Scott Brown (politician)
Scott Philip Brown is an American diplomat and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he was the United States ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa from 2017 to 2020 under president Donald Trump.
Brown was a member of the Massachusetts General Court, first in the State House of Representatives from 1998 to 2004 and then in the State Senate from 2004 to 2010. Brown served in the Army National Guard for 35 years, retiring with the rank of colonel in 2014 and receiving the Legion of Merit medal and the Maryland Distinguished Service Cross.
From 2010 to 2013, he was a United States senator from Massachusetts. He ran for a full Senate term in 2012, but lost to Democratic nominee Elizabeth Warren. After his defeat, Brown joined the board of directors of Kadant paper company, joined Fox News as a commentator, and joined Nixon Peabody where he provided legal services. Brown was the 2014 Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire but lost to Democrat Jeanne Shaheen in the general election. He is seeking election to the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire in 2026.
Early life and education (1959–1978)
Brown is of English ancestry, from a family that has been in New Hampshire since the colonial era. His earliest American ancestor was 17th century immigrant Francis Matthews, who sailed from Devonshire, England. Brown is part of a 9th generation New Hampshire family and was born on September 12, 1959 at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard located on Seavey's Island in Kittery, Maine. Brown's father, Claude Bruce Brown, and mother, Judith Ann "Judi", divorced when he was about a year old. When he was a child, his mother moved with him to Wakefield, Massachusetts. He often spent his summers in Newburyport, Massachusetts, where his father served as a city councilor for 18 years. He also spent summers in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, during his youth. His father and his grandfather were Republicans. His father has said that young Scott became interested in running for political office in the mid-1960s while accompanying him on a campaign for state office.After her divorce, his working mother received welfare benefits. Brown experienced sexual abuse from a camp counselor who threatened to kill the 10-year-old boy if he told anyone – which he did not disclose, even to his family, until his autobiography Against All Odds – and physical abuse from his stepfathers. During various periods of his childhood, Brown lived with his grandparents and his aunt. He shoplifted many times, and was arrested for stealing record albums and brought before Judge Samuel Zoll in Salem, Massachusetts, at the age of 13 or 14. Zoll asked Brown if his siblings would like seeing him play basketball in jail and required Brown to write a 1,500-word essay on that question as his punishment. Brown later said, "that was the last time I ever stole."
He graduated from Wakefield High School in 1977 then entered Tufts University where he received a Bachelor of Arts in history in 1981. He received a Juris Doctor from Boston College Law School in 1985. During his undergraduate career at Tufts, Brown was a member of the Kappa chapter of Zeta Psi International Fraternity.
Early career (1978–1992)
Army National Guard service (1978-2014)
Brown has said the rescue efforts of Army National Guard during the Northeastern United States blizzard of 1978 impressed him. When he was 19, he joined the Massachusetts Army National Guard, received his basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and attended Reserve Officers' Training Corps classes at the campus of Northeastern University. He was trained in infantry, quartermaster, and airborne duties, and in 1994 he joined the Judge Advocate General's Corps. He was active in the Guard for 35 years rising to the rank of colonel. As the Army National Guard's head defense attorney in New England, Brown defended Guard members who had disciplinary difficulties such as positive drug tests, and provided estate planning and real estate advice to those who were about to deploy to war zones. He spent ten days to two weeks with the Guard in Kazakhstan and a week in Paraguay.He was awarded the Army Commendation Medal for meritorious service in preparing for troop mobilization for Operation Noble Eagle shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and later for mobilization support for Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He credits his military experience with causing him to focus on veteran's issues as well as issues of war and peace. He has served on the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, the Hidden Wounds of War Commission, and the Governor's Task Force on Returning Veterans during his career as a legislator.
On May 2, 2011, Brown announced that he would soon go to Afghanistan for training as part of his Army National Guard service. When deployed in August 2011 for training, Brown stationed in and around Kabul.
On August 1, 2012, Brown was promoted to colonel in a private ceremony presided over by fellow senator John McCain. He officially retired from the Army on May 13, 2014, after 35 years of service, and was awarded the Legion of Merit and the Maryland Distinguished Service Cross.
