Political Capitol

Irvin Muchnick has been doing quite a bit of writing recently on his blog about World Wrestling Entertainment and former CEO Linda McMahon’s U.S. Senate bid.

And reporters, including myself, who have been covering the race have relied on Muchnick as a source even as Muchnick has been pressuring the local and national media to scrutinize WWE. McMahon, a Greenwich Republican, has been running as a successful businesswoman and using the fortune her family continues to amass from WWE to self-fund her race for the GOP nomination.

Muchnick is pushing a book on the 2007 murder/suicide of late WWE wrestler Chris Benoit and just announced his tour is coming to WWE’s hometown, Stamford, on March 25.

Don’t know how much of an impact this will have on the race but I’d say this is a pretty savvy marketing move on Muchnick’s part. And since McMahon is such a high profile candidate Muchnick’s appearance is bound to garner a bit of press.

Below is the press release. I’ve asked WWE and Linda’s campaign if they have anything they’d like to say about Muchnick and/or his book.

UPDATE: WWE has no comment.

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CHRIS & NANCY – the book about the murder-suicide of superstar pro wrestler Chris Benoit, which has landed in the middle of a closely watched U.S. Senate race – will be featured at a reading and signing by author Irvin Muchnick at Borders Book Shop in Stamford, Connecticut, 1041 High Ridge Road, on Thursday, March 25, 7:00-9:00 p.m.

This will be the anchor event of Muchnick’s statewide tour during the week before WrestleMania, and at a moment when the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), Linda McMahon, is conducting a closely watched campaign for the Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat. WWE is headquartered in Stamford.

“We’re looking forward to sending Irv to Connecticut; this is an important book and should be widely read,” said Simon Ware, publicity director of ECW Press. “CHRIS & NANCY is more than a wrestling book. It is a riveting true-crime story, and now it has been injected straight into the world of mainstream politics.”

Raffaello Piccoli, general manager of Borders in Stamford, added, “With our location, obviously, we have enjoyed great success with wrestling-related events. We look forward to an exciting evening of literary aggression.”

Muchnick previously authored the popular ECW Press book WRESTLING BABYLON: Piledriving Tales of Drugs, Sex, Death, and Scandal. He is also the lead respondent in Reed Elsevier v. Muchnick, a landmark case for freelance writers’ rights, which is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Attorney General/Democratic U.S. Senate Candidate Dick Blumenthal of Greenwich today announced he is “demanding that Toyota provide his office, consumers and dealers with more information about the safety and repair of its recently recalled vehicles.”

We’ve all seen this movie before, right? You know, the giant American robot versus the Japanese monster.

I understand tomorrow Blumenthal will be filing a lawsuit against Mothra.

Dennis House, host of “Face the State,” invited myself and Mark Pazniokas, formerly of the Hartford Courant/currently of the new The Connecticut Mirror, to be the guest panelists during tonight’s taping with freshman Democratic Congressman Jim Himes of Greenwich

A few highlights from the show, which airs Sunday morning:

1. Himes is open to a proposal made by Democratic President Barack Obama during Wednesday night’s State of the Union address to end tax cuts for investment fund managers and people earning over $250,000 – many of whom reside in lower Fairfield County and in Greenwich. There’s a BUT in there which you’ll learn if you watch the interview, clearly because Himes needs to tread carefully on taxation as a freshman Democrat representing wealthy lower Fairfield County and Greenwich.

2. Himes is prepared to vote for the Senate health bill “if the alternative is to do nothing.”

3. Himes is OK with Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke’s confirmation to a second term by the Senate even though fellow Greenwich resident/Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal wanted him out.

4. Himes sure likes to talk about how he listens to his constituents, particularly when he is not ready to commit to a position.

After the cameras stopped rolling I asked Himes about two other proposals the President focused on Wednesday night – taxing big banks to recoup federal bailout dollars and using $30 billion of the bank bailout repayments to improve the flow of credit to small businesses.

He’s prepared to support both.

I had also wanted to ask Himes for his thoughts on a proposal by potential Republican opponent Dan Debicella, a state Senator from Shelton, to repeal unspent stimulus funds and cut payroll taxes in half. But unfortunately I was unable to get to it.

