With Richard Blumenthal attempting to argue that repeatedly “misstating” that he served in Vietnam is not a big deal, and every Democrat in the state apparently agreeing with him, the Connecticut Senate race is now a lot more interesting.

There are three major contenders on the Republican side: investor and financial analyst Peter Schiff, former Congressman Rob Simmons and former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment Linda McMahon. A Republican Senate candidate involved in running the often violent and sexually-explicit entertainment that is professional wrestling initially seemed too outlandish to take seriously – witness this parody of her campaign commercial, mixing her soft-focus “why I’m running” ad with some of her, er, greatest hits in her appearances on WWE programming — but she’s brought almost unlimited financial resources to the race, and now, it is clear, the most ruthlessly effective opposition research since Patton read Rommel’s book. Polling has been sparse, but it appears McMahon leads.

The Connecticut Repulican state convention starts Friday, and there the party will formally endorse a candidate; the primary itself is on August 10. The expectation is that a poor performance at the convention could spur one of the three to drop out.

A Connecticut Republican strategist tells me we may not have heard the last shoe drop regarding Blumenthal and his record. “There are a lot of disparities between his statements and facts,” this strategist says. After the revelation that he claimed to have served in Vietnam and didn’t, what else could there be?