Blumenthal Called Winner

Despite spending more than $40 million, Republican Linda McMahon Tuesday apparently failed to stop Democrat Richard Blumenthal from becoming the state’s new U.S. senator Tuesday—because she couldn’t persuade women like Ann Cresswell to vote for her.

McMahon began losing Cresswell on the “qualifications” question—then blew it altogether with all those robocalls.

Cresswell, a voter from New Haven’s Westville neighborhood who registers as an independent, voted for Republican McMahon’s Democratic opponent, Richard Blumenthal, in Tuesday’s election for Connecticut’s U.S. Senate seat. She was part of what pollsters identified as a yawning gender gap that McMahon struggled to close in the campaign’s final weeks.

Minutes after the polls closed at 8 p.m., networks began projecting Blumenthal the winner.

What was it about McMahon that turned off women—even after spending nearly $50 million getting her message out?

Pundits had theories galore as polls showed Blumenthal with double-digit leads among women. Monday’s Quinnipiac Poll showed Blumenthal leading McMahon among likely female voters by an astonishing 25 percentage points. McMahon, who made her fortune running World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), led among men by 4 percentage points.

If McMahon had engendered even a little bit less animosity among female voters, this election might have been a cakewalk. 

We asked dozens of women who voted in cities and suburbs across the state for their take on the gap. Like the Q Poll, our unscientific survey found Blumenthal overwhelmingly taking women’s votes, even when the same women voted for Republican Tom Foley for governor.

The word “wrestling” came up often—as an epithet. So did “commercials.” And “qualifications.”
“Maybe men are more taken in by the appearance. Maybe men really like that wrestling stuff,” Ann Cresswell (pictured) said. “I can’t stand it.”

Cresswell runs a mental health project in Derby. She said she leaned toward Blumenthal because he had a good record as Connecticut’s attorney general, whereas “I don’t see that Linda McMahon has any qualifications whatsoever to be a senator.”

Then came the robocalls.

“I got a phone call from her campaign every day,” Cresswell complained. “I called. I asked them to stop.” They didn’t stop.
“I don’t like her husband [WWE’s] Vince McMahon,” said Florence Ritchie (pictured). And “she was too busy slinging dirt.”

Ritchie, who’s 72, is precisely the kind of voter McMahon needed most: She’s independent. She lives in East Haven, a bellwether community in state elections. (McMahon put her regional campaign office there and stopped there Tuesday afternoon.)

Ritchie voted for a Republican candidate for state representative. She couldn’t decided between the Democratic and Republican candidates for governor until she went into the voting booth at Overbrook School. (She reluctantly voted Democratic in that race.) Voting for Blumenthal, on the other hand, was an easy call. She didn’t like McMahon—or her ads. “The only thing she did that was good is she came on TV to thank people.”

Other independents and ticket-splitters cited McMahon’s torrent of advertising.

“I thought she was rude, putting down somebody else instead of telling us about her values,” said a Republican who split her ticket for Blumenthal and Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley at A.W. School in Guilford. She declined to give her name. So did a female registered Democrat at the same polling place who split her ticket the same way. “Blumenthal made me nervous with his ‘mispeaking’ [about serving in Vietnam] but I think the other candidate just doesn’t have enough experience,” she said.

Nancy Owen of Derby, a registered independent, said McMahon’s ads were what made her decide to cast her ballot for Blumenthal.

“I didn’t like any of McMahon’s ads,” she said. “Her ads just turned me right off.”