Former US Sen. Scott Brown turned 67 yesterday. His faded political career finally sputtered to an end Tuesday night, as he was crushed in the Republican Senate primary in New Hampshire by another former GOP senator, John Sununu.
This is a political obituary, not so much for Scott Brown as it is for a type of Massachusetts politician who has become for all practical purposes extinct:
A Republican “townie” who starts at the lowest levels of municipal government, slowly works his way up the greasy pole, bides his time and finally rises to the top of the heap, or close to it.
I’ve always liked Scott Brown. He was my state senator, in a district that will probably never elect a Republican legislatoragain.
He’s had a spotty career since losing his US Senate seat to a fake Indian in 2012. But even if you sometimes dismissed him as a RINO, who would have better represented your interests all these years – Lieawatha or Scott Brown?
Anyway, when it comes to Massachusetts Republicans today, Scott Brown ain’t walking through that door.
Here’s his political resume of elective offices:
Property assessor, Town of Wrentham, 1992. Selectman, Wrentham, 1995. State rep, 1998-2004. State senator, won a special election, 2004-10. US senator, won a special election 2010.
In other words, to paraphrase Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Scott Brown seen his opportunities and he took ‘em.
Can you imagine a young Republican in Massachusetts today figuring that running for an entry-level town office might possibly be a ticket to… anything?
The MA GOP state committee can’t find candidates for mostconstitutional statewide offices, let alone the local slots that onceserved as feeders for the bigger offices.
Thirty-five years ago, Brown was just following in a long tradition of Massachusetts Republicans, from municipal to state to federal politics. President Calvin Coolidge, for instance, a century ago.
This week you saw videotape from 2001 as President George Bush is informed of the 9/11 attacks, from an aide whispering in his ear at the school in Florida.
That aide was his chief of staff, Andy Card, of Holbrook, who took the old route in politics. He was first elected to his town planning board at age 24, then to the state House. Then he became a driver in New Hampshire for presidential candidate George H.W. Bush in 1980.
That was Card’s initial connection to the Bush family.
Another of Bush’s drivers that year in New Hampshire was Rep. Paul Cellucci of Hudson. Cellucci’s first election was to the Hudson Charter Commission, followed by selectman, state rep, state senator, lieutenant governor, acting governor, governor, ambassador to Canada….
Are any of these career trajectories possible for a young local Republican today? Of course not, but who would even bother to try? Nowadays, the only real GOP fights come for the state committee.
The smaller the stakes, the more vicious the fights, and the stakes don’t get much smaller than being on the MAGOP state committee.
The GOP’s local farm system is defunct, even for future campaign operatives, also known as hacks. You want to make your mark as a coat holder now, you must move to DC, get a job at a “shop” and from there head to Texas or Florida or some other state in Free America.
In 2010, Scott Brown caught lightning in a bottle in that special Senate election after Ted Kennedy’s death. A special statewide election in January – it’ll never happen again.
The party establishment – there was still one back then – tried to muscle Brown out, to make room for one of their old-timers. But Brown knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – to run against Martha (“Marsha”) Coakley, the world’s worst candidate.
After he lost his seat to the fake Indian in 2012, although he ranway ahead of presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Brown saw the handwriting on the wall and decamped to New Hampshire.
He lost narrowly to incumbent Sen. Jeanne Shaheen in 2014. He was attacked as a “carpetbagger,” which was pretty rich, considering that Shaheen was born in Missouri and he was born in Kittery, Maine, which is basically Portsmouth.
He would have only been the second person ever elected to the US Senate from two different states, but it was not to be.
No one even paid much attention to Brown’s final defeat last week, a landslide loss. It was foreordained after Trump endorsed John Sununu, even though Brown was the first (former) senator to endorse him in 2016, long before even Jeff Sessions.
No good deed goes unpunished.
On Wednesday, I left messages for Scott Brown in a couple of places, asking him to call me. He didn’t get back to me.
I just wanted to tell him I would be doing this column, not as a knock on him, but as a coda on a vanished era in Massachusetts politics.
Call it the era when Massachusetts was a two-party state. Those days are long gone, and like Scott Brown, they’re not coming back.