Modeling
In June 1982, Brown, then a 22-year-old law student at Boston College, won Cosmopolitan magazine's "America's Sexiest Man" contest. After two weeks on a crash diet of "three cans of tuna a day" and intensive workouts he was featured in the magazine's centerfold, posing nude but strategically positioned so that according to Brown, "You don't see anything". In the accompanying interview, he referred to himself as "a bit of a patriot" and stated that he had political ambitions. The Cosmopolitan appearance and its $1,000 fee helped pay for law school, and began for Brown a "long, lucrative" part-time catalog and print modeling career in New York and Boston during the 1980s. Brown took a leave of absence from Boston College and further pursued his modeling career in New York where he was represented by Wilhelmina Models while taking classes at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. He returned to Boston after nearly two years to continue his studies at Boston College and continued to work as a model.State political career (1992–2010)
Brown "caught the political bug" in 1992 when he was elected property assessor of Wrentham, Massachusetts. In 1995, he was elected to the Wrentham Board of Selectmen.He successfully ran for the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1998, representing the 9th Norfolk District for three terms. Brown again moved up the ladder of state politics to the state Senate in March 2004 when he won a special election to replace Democrat Cheryl Jacques. Brown was re-elected for a full term in November 2004, and again in November 2006, running without opposition the second time. He won re-election in November 2008, defeating Democratic candidate Sara Orozco by a 59–41 percent margin. Following his re-election, Brown was one of five Republicans in the 40-seat Massachusetts Senate. In the Massachusetts Senate, Brown served on committees dealing with consumer protection, professional licensing, education, election laws, public safety, and veterans' affairs.
In January 2010, The Boston Globe reported that Brown had carved out a niche regarding veterans issues. Republican Richard Tisei called Brown "the acknowledged expert on veterans' issues". Democrat Jack Hart said: "He does his homework, he's comprehensive in his approach, and on veterans' issues, he's one of them and has done a very good job on their behalf."
Brown lists among his achievements as a legislator his authorship of a 2007 law that created a check-off box on state income tax forms for veterans to indicate whether they served in Iraq or Afghanistan. The state uses the information to notify veterans of available services and benefits, including the Welcome Home Bonus that provides $1,000 for those returning from active duty in Afghanistan or Iraq.
U.S. Senate (2010–2013)
2010 election
On September 12, 2009, Brown announced his run for the U.S. Senate seat that became vacant with the death of Ted Kennedy, saying the state "needs an independent thinker". Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker said that Brown's political positions did not fall neatly into party lines, and called Brown "mainstream in a nation that defines itself as mostly conservative". Boris Shor, political scientist at the Harris School of Public Policy, described Brown as a liberal Republican by national standards, but well-suited for his Massachusetts constituency. Shor explained the support Brown was receiving from the conservative national Republican Party as due to its "decentralized decision" to support the candidate most likely to win.Brown won a landslide victory in the Republican primary on December 8, 2009, defeating late entrant and perennial candidate Jack E. Robinson by a margin of 89 percent to 11 percent.
Brown's opponents in the general election were Democratic nominee, Attorney General Martha Coakley, and independent Joseph L. Kennedy. At the outset, he faced overwhelming odds because he was relatively unknown compared to Coakley, he was running as a Republican in a very Democratic state, and much of his campaigning had to be done during the Christmas and New Year's season when citizens do not generally pay much attention to politics. No Republican had been elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts since Edward Brooke in 1972. He polled far behind Coakley for several months, but closed the gap in the early weeks of January.
One week before the January special election, a controversy arose over a Coakley approved television ad. The ad referenced the conscientious objector amendment Brown had sponsored for inclusion in a 2005 proposed state measure on patients' rights. This amendment would have allowed individual healthcare workers and hospitals to refuse to provide emergency contraceptive care to rape victims if they objected due to a religious belief. After the amendment failed, Brown did vote for the main bill which, along with other patient rights, requires healthcare workers and hospitals to provide such care. Coakley's ad featured a male voice that said, "Brown even favors letting hospitals deny emergency contraception to rape victims," over the ad's graphic which had the words, "Deny rape victims care". Brown's daughter Ayla called the Coakley ad "completely inaccurate and misleading", and stated that her father would never deny care to a rape victim. Brown criticized Coakley for running what he described as attack ads.
When told that at various times he has been labeled a conservative, moderate and a liberal Republican, he responded "I'm a Scott Brown Republican." According to Politifact, while Brown was a Massachusetts legislator, he voted about 90 percent with the state Republican leadership; however, Republican leadership in the Massachusetts legislature is generally considered far more moderate than the national Republican Party.
A week before the general election, Brown raised $1.3 million from over 16,000 donors in a 24-hour moneybomb. His campaign office stated it raised $5 million over the period from January 11–15. Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report stated on January 17 that he would put his "finger on the scale" for Brown as the favorite. The Rothenberg Political Report released a statement that "the combination of public and private survey research and anecdotal information now strongly suggests that Republican Scott Brown will defeat Democrat Martha Coakley in tomorrow's race." Suffolk University's polling of three bellwether counties on January 18 had Brown leading Coakley by double-digit margins. Brown won the January 19 election, performing well in traditional Republican strongholds and holding rival Coakley's margins down in many Democratic precincts.
On election night, after Coakley conceded, Brown gave a victory speech that stated, "It all started with me, my truck, and a few dedicated volunteers. It ended with Air Force One making an emergency run to Logan. I didn't mind when President Obama came here and criticized me – that happens in campaigns. But when he criticized my truck, that's where I draw the line." Brown's upset win stunned the national Democratic party, and foreshadowed nationwide success for Republicans in 2010.