Against All Odds

by Scott Brown

  I signed a $50,000 campaign contract and I remember lying in bed with Gail that night and saying that I hoped we could raise enough money to cover the cost of the contract. Gail was lying next to me saying, “Oh my God, are you sure? I don’t know if we can afford it.”

  I just wanted to be able to pay the bills. I didn’t want to owe anybody any money from this run. I remember some days praying, “Dear God, please let me be able to pay the bills. That’s all I ask. I don’t want to owe anybody any money. I don’t want to read in the paper that Scott Brown lost and people couldn’t get paid.”

  In my mind, I spun out all the financial calculations. I thought I could be competitive if I was able to raise just $700,000. If I had $1 million, I decided I could be really competitive. With $1.5 million, I thought I could win it. With $2 million, I knew I could win it. But right now I was worried about that first $50,000. I was not sure how I would do it, but I went forward.

  Hours after I announced in Boston, I started trying to get signatures to get on the ballot. Early that evening, I was heading to friends’ houses, and I was also trying to reach Curt Schilling, the baseball great, thinking maybe I could talk to him and eventually get his endorsement. My friends weren’t around; Schilling was nowhere to be found; then I got a call from Greg Casey saying that Schilling was just finishing up a charity event at the Eagle Brook Saloon in Norfolk. If I hurried, I could catch him. I raced over, and there was no Curt Schilling, but Gail, being Gail, had gotten almost one hundred of my friends together for a surprise birthday party on my actual birthday, even though I had just announced for the U.S. Senate. Everyone I had been trying to find to sign my signature sheets was there. And my friends were all really excited that I was taking the shot. They told me that they thought I could win this thing, that I would do a good job, that they knew me, and that they knew I would work until I dropped. And that’s what I did; I worked until I dropped.

  That night I started getting signatures and enlisting volunteers. It was a great end to my birthday—and probably the first time Gail has managed to keep something a complete surprise.

  When it looked like a showdown between Andy Card and me, the media had been fascinated. Phones were ringing off the hook in my office, and reporters camped out in front of my house, so I would have to go out through the back door. When I announced my candidacy, it was pretty crazy too, but within a few days, the frenzy died down because no one thought I could win. My one primary opponent was a perennial candidate, Jack E. Robinson III, an African-American Republican and a millionaire, who had run against Ted Kennedy in 2000, and had gotten about twenty-five thousand more votes than the Libertarian candidate. Kennedy had beaten them both by over 70 percent.

  This time, the Democrats were getting all the coverage. It was Coakley against a very capable congressman, Michael Capuano; Alan Khazei, a civic activist; and multimillionaire Stephen Pagliuca, a part owner of the Boston Celtics, all good candidates with different strengths. While the Democrats were running against each other, I was out hustling votes, going everywhere I could. I went to senior centers, to town meetings, I knocked on doors, made phone calls. I went to any big event where I could meet people. I stood outside Red Sox and Bruins and Patriots games. I went to county fairs, including the Topsfield Fair, where I had gone all those years as a boy. I made my race into a retail politics race. I wanted to shake as many hands as possible, to meet as many voters as possible, to get out there so people could know my name. I didn’t care whether they were Democrats, Republicans, or Independents. I just wanted to reach voters. In the middle of January, it would probably be a low-turnout race. I calculated to myself that six hundred thousand votes might be enough to win. But there was something else that mattered about going out and shaking hands and listening to people. People were energized. They were engaged; they were angry. And they did not like some of the things they saw coming out of Washington.

  But the Boston and Massachusetts media largely thought the Republican race was a joke, and their lack of respect showed daily in their lack of coverage. The Republican primary had a near-total news blackout. When I did a debate with Jack, the room was barely filled.

  Meanwhile, my team was trying to raise money. From the afternoon of my announcement, we were fortunate to have on board a great campaign manager, Beth Lindstrom, who had worked as director of consumer affairs in the Massachusetts State House and had been an official in the Romney administration. She brought a tremendous amount of credibility to the race and was extremely capable. Beth’s job was to keep the office together, hire people, and manage our meager budget. We were lucky, very lucky, to pull in $10,000 a week. I kept telling my political team that I was going to win the race. And the team kept telling me, “Yeah, yeah, you just get ready for the next run.” I told them I wasn’t going to run again in another nine months. The race I was running to win was this one.

