America Needs More Scott Brown, Says Scott Brown

On January 19, 2010, Scott Brown was arguably the most important man in America.

After Ted Kennedy’s death, Brown rode the Tea Party wave from Massachusetts to the United States Senate with a pledge to be the 41st vote against what was then called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

While the media referred to the special election as a contest over “the Kennedy Seat,” Brown’s campaign pitched it as “the People’s Seat.” A banner bearing that phrase hung behind Brown when the senator-elect delivered, to thunderous applause, what had become his catchphrase over the previous months.

“I’m Scott Brown. I’m from Wrentham. And I drive a truck!”

It’s strange to watch that speech today. It’s strange to hear Brown’s defiant tone knowing that he wouldn’t be able to stop Obamacare. It’s strange to watch him revel in his triumph knowing that in just two years his senatorial career would be brought to a screeching halt by Elizabeth Warren, who, at his moment of victory, was just across town in her Harvard Law office.

But mostly, it’s strange to hear that slogan again. Because Scott Brown is once again running for Senate. Only this time, he’s not from Wrentham — he’s from New Hampshire. And he’d like it very much if you’d forget that and just focus on the truck.

I spoke to Brown last month after his campaign grabbed half a news cycle with an AI-generated ad that showed the former senator from Massachusetts beating up the former senator from New Hampshire, his current opponent, John Sununu.

Brown has never really gone away — after losing to Warren in 2012 he became a Fox News contributor and ran for the Senate in New Hampshire, losing narrowly to Democrat Jeanne Shaheen in 2014. He came out swinging for Donald Trump in 2016, for which he was rewarded with the ambassadorship to New Zealand and Samoa. Now, after riding out the Biden interregnum in the private sector, he’s trying again, running for the seat Shaheen is vacating.

Going into the interview, I was excited to talk to Brown about his political journey. How was the original Tea Party candidate navigating a Republican Party that often sees government as the solution, not the problem?

After our chat, I still don’t know the answer — and I’m not sure Brown does, either.

Rather, Brown seems convinced that he can run his 2010 playbook and win. Repeatedly throughout our interview, Brown mentioned how powerful he felt during his brief tour in the Upper Chamber.

“I’m like, dude, I just won the United States Senate, and I’m the 41st vote. I can do whatever I want,” he recalled telling party leaders when he supported Marco Rubio over Charlie Crist in Florida. “That’s what it feels like right now. I could be that 41st vote or the 40th vote.”

Set aside for a moment the fact that the stakes are different — there’s a Republican in the White House, and Democrats aren’t on the verge of a generational legislative victory. This is a strange posture for a man whose 41st vote ultimately didn’t amount to anything.

But Brown doesn’t seem too concerned with how things went. Like a high school quarterback with dreams of walking on the college team, Brown is convinced that he’s just moments away from reclaiming the glory days that maybe never were.

“I believe New Hampshire will be the state that determines who controls the Senate,” he tells me. “So I can be the senator that controls the Senate.”

Brown may have a point. With the Republican majority so thin and so many major seats up, there’s a chance that New Hampshire becomes the midterm linchpin. But if that’s the case, it begs the question: what is Brown still doing in the race? Sununu leads him by about 35 points, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. Sununu is incredibly popular in New Hampshire, and has held that Senate seat before. He’s currently just three points behind Congressman Chris Pappas, the Democratic nominee. Brown trails Pappas by 12.

Brown, of course, thinks he should be the nominee — it would be strange if he didn’t. But it’s clear that he doesn’t think he should advance because he’s the GOP’s best chance to take New Hampshire. No, he thinks he should advance because he thinks he’s destined to be a senator who holds a unique kind of power. Which is strange, because it absolutely does not follow from New Hampshire’s electoral significance that the state’s junior senator will wield some kind of undue influence.

Nor is it clear what, exactly, Brown would do with this imagined power. He mentions often that he’s a fighter, a real American, someone who knows what people are going through. He says he’ll solve problems and focus on kitchen table issues.

Nothing objectionable there, but not nothing defining, either. He’s Scott Brown. He drives a truck.

“In a Republican primary with little daylight between the two contenders, Brown is seeking to distinguish himself as just that: the candidate who calls back, who will be a ‘scrapper’ and a ‘fighter,’” the Concord Monitor wrote after Brown and Sununu’s first primary debate.

But there’s another, pretty ill-advised way Brown wants to distinguish himself.

Throughout our interview, Brown slammed Sununu for being part of the New Hampshire elite. Sununu, whose father and brother both served as governors of New Hampshire, “basically has a silver spoon, you know, born on third base and thinks he got a triple,” Brown says. But then, later on in our interview Brown notes that “John was born in Boston.”

Is Sununu unqualified because he’s some kind of Granite State bonnie prince, or because he’s the real carpetbagger in the race? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Brown is the most authentic candidate in the race. The biggest misconception about him, he says, is that he’s not from New Hampshire. He is, he says, and he can prove it.

“Listen, my mom was married and divorced 4 times each,” Brown tells me. “My dad was married and divorced three times each. I’m a sexual assault survivor, a domestic abuse survivor. I was arrested at 12 for stealing records. I was drinking, driving, and stealing at 12.”

Scott Brown — lawyer, senator, ambassador, resident of Rye (median income $137,969) — is so desperate to hold on to his truck-driving image that he’s willing to resort to caricature, even at the risk of offending his would-be constituents.

What makes this all so crazy is that Brown didn’t need to do it. Which is not to say that he didn’t need to run again — he didn’t, of course, but you can’t make salmon swim downstream — but he didn’t need to run this campaign, the old campaign. It’s not 2010 anymore. The Tea Party is gone, Mitt Romney is complaining that Elon Musk is too rich, and MAGA Republicans don’t care if their representatives are rich, so long as they’re America First.

How did Brown miss this? Did he get bad advice? Does he know something about New Hampshire the rest of us don’t? Perhaps. But I think the more likely answer is that Scott Brown didn’t want to change with the times because that would have meant moving on from the cheering crowds who greeted him in Boston that January night 16 years ago.

“Listen, I’m a Scott Brown Republican,” he says when I ask why he would be an effective senator this go around. “I say that’s the difference.”

It certainly is. But do the people want a Scott Brown Republican? We’ll have to see.