But November’s nine months away, so there’s time.

If you guessed January, 2004 you’re correct.

An editor recalled the following report in the Stamford Advocate from Jan. 16, 2004 when then-Republican John Rowland was on his way out the door and there were rumors Shays might run for the job in 2006.

Oh, and that Ashton Kutcher movie? Something called “The Butterfly Effect,” released near the end of that same month.

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Shays: I will not run for governor
By Louis Porter
Staff Writer

STAMFORD – U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays will not run for governor in
2006, he said yesterday.

“If anyone suggested it, they were not encouraged to pursue it,” Shays,
R-Bridgeport, said about being asked to run for governor. Shays met
yesterday with editors of The Advocate and Greenwich Time.

He instead will put his energy into a campaign to retain his seat against
Democratic Westport First Selectwoman Diane Farrell, who will run against
him this fall.

“I am absolutely running again, and if I win that, I am running again” in
2006, Shays, said. “I am focused on issues that are important to my
district and that are national.”

Shays, who spoke for the first time on the upcoming race, called Farrell
“hugely formidable,” and said the campaign would require more work than
recent challenges.

On Monday, Shays joined several other Republican lawmakers in calling for
GOP Gov. John Rowland to resign because of an ethics scandal over gifts
from friends, state employees and a contractor.

President Bush should not ask the governor to resign, Shays said

“I would like the president to stay as far away from this as he can stay,”
Shays said. He added Bush is busy with other matters.

Bush will attend a Greenwich fund-raiser later this month, but Rowland,
state chairman of the president’s re-election campaign, will not.

Although he would like Rowland to resign, Shays said he does not think the
governor has committed impeachable offenses. Shays voted against impeaching
President Clinton.

Speaker of the House Moira Lyons, D-Stamford, launched a committee to
investigate the charges against Rowland on Wednesday.

“Bill Clinton, in my judgment, was a sleaze,” Shays said. But “you want to
make sure that it is very difficult for elected officials to vote out
someone who has won an election.”

He did ask Clinton to resign, Shays said.

Republicans should be taking the lead in pushing Rowland to resign, Shays
said.

“This is a Republican problem, Republicans have to deal with it,” he said.

It would be possible for Rowland to regain the ability to govern if he
faced the scandal with absolute candor, Shays said.

“It has gotten to the point that he has to be candid to the point of
embarrassment,” Shays said.

But Rowland has not done that, Shays said.

Instead, he has continued to “parse words,” as at a recent press conference
the congressman said he watched with dismay. Rowland said no members of
Congress had asked to meet with him, although Shays said he had been trying
to set up a meeting through the governor’s staff.

“I thought, ‘Oh, no, he is doing it again,’ ” Shays said yesterday.

Dealing with Rowland and potential other scandals may mean creating a state
office of inspector general to investigate corruption, waste and fraud,
Shays said.

“The only difference between New Jersey and Connecticut is that Connecticut
didn’t look at the corruption that was around,” he said.

State Sen. William Nickerson, R-Greenwich, supports the investigation of
Rowland, but has not called on him to resign.

“I think it is moot for anyone to ask the governor to resign because he
has made it clear a dozen times that he is not going to, at least in the
short term,” he said.

Without an impeachment, federal indictment or some other major event in the
story, Rowland will probably not resign, Nickerson said.

“Unless there is some event . . . I don’t see him changing what he is going
to do,” he said. “I don’t see it happening at the moment.”

The war in Iraq is likely to be a central issue in Shays’ race against
Farrell, who opposed going to war without broader international support.

Shays said that although some materials may have been transported to Syria,
it now appears that Iraq did not have an active weapons program as was
stated before the U.S.-led war there.

“The reason for going there was not backed up by what we have found so far,”
he said yesterday.

He did not blame the Bush administration for incomplete intelligence.

“No member of Congress has anyone to blame on this issue. It was our own
deductive reasoning,” he said. Even countries that did not support the war
thought Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had such weapons, Shays said.

Iraqis should determine what kind of trial Saddam, now a prisoner of the
United States, should face as long as it meets international standards of
fairness, he said.

If evidence comes to light that Saddam’s regime got support from the United
States, it should be public, he said.

