Linda McMahon, former president and CEO of WWE, failed in her bid for a Senate seat in Connecticut, losing to Democratic Rep. Chris Murphy on Tuesday. This follows her 2010 loss to Richard Blumenthal in the race for the state’s other seat in the Senate.
The total cost of losing two elections has ranged from $90 to $97 million, according to estimates. McMahon spent $50 million of her personal fortune in her failed 2010 campaign, and is believed to have spent $40 to $47 million the second time around. Between both campaigns, McMahon has now spent a cumulative total of over $90 million in pursuit of federal office. That is more than any other American in history.
WWE Hall of Famer “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, who worked under the employ of McMahon, criticized her exorbitant spending on two failed Senate campaigns in a series of Twitter messages Wednesday. After asking his followers whether McMahon won her race, he wrote, “Can spend 90 million on a losing election but won’t give the people that earned that money for them medical or retirement help of any kind!”
Piper then re-tweeted a message comparing her failed Senate campaigns to another McMahon family outside-the-ring venture that went bust; the World Bodybuilding Federation: “It’s like the WBF all over again; money spent on alternate endeavors earned from the blood & sweat of the boys.”
Continuing to stick up for “the boys,” while also corroborating a rumor that mid-level WWE talent had to cover their hotel and travel expenses during WrestleMania XXVIII week in Miami, Florida despite the sports-entertainment organization generating a record-breaking $102.7 million in economic impact for Miami-Dade County, he also re-tweeted, “They can spend 90 mill on elections but still make midcarders pay their and their family own way for wrestlemania. crazy.”