  We put up a Web site, had a blog, wrote letters to the editor, and got on Twitter, Facebook, everything. We did direct mail to all the Republican State Committee people. Mitt Romney had endorsed me early on, and his political action committee wrote the first big check to my campaign. I started going to town hall meetings in different areas of the state and continued calling in to talk radio shows. I knew almost all the radio hosts and a lot of the print and TV people because while I was in the state senate, I was one of the spokesmen for the Republicans and would be called upon to discuss various issues. Especially with the talk radio hosts, I would be one of two or three people tasked with going out and answering their questions and speaking about the issues, so we already had good and positive relationships. I’d be driving around in my truck, and I’d call in on my cell phone, and they’d put me on the air. My team of consultants wasn’t that happy that I was doing so much unscripted talk radio, where anything could happen. To me, that didn’t matter. I enjoyed answering the questions honestly without all the handlers who followed the other candidates around. My attitude was: Why do I need handlers? Either I know the answer or I don’t. Meanwhile, all the political pros were basically writing us off.

  On November 16, three weeks before the primary vote, I headed down to Washington with Peter Flaherty and my campaign policy coordinator, Risa Kaplan. We had four appointments: a 10 a.m. meeting with former UN Ambassador John Bolton, a noon one-on-one meeting with Senator John McCain, a meeting from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Heritage Foundation’s think tank for foreign policy briefings, and a 3:30 p.m. meeting with the Republican Senatorial Committee. We had already learned that the Massachusetts special election wasn’t even up on the senatorial committee’s Web site, so we were prepared for that meeting to be a waste.

  The McCain meeting was great. John McCain endorsed me and wrote a check to my campaign, which, given our struggles to raise cash, was a huge boost. In fact, it was all great until 3:30, when we got to the Republican Senatorial Committee offices. One staff member was there to meet with us. I made my five-minute presentation about how I could win or at least make it very close, and how this race could send an important national message. I knew it was probably the only chance I would ever have. I talked about how the Democrats were energized and engaged, and the Republicans needed to be as well. The staffer sat, nodding as I spoke, and ended with the recycled lines, “Keep up the good work, Scott. We need more people like you. But we don’t take sides in primaries,” although of course they do.

  “I need your help for the general election,” I told them. “It’s going to be a short race, just six weeks.”

  “We’ll get back in touch after the primary,” the staffer said. “We wish you the best of luck, and we’ll be in touch.” He might have saved himself two minutes if he had just said, “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

  That night, I was invited to a Republican Senatorial Committee reception at the Grand Hyatt in Washington. It was for members of Congress, political figures, donors, and hopeful candidates. Andy Card met us at the door and generously took
me under his wing. He introduced me to all the heavy hitters in the room, to Senator John Cornyn of Texas, head of the senatorial committee, and to Senator Orrin Hatch. I walked around meeting people I had only seen on television. California Republican Carly Fiorina was there, as were all kinds of high-profile candidates. Andy prevailed on John Cornyn to mention me briefly during his remarks, and I made sure that I shook hands with nearly every person in that room. Most people didn’t even know there was a race in Massachusetts. It was almost embarrassing, and we couldn’t get anyone to commit. I felt bad for Andy as well; I hoped he wasn’t wasting his own political capital on me.

  Not only did the national politicos not realize that there was a race in Massachusetts; neither did some in the national media. Not long after my trip to D.C., I was driving to an event in Western Massachusetts, and flipping around the radio dial. I stopped on the Laura Ingraham Show, a conservative talk show, which that day had a guest host. He was talking about how in November 2010, we would be taking things back. “We’ll make a difference next November.” I was sitting in the car saying, “November! We have a race on January 19, 2010. This guy is clueless.” He kept talking about how nothing could happen until next November, and I was getting livid. I dialed my cell phone, and somehow I got through to the show. I told the producer, “Hi, this is Republican State Senator Scott Brown, and I’m running for the United States Senate.” He said, “Where?” And I said, “In Massachusetts.”

  “In Massachusetts?” he said. “What’s going on in Massachusetts?”

  “There’s a special election in a couple of months,” I told him.

  “Hold on,” he said.

