Sorry, Hulkamaniacs, you won’t find Terry Bollea — better known by his wrestling name, Hulk Hogan — on your ballots this year. Well…probably not.
Hogan had been encouraged to run for Florida’s Senate seat this year — challenging the incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) — by former Trump adviser Roger Stone, who was quoted as saying that he wanted to convince Hogan to “body slam” Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) in debates. Scott, who will be term limited from running for re-election as Governor, is widely assumed to be running for the seat.
Hogan, a resident of Clearwater, was interviewed by TMZ’s Harvey Levin earlier today, and said that Stone and a number of people had been encouraging him to run, and he had seriously considered it:
I’ve thought about it — as of late, people calling my phone, driving me crazy about running for Senate. They want me to run for governor, they want me to run for mayor.
At the end of the day, I’m just so confused because it’s like watching the politicians — the Democrats and the Republicans — it’s like nobody wants to work together. It’s like a wrestling match, with two wrestlers that are supposed to work together and paint this beautiful wrestling picture, the Republicans and Democrats act like they hate each other and they don’t want to do anything except create chaos. So I really don’t want to be any part of that.
While Hogan was confident that if he ran, he would win, in the end, he told Levin, “Brother, I don’t want to run. I have a great life here on the beach.”
“Right now, at this moment, it’s a flat-out no,” said Hogan.
When Levin pressed him if next month “it could be maybe or yes,” Hogan acknowledged that was a possibility, but still said that “at this moment, his answer was no.”
Hogan did add that if he ran, he would run as a Republican, and that the electoral victories by Donald Trump and Jesse Ventura, another former wrestler who became Governor of Minnesota, gave him confidence that he could win in Florida.
“I got a feeling it wouldn’t be that hard,” said Hogan about his chances. “I really do.”
Watch Hogan’s TMZ interview here:
Follow Sarah Rumpf on Twitter: @rumpfshaker.
[Cross-posted at RedState.]