Glenn Jacobs, better known as WWE wrestler Kane, has been elected mayor of Tennessee’s Knox County.
The 7ft-tall Republican won a landslide victory against his Democratic opponent, Linda Haney, claiming 51,804 votes to her 26,224.
Jacobs’ victory yesterday follows a far more closely run contest to win the Republican nomination. The 51-year-old wrestling star beat Knox County Commissioner Brad Anders by just 23 votes in a vote in May, CNN reports.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Jacobs, who has wound down his WWE career, insists he doesn’t normally use wrestling analogies in his political life, but told supporters at his victory party: “This professional wrestler got into a no-holds-barred, last-man-standing match, and when the bell rung, he was victorious. We were victorious.”
The three-time WWE world champion first found fame as Kane in 1997. Billed as the demonic half-brother of WWE superstar The Undertaker, he is also known as the Big Red Monster, for sporting a red mask to conceal “hideous burns from a fire supposedly started by Undertaker years before”, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel.
His political ideology is less dramatic. Jacobs “favours limited government and opposes tax increases”, says the newspaper.
“The idea that the government can protect us is patently absurd,” he wrote in a 2014 blog post about the US National Security Agency (NCA). “All the government can do is to destroy our liberties while promoting the illusion of safety.”
Jacobs, who owns an insurance agency in Knoxville, will be sworn in as mayor on 1 September.
He is the second WWE star to win public office in the US. Jesse “The Body” Ventura, who holds a spot in the WWE Hall of Fame, was mayor of a Minnesota town for four years in the early 1990s and was elected to be the state’s governor in 1998.
-
September 6 editorial cartoonsCartoons Saturday’s political cartoons include profiting from authoritarianism, and the National Guard entering the CDC
-
Should Britain withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights?Talking Point With calls now coming from Labour grandees as well as Nigel Farage and the Tories, departure from the ECHR 'is starting to feel inevitable'
-
5 outspoken cartoons about Epstein survivors taking center stageCartoons Artists take on cover-ups, Trump surrounded, and more
-
Home Office worker accused of spiking mistress’s drink with abortion drugSpeed Read Darren Burke had failed to convince his girlfriend to terminate pregnancy
-
In hock to Moscow: exploring Germany’s woeful energy policySpeed Read Don’t expect Berlin to wean itself off Russian gas any time soon
-
Were Covid restrictions dropped too soon?Speed Read ‘Living with Covid’ is already proving problematic – just look at the travel chaos this week
-
Inclusive Britain: a new strategy for tackling racism in the UKSpeed Read Government has revealed action plan setting out 74 steps that ministers will take
-
Sandy Hook families vs. Remington: a small victory over the gunmakersSpeed Read Last week the families settled a lawsuit for $73m against the manufacturer
-
Farmers vs. walkers: the battle over ‘Britain’s green and pleasant land’Speed Read Updated Countryside Code tells farmers: ‘be nice, say hello, share the space’
-
Motherhood: why are we putting it off?Speed Read Stats show around 50% of women in England and Wales now don’t have children by 30
-
Anti-Semitism in America: a case of double standards?Speed Read Officials were strikingly reluctant to link Texas synagogue attack to anti-Semitism