  He probably did a quick Google search and then he came back on the line and said, “Tell us about the race.” I answered that I’m a Republican, I’ve been a town assessor, a selectman, a state rep, and a state senator. I’ve spent thirty years in the military. And then I finally just asked, “Do you guys even know there’s a race? Because I’m sick and tired of listening to you talk about November 2010. There are other things happening before then.” During a commercial break, the producer put me on with the substitute host himself, who began by asking me, “So, is Mrs. Kennedy down there voting now?”

  I replied, “Mrs. Kennedy? What do you mean, Mrs. Kennedy? There is an interim senator now. They changed the Senate succession laws in Massachusetts so they could put in an interim senator, Paul Kirk, to push the president’s health-care bill and other parts of his agenda through.” Then I told him, “Let me get this straight. This is Laura Ingraham’s show, right? And you’re telling me that, number one, you don’t know there’s a race in two months to fill the seat left by the late Senator Ted Kennedy, and number two, you think that Mrs. Kennedy is actually down there voting for him?”

  The guest host paused, and then he said, “Let me get you on the air.” I got five minutes. I was able to tell the story of the election and to work in my Web site, www.brownforussenate.com. The host ended the segment by saying, “Listen, folks, if you’re interested, you can go to www.brownforussenate.com. If you like what you see, then jump aboard, because we can really send a message right now.”

  That day, our Web site and our campaign raised $12,000.

  Now I had a new mission. I wanted my campaign team to start reaching out to the national media. The Democrats had national media, national committees, national unions, and all I had were my buddies from high school and some others who were gluttons for punishment. Aside from a very fair and thorough profile in late November in the Boston Globe by Brian Mooney—a reporter for whom I have a lot of respect, who for years had covered politics, and who had a no-nonsense reputation as a guy who did his homework—and a few other scattered pieces, there was very little focus on me or Jack Robinson. No one was paying attention to my side of the race. The Democrats had taken up all the oxygen in the room.

  Eric Fehrnstrom, Beth Myers, and Peter Flaherty on my campaign team told me it would all change after the December 9 primary. Then, they said, the coverage will have to be equal. When they write about Martha Coakley, they’ll have to write about Scott Brown. “The klieg lights will burn brightly on Scott Brown after the primary,” Eric said. “There will be equal coverage starting tomorrow,” Peter promised, as we—Eric and Peter, me, Ayla, Gail, Gail’s sister, and the teleprompter operator—waited in a small suite in the Newton, Massachusetts, Marriott hotel on primary night. As I headed down to the hotel’s basement to deliver my victory speech, Peter added, “After tonight, it will no longer be just about the Democrats.” I had won the Republican primary vote, 89 percent to 11 percent.

  The next morning, I woke up to a giant Boston Herald headline that said, “She’s the One.” I barely rated a mention anywhere on the front page.

  Two days after the primary, on December 11, I held a news conference to question Martha Coakley’s positions on spending and her economic proposals. One reporter came and wrote about how he was the only guy who showed up. The lack of coverage made me determined to work even harder. I would take my case directly to the voters, and screw the media.

  After the election, the tagline before my name in many articles was either “long-shot candidate” or “little-known state senator.” As local Boston political commentator Jules Crittenden said, “The national GOP isn’t interested in even making a good showing for Ted Kennedy’s seat” and “The state GOP is a joke.” He called it all but a foregone conclusion that Coakley would win, unless she made remarkable gaffes, and I also made an extraordinary and deft effort, or there were external events, like a “Democratic health-care debacle.” On Gail’s station, Channel Five, political consultant Mary Ann Marsh was constantly hammering me, often launching into personal criticisms that became increasingly unprofessional.

  “The writing is on the wall” was what nearly every mainstream commentator said. It didn’t matter that Virginia had elected a Republican governor, or the historically blue state of New Jersey had just elected a Republican governor as well. Statewide polling had Martha Coakley as the most popular Democrat in the primary race. A Boston Globe poll had 71 percent of likely Democratic primary voters saying that they viewed her favorably, and of all the candidates, she was the person with whom they would most like to have a beer. Those types of numbers might put her ahead of Senator John Kerry and Governor Deval Patrick in popularity. She had just won her own primary by over 20 points. Whatever political office she set her eyes on was considered to be hers for the asking.

