showed that national security and terrorism can once again be an effective wedge issue for Republicans. In the process, he raised the most online money for a statewide campaign in history and became a national phenomenon. “What was amazing was the velocity of Brown’s climb,”


says veteran Massachusetts Democratic strategist Dan Payne. “He went from nowhere to an easy win in three weeks. The published polls also became self-fulfilling prophecies. It’s the kind of abrupt shift that happens only in presidential primaries.” Here’s how he did it.


In the beginning, Scott Brown wasn’t the Republi-


cans’ first choice. There were several other contenders with more experience considering the race. Former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card was rumored to be inter- ested, and he even showed up at a Republican state com- mittee meeting for the first time in years. Kerry Healey, Mitt Romney’s lieutenant governor and the GOP’s 2006 gubernatorial nominee, was also floated as a possibility, as was former U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan. Despite being in the state legislature for more than 10


years, little was known about Brown among the general population. Politicos considered him highly ambitious, but he had few legislative accomplishments on which to build a campaign. “I don’t recall him taking leadership on any major initiatives,” says Michael Widmer, who, as the head of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, keeps a very close eye on the state legislature. When asked what type of senator Brown will be, Widmer responds, “I’m as curious as anyone else as to how this will play out, what stands he will take.” This was in large part because Brown was part of a ti-


ny—five out of 40 member—Senate Republican caucus. Nevertheless, Brown’s thin legislative record led to one advantage when crafting his campaign message: He was a blank slate. A Massachusetts Republican operative who did not work for the campaign put it this way: Brown was a great candidate because he was good looking, extremely hard working, disciplined and coachable. In these respects, Brown reminded this operative of George W. Bush in his first presidential campaign. What Brown did have was a record of electoral suc-


cesses that had made him the longtime proverbial thorn in the side of Massachusetts Democrats. Brown won his state Senate seat, which was previously held by a Democrat, in a 2004 special election. The Democrats ran Angus Mc- Quilken, an aide to the senator who vacated the seat, and the special election was scheduled on the same day as the 2004 Democratic presidential primary, when John Kerry was on the ballot. Despite Democrats turning out for their senator and there being no other Republican-drawing contest that day, Brown won. In 2008, the Democrats funneled plenty of resources into psychologist Sara Orozco’s campaign against Brown. The race was one of the state party’s top priorities as it hoped


to capitalize on the coming Democratic wave. On Election Day, the already miniscule Republican caucus in the state legislature shrank by three more seats. Scott Brown, how- ever, won with 59 percent of the vote. Soon after Kennedy passed away, Brown met with Eric


Fehrnstrom, Beth Myers and Peter Flaherty, the three principals of the Shawmut Group who are also known as Mitt Romney’s political brain trust. The trio has been with Romney since his tenure as Massachusetts’s governor and was at the helm of his 2008 presidential bid. They continue to work for his political action committee, and Fehrnstrom remains Romney’s primary spokesman. (A little context on Fehrnstrom because if you don’t


know him yet, you will if Romney runs in 2012: A former State House bureau chief for the Boston Herald, Fehrnstrom is generally regarded among Massachusetts Democrats as an evil genius—and they mean it respectfully. After his work as a journalist, he moved on to the ad agency Hill Holiday before eventually joining Romney’s administra- tion. Among reporters, he is generally regarded as profes- sional, fiercely loyal and willing to go to the mattress over a story he believes is unfair.) The Shawmut Group consultants told Brown they saw a


good opportunity for him even if he lost. There is a vacuum of credible statewide Republican candidates in Massachu- setts, so the race could set him up nicely for another run in the future. “Running a good race,” Lindstrom, Brown’s campaign manager, says of the early objectives. “That was the mission: To run a positive campaign and to get Scott running statewide to develop him as a candidate.” The consultants also told Brown that they saw potential


in the polling out of the governors races in New Jersey and Virginia. In particular, they saw unrest among young independent voters. “With independents comprising more than 50 percent of voters in Massachusetts, we could catch lightning in a bottle,” Fehrnstrom says. “That’s not to say we were looking at a 50-50 proposi-


tion,” he adds. “We knew it was the longest of long shots.” Brown signed on with Shawmut and assembled a core


team of advisers. In addition to Fehrnstrom, Flaherty, My- ers and Lindstrom, he brought on Rob Willington, a former executive director of the Massachusetts GOP, to handle new media. Finally Peter Fullerton, a veteran field director from the Bush-Cheney campaigns, came on as political director. The team planned to operatate on a skinny budget of


just $1.2 million. To run in a full-length statewide race in Massachusetts, campaigns usually spend at least $10 million. To save money, the campaign planned to forego polling en- tirely. It planned to efficiently utilize new campaign tech- nologies to reach voters at low cost. The team also wanted to set aside between $450,000 and $500,000 to use on a modest media buy in the run up to Election Day. Even that proved hard to follow through on, though, as the campaign was forced to dole out $40,000 on radio ads in the primary when its opponent, Jack E. Robinson, went on the air. There were reasons why, with this barebones plan, the


June 2010 | Campaigns & Elections 37


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