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Where Scott Brown Is Coming From

Brown in the former office of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, which is now his.  (Michele Asselin)

In just 48 hours, Scott Brown would be sworn in as the newest member of the United States Senate, stepping into the shoes (and office suite) of Edward M. Kennedy and the world of woe on Capitol Hill. But as he zipped down a Massachusetts highway on an early February night, he wasn’t focused on the issues he campaigned on and the problems he would soon confront: a gargantuan federal deficit; terrorism; health care reform, which his election may well have killed. He was fixated on “Saturday Night Live.” And how the actor Jon Hamm nailed him in a recent skit.

“A lot of his mannerisms — he actually did a pretty good job,” Brown said, bringing up the TV show for the second time in 90 minutes and sounding hugely amused. He lavished even more praise on the skit’s writers, who envisioned him as a Republican lamb lost in the U.S. Capitol and stumbling repeatedly into a Democratic leadership meeting where Senators Barbara Boxer and Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank, among others, huddled. “That would be me,” he said, grinning. “I would actually walk into an office and say: ‘Oh, my God, I’m sorry, this place is big, I’m lost, I’m sorry.’ ”

The skit’s gist was in fact less innocent than that: as Brown apologized to Pelosi and company for his serial intrusions, he smiled coquettishly, batted his eyes and invaded their thought balloons, where he gyrated and jived, a hunky go-go dancer with loose hips and lewd quips. (“I’m about to filibust out of these jean shorts.”) The lawmakers were lust-struck. Sure, they wanted universal coverage, but right then and there, they had a more intense, urgent hankering for Scott Brown.

He chuckled about that part too, kidding that when he formally met these lawmakers in the weeks ahead, he wouldn’t be sure whether to “shake their hands or wink at them.” It’s a question that wouldn’t occur to most Senate newcomers, but then they also probably wouldn’t attract the attentions of “S.N.L.” in the first place. In the context of Congress, Brown is an unusually hot property. Interpret the “hot” as you will.

That high profile only partly reflects his shocking upset victory in the Jan. 19 special election in Massachusetts, where Democrats hold the upper hand and he entered the race to fill the remainder of Kennedy’s term with minimal name recognition statewide. And it only partly reflects the game-changing consequences of his win, which ended the Democrats’ supermajority in the Senate, pumped Republicans full of hope for the 2010 midterms and could put many of President Obama’s dreams on ice.

Brown’s exposure owes at least as much to, well, his exposure. Back in 1982, when he was 22, he posed nude for Cosmopolitan magazine, which named him the sexiest man in America. The layout of the photograph skimped on some key information, but the accompanying interview made space for his fantasies, which he said turned to women who were “tall, athletic and have longish hair and beautiful legs . . . hmmm, I’m getting excited!”

Nearly three decades later, as he campaigned for the Senate, that article drew widespread notice, as did the fact that Brown, at 50, seemed as plausible a centerfold as ever. An obsessive exerciser, he competed in more than six triathlons, both abbreviated and full length, in the first half of 2009 alone. The trim, muscular results of all that swimming and sweating explained an atypical addition to the Washington press corps that shadowed him during a visit to the nation’s capital just after his victory. A reporter for the gossip site TMZ was on hand to ask him if he was “bringing sexy back to the Republican Party.”

He’s certainly bringing it a résumé and panache that aren’t the norm. And he’s transporting them — in the unlikely event that you haven’t yet heard — in a green GMC Canyon pickup truck. Seldom has a politician got more mileage out of a vehicle, and I don’t mean Brown’s crisscrossing of Massachusetts during the campaign. He constantly mentioned his truck in speeches, built an entire commercial around it and, during an appearance on Jay Leno’s show just two nights before “S.N.L.,” announced the availability of a toy version of it, packaged with the motto “Driving the establishment crazy.” The Boston Herald actually interviewed the mechanic who services it. It’s Brown’s most visible populist credential, shorthand for his kinship with the common man, an automotive analogue to Joe the Plumber. And it was the setting for the review he volunteered of the “S.N.L.” skit.

“We’re in the famous truck,” he pointed out, needlessly. “It’s a regular truck.” Yes and no. As Arianna, the younger of his two daughters, told me, he originally purchased it not so he could haul lumber but so he could attach it to a trailer bearing her horse.

He soon abandoned that plan. “It’s scary pulling a trailer,” he said, adding that he instead used the truck “for all of her horse stuff” and “it always smelled.” At that moment it didn’t, and there wasn’t any visible cargo in its bed, which often carried campaign signs. But on the dashboard I spotted the kind of plastic container used to hold a teeth-whitening mold. One of his daughters, he said, must have left it there.

Like so many politicians who have presented themselves as folk heroes, Scott Brown is a lot more complicated. He’s a real estate lawyer with a dozen years in the Massachusetts State Legislature — not exactly a career politician, but not an outsider either — and two spacious homes, one on a leafy cul-de-sac in the Boston suburb of Wrentham, Mass., the other about four blocks from the Atlantic in Rye, N.H. He’s indisputably self-made and indeed something of a he-man, but with a background that’s part Horatio Alger, part Zoolander. The Cosmo article came toward the start of a long, lucrative modeling career, and it was hardly his last voyage as a showboat.

Arianna told me that he showed up for his first real date with her mother, Gail Huff, a TV newscaster to whom he has been married for more than 23 years, in pink leather shorts. It’s family lore.

The pinkish color drained from his face when I asked him about it during a conversation in his campaign office just before we took off in the truck. He clarified that the shorts weren’t something that he went out and purchased — it wasn’t like that at all. “I did the couture shows, and instead of paying in cash, they paid in clothes,” he said. “And one of the things I had to wear were leather shorts. And these happened to be pink.”

As he told the story, he seemed, almost in spite of himself, to get into it. “If I wore these now,” he said, “I’d get shot. But it was the ’80s. Pastels were in. It was all pastel-y.” The shorts went with his tan at the time and a pair of white shoes that he owned, so he gave them a whirl. “Gail comes out and she’s like, ‘Those are pink shorts.’ I said: ‘Yeah, you like them? They’re great. Comfortable. Feel this leather.’ ” With this last phrase, he slowly stroked the side of one of his thighs, apparently miming the gesture he made in front of her.

He emphasized: “This isn’t cheap leather. This is, like, $750 shorts back then.” He shook his head at the memory. “Crazy stuff.”

More . . .

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This is a very long article.. 6 pages long.  Worth reading.  Quite a good read; he comes across as "what you see/hear is what you get" straight forward character.  Very likeable down-to-earth person.

It is impressive that he is getting so much exposure in NY Times Magazine, this quickly.

I agree with the author that Scott Brown's "Thank you tour" was a "cunning move" and I think it was a great strategy. He used his time well and further gained on the momentum he had already developed.  Every time he returns to MA he will need to get on that trail because he has a re-election coming up.

I totally agree with this from the last page of the article:

Brown was also flawless at this, neatly weaving together two leitmotifs in his life: exhibitionism and an ability to hunker down and do what it takes, whether the arena is athletic or political. For a candidate, that’s a killer combination.



-- Edited by Sanders on Wednesday 24th of February 2010 11:08:10 AM