Tom Scott to Join McMahon Campaign. Hire Signals Sharp Right Turn for Moderate McMahon.

Tom Scott, former Republican state senator and independent candidate for governor, will join Linda McMahon’s campaign for the United States Senate, Daily Ructions can report. Scott, who served in the legislature in the 1980s, has been advising McMahon as her second campaign for the Senate takes shape.  McMahon is expected to hire Scott in a high-ranking post to help with organizing the troops on the ground when she formally launches her bid later this summer.

Scott, who has worked in radio and real estate, is a conservative firebrand, a sharp contrast to McMahon who presented herself as an entrepreneurial moderate Republican. Scott takes considerable credit for the 1988 defeat of the last Republican to represent Connecticut in the United States Senate, Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. McMahon enjoyed a long and cordial business relationship with Weicker, who served for many years on the board of directors of McMahon’s professional wrestling enterprise, WWE.

McMahon is likely to face former Congressman Christopher Shays, who is returning to Connecticut from the Maryland shore to explore a bid for the Republican nomination.