The People’s Seat
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BOSTON — The last time Massachusetts sent a Republican to the
U.S. Senate, the year was 1972. Richard Nixon was in the White
House. Sonny and Cher were still together. “All in the Family”
was still only in its second season. The Chevy Chevelle was one
of the country’s top-selling cars. And Massachusetts was the only
state in the country that voted to elect George McGovern
president.
That last trivia item illustrates the significance of state Sen.
Scott Brown’s accomplishment. A Republican who started the race
down 30 points was elected to the Senate seat the late Ted
Kennedy held for 47 years, winning 52 percent of the vote with 99
percent of precincts reporting. He won with a simple argument:
“This Senate seat belongs to no one person and no one political
party — it belongs to the people of Massachusetts.”
Nobody expected the special election to fill the remainder of
Kennedy’s term to even be close. Certainly, Attorney General
Martha Coakley didn’t. She cruised to victory in the Democratic
primary based on name recognition and then hoped the “D” after
her name on the ballot would take care of the rest. Her only goal
in the campaign was to make sure that Massachusetts voters knew
libertarian-leaning independent candidate Joseph Kennedy wasn’t
man from Citizens Energy and descendant of Camelot.
Barack Obama didn’t expect to have to fly to Boston for a
last-minute get-out-the-vote rally on Coakley’s behalf. He won
Massachusetts by 26 points in 2008. His bill expanding the
federal government’s role over the American health care system
was supposed to be the culmination of Ted Kennedy’s life work.
This was, as he put it, a simple choice “whether we’re going
forwards or backwards” — between Obama’s change we can believe
in or the bad old days that came before.
Well, it took George W. Bush five years to bring his party to the
brink of electoral disaster. It has taken Obama one year. That’s
change, all right.
The political establishment in Washington didn’t anticipate
having to make any changes to the way it does business. When the
first polls suggested that Scott Brown might be a serious
candidate, they began to dream up ways to ram through their
legislative agenda as if nothing had ever happened.
Simmering beneath the surface, however, there was a group of
voters who were tired of corrupt one-party rule on both Beacon
Hill and Capitol Hill. They had patiently paid the bills while
one “change agent” after another pledged progress, without seeing
any benefit to their own families.
They had the highest hopes for the Barack Obamas and Deval
Patricks and the Michael Dukakises who knew better how to spend
their money than they did. In Massachusetts, these folks were
already paying for universal health care, only to face the
prospect of Uncle Sam asking them to pony up again.
Now they were finally fed up. By Christmas, the lawn signs alone
suggested an enthusiasm gap between Brown and Coakley. By the
time your humble servant returned to Massachusetts earlier this
week, it was evident that the angry
independent was ready to make his voice heard. Another shot
heard ’round the world? Perhaps not, but at the very least the
most dramatic repudiation of the commonwealth’s Democratic
hierarchy since
1990.
Once the Democrats realized they were in trouble, virtually
everything they did reinforced the disgruntlement of voters drawn
toward Brown. Already concerned about giving one political party
absolute power, these angry independents were treated to news
reports that the Democrats were willing to contemplate delaying
Brown’s certification in the event that he won. Already worried
about an onerous health care bill, they heard about the national
Democrats’ plans to pass a bill no matter who Massachusetts
elected senator.
With many voters already tired of being treated with contempt by
a politician who clearly felt entitled to be senator, Coakley
became a parody of herself when she belittled mingling with the
hoi polloi outside Fenway Park — “This is a special election” –
and ignorantly mocked former Boston Red Sox star pitcher Curt
Schilling as a “Yankee fan.” Faced with voters disgusted by a
political party that seemed to believe it was destined to rule,
the best Coakley could do was drag a virtual politburo of
Democratic hacks into the state to campaign for her, doing
everything short of disinterring Senator Kennedy himself.
In the end, the “D” next to Coakley’s name was still worth about
47 percent of the vote. Although Scott Brown did nearly
everything right during this short campaign while running against
a candidate who did nearly everything wrong, he still needed
last-minute help from friends and donors across the country to
help him across the finish line. Bay State Democrats are probably
already thinking of ways to unseat him in 2012.
But watching the revelers at Park Plaza — who never at any point
in the night seemed to doubt the outcome of this election –
chant “the people’s seat” at the top of their lungs, a thought
occurred. Once the people get used to exercising their power,
there is no telling where they will stop.