  But I was taking a different poll. I was out shaking hands, and people liked what they heard. When I’d ask people if I could count on their vote, they’d say, “Yeah. I don’t think it will matter, but yeah, you’ve got my vote.” But gradually, as the weeks went by, people stopped staying, “I don’t think it will matter.” Because by then, it did.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “It’s the People’s Seat”

  It wasn’t hard to figure out Martha Coakley’s campaign strategy. It was simply to behave as if she had already been elected. She spent December networking with Democratic officials in Massachusetts and Washington and traveling around to the swearing-in ceremonies for local Democratic mayors across the state. Martha is a nice lady, and she devoted herself to the race. The media myth has become that she didn’t work hard, because that’s the easiest way to place all the blame for the outcome at her feet.

  But unlike Martha and unlike probably most of the Republicans who had thought about running for the U.S. Senate seat, I had thought from the start that she was vulnerable. I knew her races; she had never been forced to run a tough campaign. Her elections had always been easy, while mine had always been bloodbaths. Easy is not necessarily good. It can make you complacent. Lots of people in Massachusetts politics were afraid of Martha Coakley. But I wasn’t, even though I knew just how much machine support she had behind her. In addition to the state and national Democratic Party apparatus, she got the endorsement of most of the major newspapers
and all of the key unions. When I drove home each night on the expressway, I would pass the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers headquarters with its big electronic billboard. Every day, there would be an image of Martha Coakley made out of hundreds of tiny lights alongside an illuminated flag. Whenever I felt tired or worn-out, I’d look at her electronic picture, and I would think: I’m going to do one more event. I’m going to work harder. I’m going to make another one hundred calls.

  I had gone to make presentations before the key unions around the state—many times Martha hadn’t even shown up to speak to them, but the union officials still endorsed her anyway or largely sat out the race. My positions were increasingly resonating with the union rank and file, with people like me, but that didn’t matter to the union heads. The problem was simply a letter, the letter R after my name.

  Throughout December, I went out to meet voters. I stood outside Fenway Park in the freezing cold to shake hands with fans before the Winter Classic hockey game, featuring the Boston Bruins against the Philadelphia Flyers. I stood outside the TD Garden to meet people going in to Celtics games. I dropped by bars in South Boston, in Dorchester, and throughout the state, and went from booth to booth, meeting people and listening to what they had to say. I’d pop into senior centers. I campaigned in front of coffee shops and hardware stores, and when I did, I always went in and bought something. I was hungry, so food was a natural, but there were also things that I needed to make repairs around the house. I figured that if shop owners were kind enough to allow me on their space out front, the least I could do was to patronize their stores.

  I kept doing the radio. Each host had a very different personality, and I liked the variety and interplay and how seriously each one took his or her job and responsibilities. Howie Carr was good at mixing serious issues with a sense of humor. I knew Michael Graham from his work on behalf of veterans and their issues, and he always made good points. Jay Severin had his finger firmly on the conservative pulse in Massachusetts, and always expected honest answers to his tough questions. I enjoyed Michele McPhee, who, like me, was from Wakefield, and who focused on fighting for the little guy and law enforcement. Jim Braude, a liberal host, liked to go for the jugular, particularly with Republicans, but I enjoyed his “out there” humor and have always appreciated his preparation and fair treatment of me. On the morning drive, Tom Finneran and Todd Feinberg focused on highlighting the important political issues of the day. And I got great and vital radio attention outside of Boston. In Worcester, Massachusetts, former U.S. Representative Peter Blute, a Republican who had represented the state’s third district, talked with me regularly over doughnuts on his lively morning show. Two other Worcester hosts, Jim Polito, a former chief investigative reporter for the ABC affiliate in Springfield, Massachusetts, and Jordan Levy, both at WTAG, also had me on and gave me a fair hearing. I called in to Bo Sullivan and Brad Shepard’s morning show out in Springfield and spoke regularly with Ed Lambert at WXTK down on the Cape. In Lowell, WCAP gave me a great forum, and so did WXBR in Brockton. In large measure, radio and the radio hosts who knew the issues and could discuss them in-depth were what made the campaign. Apart from radio, I would appear on whatever media would have me, and I talked up the Web site, www.brownforussenate.com.