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Scott Brown Tag

Timing is everything in politics, and Elizabeth Warren received a huge break when a devastating Washington Post investigation of Warren's legal practice when she was a law professor was published on Monday, July 15, 2019. That was the day after Trump's tweets telling four congresswomen "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how...." The investigation confirmed and expanded on Legal Insurrection's reporting from 2012 that in her private legal practice Warren worked against breast implant victims, not for them as she claimed. It was part of a pattern of Warren representing major corporations against the people Warren claims to care about, before she launched her political career.

The Gibson's Bakery massive verdict against Oberlin College has sparked incredible reader excitement, and brought many new readers to Legal Insurrection. I've spent the last week trying to absorb what is happening. The reactions to the compensatory and punitive damage verdicts remind me of only a few times in Legal Insurrection's almost 11-year history.

Elizabeth Warren had a reputation in academia as a climber with sharp elbows, said New York Magazine in 2011 ("A Saint with Sharp Elbows), and The Boston Globe in 2012:
Behind the scenes, some of her peers bristled at her ascent, viewing her as smart and capable but also as a climber with sharp elbows.
Warren brought those sharp elbows to her 2012 Senate campaign against Scott Brown, and when Brown elbowed back he was accused of sexism. Brent Budowsky at The Hill accused Brown of "sexist slime" for raising the obvious question as to whether Warren's false claim to be Native American in a law directory used for hiring might have juiced her career. Budowsky wrote:
First Brown implied that Warren was a Harvard elitist. Presumably Brown would attack John F. Kennedy for the same reason. Now Brown suggests that Elizabeth Warren is not really qualified to teach at Harvard. Huh? Brown's using the old Karl Rove-style "dog whistle" attack, suggesting Warren just maybe got the Harvard job because of affirmative action. What sexist garbage it is that Scott Brown is trying to sell? Elizabeth Warren got the Harvard job because she was supremely qualified, as are most women who are attacked in this way.
The Warren campaign made the same sexism charge:

If you missed the debate between Scott Brown and Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire last night, consider yourself lucky. Brown did very well despite the tremendous odds stacked against him. The debate was sponsored in part by the University of New Hampshire and moderated by the not-at-all biased Chuck Todd of NBC News. Scott Brown went out of his way to tie Shaheen to Obama's poor record and at one point, she helped him out. While many Democrats are running as fast as they can from Obama, Jeanne Shaheen admitted that she has voted with Obama 99% of the time. The Washington Free Beacon caught this moment:
Jeanne Shaheen Admits To Voting WIth Obama 99% Of Time Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D., NH) admitted Tuesday night that she has voted with President Barack Obama 99% of the time. At her second debate against Republican senate candidate Scott Brown, Shaheen conceded the fact after being pressed by a debate moderator. After reminding Shaheen of her voting record the moderator questioned Shaheen, “How does your voting record sort of jive with serving the citizens of New Hampshire?” Faced with the facts, Shaheen admitted to the number and tried to pivot. “Scott Brown talks a lot about one survey and 99% of the time I voted with the president,” Shaheen replied, “but the numbers I’m proudest of are the 259 people now working at the Berlin prison because I was able to get the prison open after it sat empty for two years.”
Here's the video:

According to a new poll from WMUR in New Hampshire on the race for US senate, Republican Scott Brown has gained a tremendous amount of ground on incumbent Democrat Jeanne Shaheen. Joshua Miller of the Boston Globe recently reported:
Scott Brown, Jeanne Shaheen in dead heat The US Senate race in New Hampshire has narrowed, and Republican Scott Brown is now in a dead heat with incumbent Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, according to a new poll. The Granite State Poll, released Thursday evening, found Brown trailing Shaheen, 44 percent to 46 percent among likely voters, with 9 percent not knowing or undecided in a hypothetical general election matchup. The narrow gap between the two contenders was within the margin of error of the poll, which was sponsored by WMUR-TV and conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. A WMUR survey released early last month and reporting similar numbers to other polls during that period, found Shaheen leading Brown, 50 percent to 38 percent. Pollster Andrew E. Smith, a political science professor at UNH, said he thought the shift was a result of national trends and had little to do with the candidates’ campaigns. “I think it’s an Obama drag,” he said. The new WMUR poll found only 38 percent of New Hampshire adults approve of the way President Obama was handling his job, a 7 percentage point drop from about a month earlier, while 55 percent disapprove.
Guy Benson of Hot Air notes that other recent polls weren't as kind to Brown, so it's difficult to tell if this is a trend:

The senate race between Democratic incumbent Jeanne Shaheen and Republican challenger Scott Brown is going to be a pricey one. Some are even speculating that it could set records. Chris Cassidy of the Boston Herald reports...
Scott Brown-Jeanne Shaheen N.H. race costs may set record The heavyweight U.S. Senate showdown between Jeanne Shaheen and Scott Brown — already off to a fast and snippy start with both sides accusing each other of breaking federal elections laws — could shatter records for campaign spending and even top the amount racked up by GOP presidential primary hopefuls in the Granite State two years ago. “It wouldn’t shock me if it topped $50 million,” said Dante Scala, a campaign finance expert at the University of New Hampshire. “I suspect the spending on the Senate race will dwarf the New Hampshire Republican primary spending in the 2012 presidential primary. ... In all likelihood this would set a record.” Spending during Shaheen’s last U.S. Senate race against John Sununu in 2008 hit about $37 million, Scala said. Even by his most conservative estimate, Scala expects to see $45 million in spending — $20 million combined by both campaigns and $25 million by super PACs and other outside groups. All this in a state with just 1.3 million people and less than 800,000 registered voters.
The stakes are high and both sides know it. In addition to hitting her support for Obamacare, Brown is taking Shaheen to task for the Keystone pipeline. Brown published the following letter in the New Hampshire Union Leader...
Will Jeanne Shaheen join me in supporting the Keystone pipeline?

Much speculation today, apparently confirmed by Fox News:
Fox News has confirmed that former senator Scott Brown (R-Mass.) has told the network that he will file an exploratory committee for the New Hampshire Senate race. His contract with the network has been canceled, as is standard practice for candidates for office. “Scott Brown’s contributor agreement was officially terminated today once he notified Fox News of his intention to form an exploratory committee to run for U.S. Senate in New Hampshire," Fox News executive vice president of programming Bill Shine said.
Is it for real, or just exploratory?
Several people involved in the discussions about Brown's future said some in the GOP establishment remain skeptical, given the former Republican senator's recent track record. Brown, 54, angered Massachusetts Republicans last year after indicating he would run in the state's special U.S. Senate election, only to change his mind late in the process. "He's been reaching out to opinion leaders, to grass-roots activists, getting a sense of, `Would you be supporting a Scott Brown campaign?"' said former New Hampshire Rep. Frank Guinta, who is running again for Congress and was included in Brown's outreach efforts. "That, to me, says he's serious. But I think only Scott Brown knows if Scott Brown is going to run."
If Brown runs, I don't know if we'll cover the race the way we did in 2010, when we were the first and almost the only one giving him a chance against Martha Coakley, and we turned the blog "all Scott Brown, all the time" as the rest of the internet caught on. Our election night coverage and celebration was epic. And then we said Bye-Bye Brown as his Senate performance and positions disappointed. Only to get sucked back into the 2012 campaign against Warren when her fake Indian status surfaced. We ended up driving many of the issues in that race, although I don't think there was anything that was going to stop Massachusetts from electing Warren, not even had she driven drunk and left a girl to die like the namesake of the Kennedy Seat. Jim Geraghty has early analysis of the race against Jeanne Shaheen. So if Brown runs in NH, what does it mean for Legal Insurrection? Resist we much. Update: It's official official --

A follow up to Hopeless in Rhode Island. Boston talk radio host Michael Graham writes, DON’T Run, Scott, Don’t Run! Actually, I have no problem with Scott Brown running in the special election we all expect to have in a few months after John Kerry becomes Secretary...

John Kerry to Be Nominated to Be Secretary of State, Sources Say: Sources tell ABC News that President Obama has decided that he will nominate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., to be secretary of state. If confirmed, which he will be (emphasis mine): If nominated by the president and confirmed...

Kimball Political Consulting, a Republican leaning firm but one which has not been overly generous in its results for Scott Brown to date (it had Warren up 2 in mid-October), finds Brown up by 2 in a poll just released: Senator Scott Brown holds a 2...

In the past two days two wildly differing polls have been released, one showing Scott Brown up 2, the other showing Elizabeth Warren up by 7. Polling from last week showed Warren ahead by 5. AP via Boston Globe reports: A new poll is giving an edge...

No one expresses feigned outrage quite as well as Elizabeth Warren. Warren, who assumed a false Native American identity for employment purposes while climbing the law professor ladder and explained it away by playing on ethnic stereotypes of Indians having high cheekbones, is upset. Scott Brown said he...

First it was union members being fined for not picketing for Elizabeth Warren.  Then it was Warren supporters taunting a gay staffer with Scott Brown's campaign. Now black supporters of Scott Brown have received the sort of racially based taunts that we have seen directed in the...

I had the pleasue of spending a full hour on the radio with Dan Rea at WBZ 1030 (CBS Boston), a true superstation that covers all of New England and into New York. Dan made a point during the hour that character matters, and that Elizabeth Warren's character...