Glenn Jacobs recently spoke with Ryan Bort for Rolling Stone; you can read a few highlights below:
Jacobs on when he first really knew he might run for office:
I’ve always been interested in politics. Social studies was my favorite subject. I remember I portrayed Walter Mondale in a mock debate in my sophomore social studies class. Probably about three years ago I played with the idea of running for county mayor. As time went on and I started thinking more seriously about it, I started to think that I really could do it. The timing was right as the county mayor is term-limited, so there was no incumbent and it was an open seat. From a strategic standpoint, that’s what you want.
To what extent did Donald Trump’s presidential run inspire his own?
It did. Speaking strategically, Bernie Sanders was right there with the Democratic nomination, which some people feel was stolen from him. We’re seeing two guys who were definitely outside the establishment. Even though Bernie is a politician, he’s outside of the Democratic establishment, and then you have this guy who is completely outside of the establishment by any metric. I was like, “Wow, people, whether they’re on the left or the right, are sick and tired of politicians.” People want something different. That certainly played right into my hands. I’m as far outside of the mainstream political establishment as you can get.
We knocked on over 50,000 doors in Knox County over the course of 15 months. People would ask me if I was in government or not. Initially, I was thinking that I was going to say “no” and they were going to say, “Well, what are you doing? Why do you think you can do this?” But the funny thing was that the response I got inevitably was that when I said, “I don’t have any [government experience],” people would say, “Good, because I’m not going to vote for a career politician.” When folks look at Trump, especially among the local Republican establishment, they think it’s only a phenomenon on a national scale. It’s not. It’s everywhere.
Do you have any plans to get back in the ring?
WWE is always going to be part of me and hopefully I’ll always be part of it. I haven’t ruled out making special appearances every now and then. My main priority is being mayor, of course. [My role in the WWE] does bring a lot of attention to Knox County, so that’s cool. It’s just a matter of making sure everything I do — WWE or any other outside stuff — does not impact my role as mayor.
