Young Cho (at right) of Gourmet Heaven.
McMahon (at right) with Yorkside’s Koutroumanis.
Tony Koutroumanis landed a new celebrity customer to boast about at Yorkside Pizza & Restaurant, as Linda McMahon spent an hour and a half under the radar in New Haven’s Broadway shopping district, keeping the focus of her U.S. Senate campaign on jobs rather than on the questions of the press pack.
Following a private chat with 30 business people at the Chamber of Commerce’s 900 Chapel St. offices, McMahon spent 10:30 a.m. to noon visiting shops and chatting with clerks and managers at stores along the Broadway/York St. strip rebuilt by Yale. Her campaign did not issue any advance releases to let the press corps know she was coming.
At first blush, it was a confusing sight: Why would a Republican statewide campaign be waste precious time in the final two weeks before a tough election in an overwhelmingly Democratic city (which last elected a GOP mayor in 1951), intentionally avoiding reporters who could at least broadcast warm and fuzzy images to millions of voters?
The decision reflected a conscious statewide strategy that has emerged from the McMahon camp as it tries to catch up to Democratic candidate Richard Blumenthal and turn around the momentum of the race by Nov. 2.
McMahon, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, destroyed Blumenthal’s original 41-point lead by defining the issues in the race early on: His misstatements about his Vietnam service, her background as a job-creating businesswoman and government outsider.
Then he pulled back ahead in recent weeks, in part by outperforming McMahon in televised debates and getting the press to focus on McMahon’s fumbling questions about the minimum wage and on controversies surrounding WWE under her command. McMahon’s well-funded and savvy campaign (she has vowed to spend up to $50 million) stumbled in trying to change the subject or focus on positive poll results; partly that happened whenever she faced a group of reporters at press conferences or following public appearances which were well publicized in advance.
Retailing Retailers
Tuesday’s New Haven visit reflected the two-pronged strategy the state will see as McMahon seeks to keep the focus on jobs.
It as at once a media-blitz and stealth campaign, conducted at two levels.
From above, she’ll reach a mass audience through continued bombardment of the airwaves with ads, including a devastating spot showing Blumenthal stumbling when asked by McMahon, “How Do You Create A Job?” Click the play arrow to watch that ad.
On the ground, she’s conducting “Main Street tours” like the one on Tuesday in New Haven, one-on-one so-called “retail politics” encounters with, at most, maybe one reporter present. That will highlight McMahon’s other strength, besides her pocketbook: A celebrity status and a personal touch with everyday people on the campaign trail. (Click here for a previous example of that in Fair Haven.) Her strategists believe that the buzz from such encounters does have the potential of traveling broadly through word of mouth.
Whether to not that proves true, the McMahon charm definitely swept the Broadway district Tuesday. Everyone she met seemed to recognize McMahon instantly from TV as she peppered people with questions about how their businesses are faring the recession. She listened. She was relaxed. She threw in references to their product lines. And she kept the discussion on jobs.
There was no doubt that people are seeing her commercials and associating her with the word “jobs.” Some echoed her argument that the private sector, not government, does a better job creating jobs.
“‘How do you create jobs?’ That hit the nail on the head for me,” said New Haven contractor Christopher O’Connor, who recently helped renovate the Mory’s eating club and is now working on the new Gant clothing outlet on York, two private contracts. He’s pictured above explaining to her how much money he saw wasted on government-funded renovations at the Hannah Gray Nursing Home and how lead paint and health care regulations drive up his costs too high on similar jobs. “I’ve done a lot of government-funded work. It’s the worst — the most cost-ineffective way of doing things.”
He and McMahon agreed about how misguided President Obama’s “shovel-ready” economic stimulus plan turned out, in their view.
McMahon then spoke with Tyco Printing co-manager Vinny Morrotti. She asked him what he’d do with the money if, as she proposed, the feds give business owners a one-year payroll tax holiday. He responded as though on cue: He claimed he’d hire more people.
After a stop at Educated Burgher, McMahon quizzed Thom Brown shoe store manager Liz Dziurzynski about business. She reported that students are willing to buy two or three pairs of shoes at a time again this year.
“Are you the cool place?” McMahon asked
“I would say we’re the cool place,” Dziurzynski responded.
After McMahon left, Dziurzynski said McMahon was the cool candidate. “She’s wonderful. I just did a report on her for my Southern [Connecticut State University] class, my management class.” She hadn’t thought to tell that to McMahon …
… who by then was chatting up sales associate Justin Griffith amid the Antihero skateboards lining the walls at enclave. Griffith too reported that business is up. McMahon offered that she’d taken a spin on a board in her time — and she made a point of dropping the name of Tony Hawk, the industry’s Hulk Hogan, before slipping over …
… to A One Pizza.
“You’re Linda McMahon!” Ali Yaglidere called out from behind the counter, where he was grilling a sausage egg and cheese sandwich. “You’re running for mayor?”
“Senate,” McMahon responded, all smiles.
“I promise to vote for you!”
Chris Mejias made the same vow, not to McMahon’s face, but after she departed Denali, the store he manages.
“I love the North Face,” McMahon said, eyeing the rows and rows of jackets bearing that label. “They’re really warm, and they’re so light.” They chatted about the outlets that Denali’s owner, Trailblazer, operates throughout the state.
Why’s he voting for McMahon? Mejias was asked later
“She’s got the right ideas,” he said.
The candidate didn’t elicit any promises from Gourmet Heaven’s Young Cho. She did receive a friendly greeting.
“Linda, right?“Cho asked. “I saw you many times on TV.”
McMahon also elicited the whole story about how Yale Properties visited Cho’s New York market in the 1990s and convinced her to move up here and open two Gourmet Heaven shops catering to students.
“Wow,” McMahon said. “They’re doing some aggressive marketing.”
That’s terrain McMahon knows well herself, from WWE to her wall-to-wall ad blitz during the campaign. One of those commercials was playing on the radio at Yorkside as McMahon bit into the first of two slices of mushroom pie.
It was originally meant to be a quick stop. Then she was corralled by owner Koutroumanis, who regaled her with tales of all the other famous people he’s served over the years. (He took her to the wall to admire a photo of George H. W. Bush.) He described the pies he bakes. And he sold her on staying around for one.
Before it arrived, Charles Herndon, a cook at Mory’s next door, did what a lot of young males do on the campaign trail: He asked McMahon to pose for a photo with him.
He later described himself as a McMahon fan — “when it comes to wrestling.”
How about a fan of the candidate?
“i don’t vote. I don’t believe in that political stuff,” Herndon responded. “But I love her. I love Vince.”
I wish more candidates for state and national offices would conduct their campaigns this way. I doubt I will be voting for Mrs. McMahon, but I do admire her for her willingness to walk around 'unhandled'(in what might be thought of as unfriendly territory) and engage in unscripted encounters with the public she wishes to represent.
The saddest part of this story is young Mr. Herndon's breezy announcement that he doesn't "believe in that political stuff" and therefore doesn't vote.