McMahon takes strong lead in GOP Senate race

Well-heeled political newcomer Linda McMahon shot out to a comfortable lead over her two opponents in the high-stakes Republican U.S. Senate primary battle.

With 13 percent of precincts reporting, McMahon had 47 percent of the vote to 30 percent for former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons and 23 percent for financial commentator Peter Schiff.

McMahon has anted up $22 million of her own money so far on a well-oiled campaign machine that has guided the self-proclaimed political outsider to insider status in the GOP. New Jersey Democrat Jon Corzine holds the record, dropping $60.2 million of his Goldman Sachs fortune on his successful run for Senate in 2000.

Critics of McMahon say her free spending is a double-edged sword because of the perception she is trying to buy the seat of retiring incumbent Christopher Dodd with money from an industry that has been rife with steroid use and has glorified violence -- professional wrestling.

But her return on investment is undeniable. This time last year, McMahon was but a blip on the radar of Republicans.

Quinnipiac University only started including McMahon in its Senate poll in November, when she trailed Simmons by 11 points in a hypothetical primary matchup. In six months, Simmons' lead evaporated.

McMahon has saturated the airwaves with campaign commercials, promoting themes of job creation and fiscal restraint, values that she said she learned going through personal bankruptcy and building up a billion-dollar wrestling empire with her controversial husband, Vince.

McMahon has aimed much of her campaign resources at Democratic nominee, Richard Blumenthal, cutting the longtime attorney general's lead from 41 points in January to just 10 points last week.

Simmons, a Vietnam veteran, former CIA agent and one-time state legislator, appeared to have the party's nomination locked last year, after having barely lost his congressional seat in 2006 to Democrat Joe Courtney.

But by the time the convention rolled around in late May, McMahon had convinced delegates hungry for a long out-of-reach Senate seat and the end of Blumenthal's political career that she was the candidate to win in November.

"For him to be ditched at the convention after all these years of honest investment, by somebody who bought her way, threatened her way in...," said Simmons' wife, Heidi, "that convention was sickening to me, distressing to my children and his strong followers were stunned."

A few days after the convention, Simmons said he would leave his name on today's ballot, but suspend his campaign because he could not compete with McMahon's money. A few weeks ago, spurred on by decent poll numbers and well-wishes of supporters, he became more engaged in the race, granting interviews, participating in debates and launching modest television ads to, he said, remind voters he was on the ballot.

Name recognition haunted Schiff throughout the campaign, with 61 percent of likely voters saying they didn't know enough about the financial commentator and money manager in the most recent Quinnipiac poll, conducted less than a week before the primary.

Schiff positioned himself as an expert on the economy who predicted the financial meltdown when no one else would listen.

A seat in the Senate would fix that in his view, giving him a platform to push for a flat tax and for cuts to entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. Those policies have made him a favorite of the tea party movement, blogosphere and former presidential candidate Steve Forbes.

But Schiff's appeal as a viable alternative to McMahon or Simmons never caught on in his home state, from which just 6 percent of his campaign donations originated.

Schiff was forced to petition his way onto the primary ballot after failing to garner the required 15 percent of delegates at the state GOP convention.