Want to run for the U.S. Senate? Bring your wallet, a fat one preferred. A political base and some name recognition would be helpful. And above all, you’d better have a clear idea of what you want the race to be about, and the will to impose your vision.
Scott Brown — the former Massachusetts senator who made sure that no politician will ever again refuse to press voter flesh out in the cold — checks most of those boxes as he launches his second try at election to the Senate from New Hampshire. “I’m older, I’m grayer, I’m a little bit heavier, a little bit more thin in the hair,” he said during an interview last week, the Zoom screen revealing a buff 66-year-old who could pose for a Truth Cosmo centerfold if he wanted to. “Aside from the physical attributes, I also have four amazing grandchildren, and I care very deeply about the direction of our country.”
To Brown, that means mounting debt and deficit, over regulation, and the right wing’s favorite bloody shirt, “men and boys in women’s and girls’ sports.” But for someone ostensibly focused on the future, Brown sure talks a lot about the past, mentioning Joe Biden four times in a ten-minute conversation and larding his announcement video with grainy images of Biden chatting up his likely opponent, Congressman Chris Pappas.
He may have good reason to focus on the past instead of the present. According to a late-May UNH Survey Center poll, voters are just as wary of Donald Trump in New Hampshire as they are across the country, with 55% disapproval of his job performance, 57% among the all-important independents and an eyebrow-raising 68% among women. In another UNH poll last week that featured generally positive results for Gov. Kelly Ayotte, only three percent of those who approved of her cited her support for Trump as the key reason; 22% of Nayotte voters said that’s the main reason they don’t approve.
Meanwhile, that most-recent survey found Brown deep underwater, just 12% favorable and 38% unfavorable. Among conservatives, it’s an anemic 23/17% fav/unfav split.
That last number won’t improve if Brown tries to distance himself from Trump; just ask Ayotte, who used to shun Trump but would now break her nose if he stopped in his tracks. And Pappas, like every Democratic candidate in states where Trump is unpopular, made it clear in an interview he intends to dress Brown in a Trump-style fat suit by election day, calling him “a full-throated supporter of Donald Trump.”
None of this can possibly come as a surprise to Brown. Nonetheless, he made a point of saying “President Trump’s not on the ballot, Chris Pappas is and I will be. And when we asked him to cite a significant issue on which there’s distance between him and Trump, Brown said: “I don’t agree with what they did with [Trump’s pandemic-era Chief Medical Adviser Anthony] Fauci, you know, keeping him on too long and hiring him. I would have gotten rid of him a long time ago.” Who?
Given the apparent skepticism of Brown within the Republican base and the enduring distaste for Trump in a state that has rejected him three times on election day, Brown will have to do better than that. Other Republicans eyeing the race don’t sound scared off by Brown’s entry. And all the emphasis Brown puts on his family’s New Hampshire roots — even though it’s been twelve years since he moved there after spending his adult life in Massachusetts — suggests an effort to send the carpetbagger label to the cleaners.
Ayotte’s big punchline during her gubernatorial win last year was “Don’t Mass Up New Hampshire” by allowing all of the Bay State’s evil influences to slip over the border. Says Pappas: “I guess I could use that and say Scott Brown shouldn’t Mass up New Hampshire either.”