for the candidate herself on Tuesday. The wrasslin’ and unstated politickin’ took center stage Saturday, just three days before Election Day, at the Hartford XL Center. Saturday’s World Wrestling...

The Connecticut Secretary of State's office told poll workers to watch for WWE gear, and they had the ability to tell people to take it off or turn it inside out at a polling place. Vince at WWE gets ticked off and goes to court. The Conn. Sec. of State says "she never said" people could not wear WWE gear and they COULD wear the stuff. She may have not said it, but her official spokesperson DID. She's trying to weasel out of it. The court agrees with WWE. McMahon announces today they will be handing out FREE WWE gear...

GREENWICH, CONN. IT has been said that American politics and professional wres tling share a paucity of honest emotions. But Linda McMahon, who as CEO built World Wrestling Entertainment into a billion-dollar company, might think comparing wrestling to politics insults wrestling. As she seeks the Senate seat being vacated by Chris Dodd, she says the honesty deficit concerns not emotions but facts. Her Democratic opponent, Richard Blumenthal, who served six years in the Legislature, has been Connecticut's attorney general for 20 years, so he knows how to parse sentences. Yet his penchant for (to be polite) tactical imprecision goes beyond...

State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal again holds a double-digit lead over Republican opponent Linda McMahon in Connecticut’s U.S. Senate race. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Connecticut shows the longtime Democratic state official with 56% support, his best showing since early June. McMahon claims 43%of the vote. One percent (1%) prefer some other candidate, and another one percent (1%) are undecided. Less than two weeks ago after the candidates’ second televised debate, Blumenthal posted a much narrower 51% to 46% lead. But the new findings shift this race from Leans Democrat to Solid Democrat in the...

Dick Blumenthal has tried to cast himself as a white knight in the Countrywide Mortgage scandal that forced Chris Dodd into retirement after the exposure of his sweetheart mortgage deals under the “Friends of Angelo” program at Countrywide. Blumenthal points to his $8.6 billion settlement with Bank of America over the mortgage giant’s remaining loans, one that supposedly “won’t cost taxpayers a dime,” as an example of his beneficial work for Connecticut voters and his ability to get tough with fraudsters. Linda McMahon takes aim at this argument with her new ad released yesterday titled “Taking Care,” which alleges that...

No low is too low for a guy who falsely claimed to have served in combat during the Vietnam war… (Politico)- A source this morning forwards on an e-mail this morning from inside Attorney General Dick Blumenthal’s campaign for Senate, in which his aides discuss tarring Linda McMahon in cooperation with Planned Parenthood. The e-mail’s subject line is: “Worst of WWE + women photos.” “Hey all — Grossman is looking for mysoginistic photos of women and WWE. Planned Parenthood wants to hit LM hard on it,” press staffer Marcy Stech e-mailed seven other aides to the campaign and the State...

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Local election officials in Connecticut are being told they can ask people wearing World Wrestling Entertainment garb to cover that up while voting. A spokesman for the secretary of the state's office says that's because Republican Senate candidate Linda McMahon is so closely associated with WWE, which she left to run for office.

Blue-state Connecticut has undergone a jolting metamorphosis over the past three years, with potential ramifications for the Senate contest between Linda McMahon and Richard Blumenthal. Many residents have become a lot more like red-state Texans than blue-state New Englanders. Now, they're enthusiastic supporters of the death penalty and are fond of handguns and shotguns. It's all due to a horrific home invasion in 2007 in the affluent town of Cheshire, a New Haven suburb. Chilling details of the "Cheshire Murders," as they're known, have played out in a New Haven courtroom this fall during the first of two trials. Now,...