WWE’s Kane Elected Mayor of Knox County, Tennessee
Kane won the election with more than 60 percent of the vote ...
The Big Red Machine is now the Big Red Mayor.
Glenn Jacobs, better known to wrestling fans as WWE’s Kane, is the new mayor of Knox County, Tennessee, obliterating his opponent in Thursday’s election, democrat Linda Haney, by a two-thirds margin.
Jacobs finished with 51,804 votes, compared to 26,224 for Haney.
Jacobs, 51, has still been featured on WWE as the Kane character in recent months. In fact just three weeks ago at Extreme Rules, he reunited with Daniel Bryan to bring back their “Team Hell No” tag team. Jacobs suffered a legitimate broken ankle and was shown on screen wearing a walking boot; WWE later reported that he would be out of action indefinitely while recovering from his injury.
Outside of WWE, Jacobs is a realtor and owns an insurance agency with his wife in Tennessee. He made the decision to run for office after the 2016 presidential election, where he threw his support behind Donald Trump. In 2008, Jacobs supported Ron Paul in his bid for the presidency.
Jacobs, in interviews, has described himself as “Rothbardian” and has also promoted libertarian politics. Jacobs is also a member of the Free State Project, which is a libertarian group that aims at moving as many as 20,000 libertarians to a small population state (in this case, New Hampshire) in an attempt to make that state a libertarian stronghold. Jacobs spoke for the group at an event in New Hampshire in 2009.
Jacobs won’t be the first former professional wrestler to enter public office. In 1998, Jesse “The Body” Ventura was elected the governor of Minnesota as a third-party candidate. Prior to that, Ventura was serving as the mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota from 1991-95. There are other examples of entertainment figures gaining public office, with the most notable being Arnold Schwarzenegger being elected governor of California, and then of course Donald Trump being elected president in 2016.