Blue Mass Group

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Scott Brown: I can work with Boehner

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In an interview with the Lowell Sun, Scott Brown said people should vote for him because he has a better relationship with John Boehner than Elizabeth Warren would. He’s still Mr. Bipartisan and all, but he can get Lowell some new bridges, etc., because they’re both Republicans.  Except Scott’s an independent.  When he’s not a Republican.  Or something.

Brown also says he’s going to win Lowell by more this time than in 2010.  We’ll see about that.  He also claims his support is “strongest” in at least half the state, including the Cape (where he actually did win in 2010) and Islands (where he lost, badly in the case of MV), Springfield (he lost 61-37), Fall River (he lost 57-41), New Bedford (he lost 59-39).  He hopes to win or tie in the North End, South Boston, East Boston, and the heretofore nonexistent “West Boston.”

Let’s GOTV and make sure Scott doesn’t come close to winning in any of these places.

One nugget: Brown says he’s telling all the Obama supporters who are dying to vote for him, but can’t bear to cross party lines, to “just leave [the Senate race] blank” on their ballots.

Oh, and Scott would absolutely love to see John Kerry as Secretary of State in January.  That would mean another special election for Scott to run in after he loses this year.

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  1. Brown has refused to meet with the major papers in the 413. Warren has. If this does not change by next week, he will have effectively conceded Western Mass and by the looks of his operation out here, he already has.

    • a very poor showing in the 413, though he did clean up in Hampden County west of Springfield and Holyoke.

      You’d think he’d at least try to do better this time. But maybe he figures he’s got Western Mass. sewn up since he gave a shout-out to Milano’s.

  2. In 2010 he won several precincts there, though he still lost the 20th Ward, which also includes parts of Roslindale, overall.

    Still calling West Roxbury, “West Boston” is pretty embarrassing flub, since no one ever calls it that, not that most folks in Lowell would necessarily pick up on it.

    • those weren’t his words, they were the words of the Lowell Sun in reporting what he said. I wish Scott had said “West Boston” but it’s the reporter who got it wrong.

      I imagine he did mean West Roxbury, though.

        • “Brown’s been campaigning too long to make that amateur a mistake.”

          Paid actors’ fer instance.

          • Saying something stupid because you’re frustrated by an effective attack of an opponent is a different category than geographic ignorance of key region.

  3. Is that true? What, is he looking ahead to the possibility of needing to be confirmed by the Senate? Or he just doesn’t want to say anything bad about his cycling buddy? Or, more ominously, would he be just as happy to have Brown win so that there’s no worry about Kerry looking less appealing as a Sec’y of State candidate because Brown would be poised to run again for Kerry’s seat, as Boston magazine and others have speculated?

    I neither expect nor want Kerry to be launching personal attacks against Scott Brown. But if he’s not complaining about Brown’s partisan Republican votes then he is basically helping the Brown campaign’s pretense of being bipartisan, whoever he’s “endorsed.”

    • on Sept. 25, Kerry sent this email on behalf of the Warren campaign hitting hard on Democratic control of the Senate (emphasis mine):

      Yesterday I enjoyed a busy day in Massachusetts on the campaign trail with Elizabeth Warren — and the enthusiasm for her is palpable — and building.

      Let me underscore two things very quickly: one — Elizabeth’s campaign needs to keep growing its people-powered energy and that means we need your help, and two — I want you to know why I’m so committed to this race.

      As I said in Somerville yesterday morning, I’m not making a case against anyone. I’m making a case for someone — and that someone is Elizabeth Warren. I’m not telling anyone how to vote. Folks in Massachusetts make their own decisions.

      But there is something that I can do because I see it and live it every day: I can take my everyday view of the Senate and paint a clear picture of the Senate you want vs. the Senate you risk having in January.

      This race is bigger even than the two candidates — it’s a fight for the Senate itself. It will decide which party holds the majority and sets the agenda in the United States Senate.

