Ex-wrestler is wild card in special election
Dan Rodimer is a shameless carpetbagger.
He has been accused of assault four times over the past 11 years.
He lost his only two bids for elective office.
Nonetheless, Rodimer is stealing considerable attention in the 23-candidate special election to succeed the late North Texas Congressman Ron Wright, who died in February after contracting COVID-19.
Rodimer is hard to overlook. He’s a 6-foot-7 former professional wrestler who actually refers to himself as “Big Dan.”
There’s the sheer audacity he delights in displaying. Four months after losing a close congressional race in Nevada, he filed for Wright’s 6th District seat and simultaneously announced he was moving to Texas.
There’s the theatrical manner in which Rodimer chartered a plane two weeks ago to take him from Fort Worth to Austin to beat the filing deadline.
There’s the way he privately boasted to associates that both U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and members of former President Donald Trump’s family encouraged him to run.
There’s also the little matter of how Rodimer, in his failed 2020
Nevada congressional bid, managed to raise nearly $3 million.
Underlying everything is the fact that Rodimer’s personality is as big as his frame. He’s selling a brand, that of the cocky, hyperpartisan, pseudo-celebrity tough guy, at a time when the new breed of GOP lawmaker — Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz — is more consumed by owning-the-libs gamesmanship than actual policymaking.
During his Nevada campaign last year, Rodimer milked his World Wrestling Entertainment roots by promising, if elected, “to take a folding chair to the Washington, D.C., establishment.”
Presumably, the voters of District 6 can count on him to unleash a piledriver on COVID-19 and deliver a suplex to the federal debt.
Moving to a new state at the last minute and throwing yourself into a mega-crowded, special-election contest, in which you have to compete with both Republicans and Democrats, requires both obsessive ambition and off-the-charts arrogance.
The special-election format means that if no one wins 50 percent of the vote, the top two candidates, regardless of party, proceed to a runoff.
If one of the 10 Democrats in the race emerges from the pack, it’s possible the runoff could come down to one Republican and one Democrat. Right now, the consensus is that the Republican with the best shot to make the runoff is Wright’s widow, Susan.
Rodimer is a wild card, an oddity, a curiosity. But the very unpredictability of his impact is what makes other candidates nervous. As Politico writer Ally Mutnick put it in a March 4 piece on the District 6 campaign, Rodimer’s filing “is sending shock waves through the race.”
Rodimer, 42, is the greatnephew of a New Jersey Catholic bishop named Frank Rodimer. He once described his greatuncle and legendary wrestler Hulk Hogan as his two idols.
As a wrestler, Rodimer embraced the villain’s role.
“From the start, I was perceived as a cocky guy, so I’ve gone with it,” he told the Daily Record of Morristown, N.J., recalling his participation in the 2004 WWE “Tough Enough” contest.
“My character gets the most boos. You’ve got to have a bad guy. Nobody wants to see me kicked off; they want to see me get beaten up.”
Police reports suggest Rodimer’s belligerence hasn’t been limited to the wrestling ring.
He pleaded guilty to a 2010 misdemeanor battery charge and entered a six-week anger-management class to get the charge dropped. Rodimer had grabbed a man by the neck and thrown him to the ground at a southwest Florida Waffle House after the man told him to “leave the girls at our table alone,” according to the victim.
In 2011, Rodimer was accused of punching a man in the head at a Naples, Fla., nightclub and then running from the scene.
In 2013, a bartender at a Naples club said Rodimer “sucker punched” him in the face.
In 2018, Rodimer’s then-girlfriend — and current wife — accused him of assaulting her and stealing $200,000 in cash, jewelry and guns from her.
That sordid history figured prominently last year in the Nevada campaign waged by Rodimer’s Democratic opponent, Susie Lee.
The litany of allegations surely damaged Rodimer’s campaign in a swing district that was highly winnable for a Republican. Trump had carried the district in 2016 and lost it to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden by only 0.2 percentage points last year.
Trump offered Rodimer his full-throated support in the Nevada race.
“Dan has my Complete and Total Endorsement,” Trump tweeted last August. “We need Dan in Washington!”
Nonetheless, Rodimer lost to Lee by 3 percentage points.
But the former wrestler doesn’t let losing get him down.
Some candidates shop for congressional seats. Rodimer shopped for a new state. We’ll soon see if District 6 voters, like old WWE watchers, develop a fondness for despising him.