Going to war in Iraq was the right thing to do, since there was no way to be
sure there were not nuclear, biological or chemical weapons in Iraq, Shays
said.

Some decisions should not rely on public opinion, no matter what the
political cost, he has said.

U.S. Congressman Chris Shays this week sent some pretty mixed messages about whether he might jump into the already crowded race for Governor.

In a phone interview Monday night Shays, who relocated to a waterfront “dream home” in Maryland following his 2008 loss to Democrat Jim Himes, told me some of his friends have been urging him to run and he is thinking about it.

But Shays said: “The answer may be it’s just not practical … It’s more likely in a few weeks I’ll have thought it through and said ‘you know what? I’m not sure this makes sense’.”

And later in the conversation, after I’d asked if he was interested in a re-match with Himes, Shays said: “I haven’t totally ruled that out, either, but I think it’s unlikely I would run for Governor. I think it’s unlikely I would run for Congress.”

Perhaps it was the fact he was surrounded by old friends and political insiders at last night’s roast in his honor in Greenwich that had Shays sounding a bit more optimistic about moving back to Connecticut and re-entering state politics.

What does it say about the quality of candidates – particulary the quality of GOP candidates – when folks are trying to convince a veteran politician who lost and left the state to move back and run?

Will the cost of Shays’ new Connecticut home be chalked up as a campaign expense?

UPDATE: The Connecticut Constitution states that to qualify to run for Governor you have to be a registered voter over the age of 30.

As for the issue of residency, Av Harris, spokesman for Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, said: “There’s no durational residency. It’s not a certain period of time. He needs to either buy a house or rent an apartment somewhere in Connecticut and he can establish residency and register to vote here.”

Shays has said renting is possible. So I have to wonder what voters would think of a gubernatorial candidate who rents a home in Connecticut to run for office while maintaining his “dream home” in Maryland?

I shot an e-mail to GOP Chairman Chris Healy asking if he has any concerns Shays’ potential candidacy might cause a public relations problem.

“Are you concerned about the appearance of his considering buying/renting property here and running?” I asked.

Healy responded: “Chris Shays will ultimately decide whether he wishes to run and certainly has the credibility and record to be a candidate for any office.”

UPDATE 2: Another interesting development courtesy of fellow Hearst reporter Ken Dixon. Shays is still registered to vote in Bridgeport

But a spokesman for the Registrar of Voters for Talbot County, Maryland in which Shays’ new home of St. Michael’s is located just told me he registered to vote there on Oct. 19, 2009.

But the confusion is not Shays’ fault. The spokesman said it is her office’s responsibility to notify Bridgeport that Shays is now registered to vote in St. Michael’s

“There should be a report that should have been sent to them and either someone overlooked it or it got lost in the mail. I don’t know,” she said.

Hartford business executive Oz Griebel is launching his long-rumored gubernatorial bid tomorrow with four campaign stops, concluding at 6:15 p.m. at the Stamford train station.

In doing so Griebel, a Republican, will be launching his statewide campaign in a city that two other contenders call home – recently retired Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy, who wants the Democratic nomination for governor, and, more importantly, Republican Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele.

I was tempted to write the headline: “Oz in Stamford to Drop House on Malloy/Fedele Campaigns” but at this point the “Wizard of Oz” references are already getting old and I’m sure he’s pretty tired of them as well.

I will be particularly interested to learn why Griebel thinks he can do a better job than the guy who has been second-in-command at the capitol for the past three years. And I’m sure Fedele’s potential Democratic opponents are eager to catalog any criticism from a fellow Republican businessman (Fedele is running as a businessman who will focus on job creation if nominated and elected).

Stamford’s own U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s staff today announced that he is now participating in (On? With? What do the kids say?) Twitter at http://twitter.com/joelieberman.

“The Senate Twitter Caucus has gone tri-partisan!” read the announcement, referring to Lieberman’s self-described status as an “independent Democrat.”

Lieberman remains a registered Democrat in Stamford but in 2006 after losing the party’s nomination for re-election he formed his own third party and won the general election.

The New Haven Independent story about Democratic New Haven Mayor John DeStefano being snubbed by Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell during her visit to that city today reminded me of Rell’s odd trip to Stamford last year.