Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., along with Reps. Justin Amash, R-Mich., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., are beloved by many of the millennials and others who belonged to the Ron Paul “revolution” that arose during the libertarian icon’s 2008 and 2012 Republican presidential campaigns.
Many who remain sympathetic to the enduring “liberty movement” that Ron Paul’s popularity produced have been eager for another leader of note to join their ranks.
On Tuesday, Glenn Jacobs—aka World Wrestling Entertainment star “Kane”—won a Republican primary by a razor-thin margin in his bid to become mayor of Knox County, Tennessee.
Jacobs (who, full disclosure, is a personal friend of mine) beat his closest Republican challenger by only 17 votes. There are still 43 provisional ballots to count before the victor is finalized, which might come as early as Thursday, and reports seem to strongly favor Jacobs’ chances.
Regardless, in his first run for office, Jacobs was definitely outside the political establishment.
“There is currently tremendous dissatisfaction with the political establishment,” Jacobs told me on Sunday, sizing up his chances for the primary. “This gives liberty-minded candidates—small government conservatives—a great opportunity to win office at all levels of government and effect positive change in our country.”
In deep-red Knox County, it is highly likely the Republican will best the Democrat mayoral candidate in the general election (term-limited outgoing Republican Mayor Tim Burchett handily defeated his Democratic opponent in 2010 with 88 percent of the vote).
In short, Tuesday’s primary all but decided who would become the next mayor, and it will likely be a nearly 7-foot tall professional wrestling “demon,” who also is a well-established dedicated libertarian.
Jacobs operated a different kind of campaign, running on a pro-free market limited government platform, while also using his pro wrestling celebrity and libertarian-conservative brand to attract support from both inside and outside his county.
A slew of famous pro wrestlers—The “Nature Boy” Ric Flair, The Undertaker, Mick Foley, Chris Jericho, Daniel Bryan, the “Big Show,”Arn Anderson, Ricky Morton—all traveled to Knox County to hold fundraisers for their longtime colleague and friend, and doubled down on their support on election day, enabling the WWE legend-turned politician to draw more popular attention than most conventional Republicans.
Before he became a mayoral candidate, Jacobs helped found the limited government Tennessee Liberty Alliance, was a regular on the libertarian program “Kennedy” on Fox Business, a speaker for libertarian youth activist group Young Americans for Liberty, and he spoke at the Foundation for Economic Education’s national conference in August.
Jacobs was also endorsed by Rand Paul in May 2017.
Outside of politics and his professional wrestling career, and practicing what he preaches when it comes to capitalism, Jacobs is also a small business owner, running an insurance agency with his wife Crystal in Knoxville.
Jacobs detailed some of his libertarian influences on “Kennedy” on Fox Business last month, “There’s been a lot of them. From Ronald Reagan to F.A. Hayek to Ron Paul…”
“It’s so wonderful to see the emergence of Sen. Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, Justin Amash, Mike Lee, those guys that are pulling the Republican Party in the direction of liberty and free markets,” Jacobs said.
A mayor will obviously not have the same sort of national profile or impact as a U.S. senator or a congressman, but a figure with Jacobs’ celebrity who so openly embraces liberty ideas and policies is still another great representative for the libertarian faction within the Republican Party. It’s good for libertarian-leaning Republicans to have leadership at all levels of government, and Jacobs serving in an executive position is particularly positive.
There are other promising Liberty Republicans running this year—Maine’s “28-year-old wunderkind” state Sen. Eric Brakey who is challenging Sen. Angus King, former Libertarian Party presidential candidate Austin Petersen’s current GOP bid for U.S. Senate in Missouri, and Pensacola’s Rebekah Bydlak, whose 2016 attention-grabbing congressional run has positioned her well for a Florida statehouse victory in 2018 (not to mention Young Americans for Liberty’s current nationwide effort to elect a slew of libertarian Republicans at the state level).
For a number of years, many right-leaning libertarians have been eager for another prominent figure to better round out their political representation within the GOP.
A “Mayor” Glenn Jacobs fits that bill.
Jacobs faces Democratic challenger Linda Haney in Knox County’s general election on August 2.
Jack Hunter is the former political editor of Rare.us and co-authored the 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington with Senator Rand Paul.