      The vote in Massachusetts in November will decide the outcome of the first and single most important vote cast in the Senate in January: the vote for the Majority Leader of the Senate — and the vote to choose the Chairs of the Committees. That vote determines what comes to the floor and what doesn’t — a vote that will decide whether the middle class gets a shot at fair tax reform or has the Ryan budget jammed at us. Whether Obamacare will survive. Whether new financial rules will disappear and we return to the policies that got us in trouble in the first place.

      It matters whether the environment committee is chaired by a climate change denier.

      It matters whether we have a Judiciary Committee Chairman who opposes Roe vs. Wade, and will block President Obama’s judicial nominees.

      It matters whether we have key education, health, labor, Medicare, and Social Security committees in the hands of Chairmen and Chairwomen who believe in those priorities — or whether it’s going to be controlled by a Republican Party that this year is nominating candidates who actually — and these are their words — compare student loans to “Stage 3 cancer,” or a Budget Committee Chairman whose only gripe with the Ryan Budget — and again these are his words not mine — is that “Ryan’s plan doesn’t make large cuts fast enough.”

      Some people call that “inside baseball” — I call it facts. And facts matter.

      I’d hate to think that we’d reelect President Obama on the same day that we’d turn the Senate over to a majority that would do from the Senate floor what we’d never give Mitt Romney the chance to do from the White House.

      This is a race I care about deeply in the state I love, and it’ll greatly affect the Senate which I revere.

      Elizabeth Warren is a fighter — and she’ll be a great Senator if you can dig deep and help her get there.

      Please join us today — and let’s go win this election!

      John

      • …However it is also totally in the party line. Warren doesn’t need Kerry to say Brown’s votes hurt Massachusetts. She can say that on her own. For him talking about the impact of a GOP Senate, that’s in his wheelhouse as somebody who could easily lose his chairmanship if the GOP regains the senate, forgetting Secy of State for the moment.

        • experienced Senator John Kerry were to point out that Brown is not the bipartisan moderate he is claiming to be. I disagree with you there. Yes, nationalizing the race is important, but I don’t need his expert opinion to say that voting for a Republican may help the Republicans gain control of the Senate as much as I need an expert to explain why Brown’s claim to be an effective bipartisan moderate is untrue.

          There are people who are supporting Scott Brown knowing full well he’s a Republican and what that could mean, but who also want to help get the Republican party out of the hands of right-wing extremists and back toward the middle and compromise. I know this because I’ve been out talking to voters for weeks now. Being able to say something like “Senator Kerry, who has seen Scott Brown up close for two years, says that ….” to counter this myth that Brown is somehow not voting with the hard-right Republican party when it matters, would be extremely useful.

        • What Brown is effectively saying is “Good Democratic Senator Kerry” doesn’t complain about my record. “He really knows I’m a good guy.” I don’t find that helpful. Especially when Kerry is all over TV attacking Mitt’s record.

          But then again I could go back to the state convention – where was he? – and it’s tough not to conclude that Kerry isn’t going to do any more than he has to on this.

          Although I have to admit I haven’t been much of a Kerry fan since his vote to back George W. Bush’s war of choice in Iraq.

  4. A key problem for Brown is that he hasn’t delivered anything for MA. The GOP hates MA with a fervor similar to that Gollum displayed to the forces of the light: the only way the Commonwealth is likely to get much from DC is through a democratic administration. Brown’s sorry record of non-performance in the Senate underlines the point.

    • Excellent LLOTR reference.

      Everything I know about personal honor and trust and not giving into despair I have learned from The Lord of the Rings. (and Star Trek). And yet, no matter how many times and in how many ways the GOP says otherwise, I know that “these are the droids I am looking for”.

      • …inform much of my view on the death penalty. Paraphrasing he and Frodo talking about Gollum: Frodo talked of how Gollum deserves death, and Gandalf replied that while Gollum might certainly deserve death, and that many who live deserve death. Conversely, many who are dead deserve life, can you give it to them? Then do not be so quick to deal out death as punishment.

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