WWE CEO Wins Initial Approval For State School Board Reported by: Ryan Clark
Updated on February 5, 2009 9:31 PM EST
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Source: Stamford Advocate
HARTFORD -- World Wrestling Entertainment Chief Executive Officer Linda McMahon's nomination to the state school board received initial approval Thursday, despite some legislators contentions that she presides over an entertainment empire that verges on the pornographic. "Her background and her presentation today, I thought, was very impressive and effective," said Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney, D-New Haven.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell nominated McMahon to serve on the 11-member State Board of Education, which sets statewide education policy for Connecticut public schools. Looney is a co-chairman of the Executive and Legislative Nominations Committee, which presided over McMahon's confirmation hearing and voted 11-2 to recommend her appointment to the full General Assembly.
McMahon, a Greenwich resident whose WWE offices are in Stamford, was nominated to the state Board of Education last month to finish member Alice Carolan's term. Her nomination raised concerns in part because she lacks a background in education.
The retired Carolan was an adjunct professor at the University of Bridgeport and a former administrator of the Naugatuck Public Schools.
McMahon majored in French at East Carolina University in 1969 and was certified to teach in North Carolina. But she said Thursday a pregnancy altered her career path. By the late 1970s, she and husband Vincent McMahon were on their way to building the global WWE empire, which features scripted bouts between often well-built, scantily-clad male and female characters who represent good and evil.
Her involvement in education has since been in sponsoring reading and other youth-oriented programs through the WWE. She also has a seat on the Board of Trustees of Sacred Heart University in Fairfield. McMahon and others said her outsider's perspective and management skills would prove valuable to the state school board.
"I'm just a lay person. . . . I'm not part of the world of academia," McMahon said. She said she offered her services to Rell after reading in the newspaper that the Greenwich school district was cited last fall for not making adequate yearly process under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. "I thought, 'How could that be? Here we are in one of the wealthiest cities in the nation,' " McMahon recalled. When committee members sought her opinions about various educational issues, McMahon either said she did not know enough to respond or gave basic answers. Asked to propose ideas on improving student performance, McMahon said, "I really wish I had that plan to lay out for you. I don't. . . . I can only see we're not getting results."McMahon spent much of the hearing defending the WWE as providing a legitimate, legal form of entertainment that she and her husband are proud to share with the world. "We're an entertainment company. Our performers are actors," McMahon said, adding later: "Did you know Abraham Lincoln was a professional wrestler who traveled around on the carnival circuit?"
State Rep. Andrew Fleischmann, D-West Hartford, participated in the hearing as a co-chairman of the Education Committee. He said he found a "disconnect" between McMahon's nomination to the school board and "the wildly unreasonable things that happen on television through your organization every day."
He said WWE promotes inappropriate behavior among children. McMahon herself has participated in the ring, kicking a wrestler in the groin and fighting with her daughter. McMahon said it is up to parents to determine whether their children should watch a WWE television program or attend a live wrestling event.
State Rep. Shawn Johnston, D-Putnam, said that after attending a live WWE event with his sons, he grew embarrassed over the sexual imagery and banned them from watching it at home.
Johnston said he was looking at other WWE events on the Internet before Thursday's hearing and had to shut his office door.
"I was afraid someone was going to walk by and think I was watching pornography on a Capitol computer," Johnston said. State Rep. Claire Janowski, D-Vernon, questioned McMahon about steroids in wrestling.
"In 2006, we really tightened up our program with more requirements than ever before," McMahon said. She said that after the third violation wrestlers are fired. But she said she is willing to help them through rehabilitation if they are open with WWE management.
"I'm proud of it. It helps protect the health and well-being of the greatest assets of WWE, our superstars," McMahon said.
Republicans on the committee said Democrats were unfairly targeting McMahon.
"We're not putting the WWE on the board. We're putting you on the board," state Rep. Janice Giegler, R-Danbury, told McMahon.
State Sen. John McKinney, R-Fairfield, said McMahon would add diversity to the school board and said he did not view his voting for her as a "stamp of approval" for all WWE activities.
McMahon's staff Thursday handed out letters of support from two potential Democratic opponents to Rell in 2010 -- Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz and Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy.
Malloy credited McMahon with supporting the Connecticut Grand Opera & Orchestra's education programs at Stamford schools, the Boys & Girls Club of Stamford and St. Luke's LifeWorks.
"It is always crucial for the state to tap the business insights and experiences as well as the professional training and certifications of our corporate citizens for public service," he wrote. "Ms. McMahon's background presents just such an opportunity."
