Chapter 4: What Can Brown Do For Us?
As part of my TEA Party +15 celebration I am serializing my 2019 book The Rise and Fall of the TEA Party. A chapter will appear each Tuesday until the 15th anniversary on February 27, 2024.
“It was a miracle moment...(Scott Brown) went from zero on the radar screen to what everyone was paying attention to.” - Christen Varley, Greater Boston Tea Party.
The death of Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy on August 25, 2009 saddened the nation because it signified the end of the “Camelot” era initiated by our 35th President, a youthful John F. Kennedy. It also reminded America once again of the tragedies his family faced at the hand of assassins twice in less than five years, as well as other (often self-inflicted) misfortunes associated with the Kennedy name.
But in a political sense Kennedy's passing threw a monkey wrench into the Democrats' plans for enacting the Obama agenda by temporarily eliminating the 60-40 leftwing supermajority they could use to avoid Republican attempts to stop legislation via filibuster by invoking cloture, which required 60 Senators to agree.1 Originally it was feared by Democrats that they would have to wait nearly six months for the results of a special election in Massachusetts to fill the remainder of Kennedy's term, but some legislative legerdemain by Bay State Democrats (requested by Kennedy himself as his health finally failed)2 enabled them to avoid that crisis. After the succession law was changed, on September 24 loyal Democrat Paul Kirk, Jr. was installed as a four-month “caretaker” for Kennedy's seat.3 As a condition of appointment, the 71-year-old Kirk promised he would not seek the remaining two-plus years of the term, and the election was set for the following January 19.
It was another change in Congress that would give the TEA Party its first true electoral test, though. In June President Obama had tapped moderate Republican Rep. John McHugh of New York to be his Secretary of the Army; McHugh resigned his House seat upon confirmation September 21. Although it was expected since the day McHugh was tabbed for the position, his resignation formally placed the 23rd District seat, representing the farthest reaches of upstate New York along the eastern shore of Lake Ontario and the nearby Canadian border, on the 2009 off-year ballot. Here was a chance for the TEA Party to see just how much political muscle it had.
However, there were some parameters within this campaign which made it different than a standard political effort. While Obama's intention to select McHugh became known in June, his confirmation languished as the Senate took care of other business and enjoyed its annual summer recess. Despite this uncertainty, the leading candidates were selected by local party officials as they were for an earlier special election in the adjacent 20th Congressional District.4
So while the 23rd District Democrats tried to convince a number of local elected officials to run, their collective refusal eventually led the party to eschew three previous failed aspirants for the seat and select lawyer and Air Force veteran Bill Owens as their candidate.5 After all, the Democrats had little to lose since the region historically was so solidly Republican that portions of the 23rd hadn't elected a Democrat to Congress in over a century.6
On the other hand, the Republicans and TEA Party-influenced conservatives in the district had differing ideas.
Republican county chairs representing the eleven counties of the 23rd District came together in July and vetted a pool of interested candidates. Among this group were State Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava and Doug Hoffman, a CPA and former Army reservist making his first bid for office. Knowing the district was a long-standing GOP stronghold that was trending toward the political middle – it narrowly supported Obama in the 2008 election, although the centrist Republican7 McHugh was re-elected with ease – the county chairs decided to go with the experienced, more socially moderate8 Scozzafava. (Also in her favor: she represented a portion of the 23rd in the state legislature; meanwhile, Hoffman actually resided just outside the district boundaries.)
Although Hoffman initially wished Scozzafava the best of luck in her effort,9 a few weeks later he opted to go before the Conservative Party – which has its own ballot line in the state of New York – and got the blessing of their leadership to secure their nomination for the Congressional seat. As events unfolded, this made the race a three-way contest and a test of whether the TEA Party could make the transition to a viable political organization.
Eventually this otherwise obscure Congressional race became a cause among conservative and Republican leaders, with much of the TEA Party gathering on Hoffman's side while a handful of Republican regulars took what they considered the pragmatic approach in backing Scozzafava. Included in the latter group was erstwhile TEA Party backer Newt Gingrich:
The special election for the 23rd Congressional District is an important test leading up to the mid-term 2010 elections. Our best chance to put responsible and principled leaders in Washington starts here, with Dede Scozzafava…
This special election...could be the first election of the new Republican Revolution, but we need the momentum to get it started.10
Yet Gingrich and GOP regulars were swamped by an outpouring of support11 for Hoffman: included in that number were Dick Armey of FreedomWorks, former Presidential candidate Steve Forbes, and potential 2012 White House hopefuls Michele Bachmann, Fred Thompson, Rick Santorum, Tim Pawlenty,12 and – most importantly in TEA Party circles – Sarah Palin, who noted in her endorsement that Hoffman “has not been anointed by any political machine.”13 As the campaign continued into October, Hoffman's poll numbers surged thanks to the influx of TEA Party money and support – so much so that by month's end a clearly frustrated Scozzafava decided to withdraw, seeing she had lost her backing and that “victory was unlikely.”14 Yet while she said in her withdrawal announcement, “I am and have always been a proud Republican,” Scozzafava endorsed the Democrat Owens a couple days later as an “independent voice...he will put our interests first.”15
On Election night, November 3, it appeared Hoffman trailed Owens by over 5,000 votes, so he conceded the race. This allowed the Democrat to be sworn in by week's end and help push Obamacare through the House; however, the results were briefly thrown into doubt due to counting irregularities.16 As it turned out, though, the unusual New York rules about ballot access and candidates running on multiple ballot lines allowed Owens to pick up enough votes to win as he was cross-endorsed by both the Democratic and Working Families parties – on a strictly Democratic line Owens came up short of the Conservative Party's Hoffman.17
While the national politicians that were angling for eventual TEA Party support took sides in the race, out of the various national TEA Party groups only the Tea Party Express endorsed Hoffman. (However, they didn't include Hoffman's district on their concurrent tour.) The others mostly maintained their “no endorsement” stances, either due to concerns about their tax exemption status or the idea of allowing their members to decide rather than a group endorsement.
Individual TEA Party volunteers, though, deluged the Hoffman campaign,18 and to some observers that nationalization of the campaign was part of the problem. Local issues (in this case, Fort Drum and bridge repair)19 and local municipal-level elections20 matter, analysts said. They also contended the outsiders' tactics alienated a swath of the voters from this “very proud, self-assured area”21 who resented the influx of out-of-state money and volunteers who supported Hoffman.
But other national leaders and TEA Party advocates from other parts of the country saw it differently. Conceding that local issues were a sore subject in the race, FreedomWorks' Dick Armey complained that time simply ran out on Hoffman: “He just got there late, that's all,” said Armey.22 Meanwhile, the Club for Growth, another inside-the-Beltway group looking to court TEA Party money and volunteers for their efforts, blamed it all on Scozzafava. “It turned out the Republican was the spoiler in the race,” said the Club's Executive Director David Keating. “We can't control what others do in any event.” Reportedly, the Club for Growth spent over $1 million on the Hoffman race.23
But across the country there was another Congressional race that most of these groups and workers ignored. Perhaps California's 11th District was considered too much of a shoo-in for Democrats, but there was a strong TEA Party presence in that part of California between Sacramento and Oakland and the Democratic opponent to GOP aspirant David Harmer was the state's lieutenant governor John Garamendi, a career politician who was jumping jobs (and lived outside the district.) So the national GOP provided little help,24 and aside from a stop from the Tea Party Express – with the district in the back yard of its Sacramento headquarters, this wasn't much of a stretch25 – neither did the TEA Party. Yet Harmer took a race where Democrats had over 64% of the primary vote between six candidates26 and lost it by just 10 points.27 (In 2010, Harmer would run in an adjacent district and lose by just over 1%.)28 In the end, though, by the Friday after the election both Owens and Garamendi were sworn into Congress, providing two of the narrow margin of votes that got the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) through the House.29
While the TEA Party was 0-for-2 in these off-year Congressional races, their effect was felt like an earthquake in local and state races. In both New Jersey and Virginia, Republicans won: the firebrand Chris Christie stopped 8 years of Democratic control of the Garden State by beating incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine, while Bob McDonnell regained the governorship of Virginia for the GOP for the first time since 2001, when Jim Gilmore left office. McDonnell beat Democrat Creigh Deeds handily, by 17 percentage points, in the race to win a four-year term. The GOP in Virginia also maintained its lieutenant governor, picked up the attorney general's office, and gained six seats in their House of Delegates in its statewide elections.
These local elections, which largely escaped the notice of the national GOP, proved a point made by defiant blogger and Los Angeles TEA Party organizer Stephen Kruiser during the days leading up to that offyear election:
The argument is always that the desperately needed moderates won’t be attracted to a conservative candidate, which is a truck load of manure we can no longer allow the GOP higher-ups to dump on us any more.30
But this series of elections also dictated a direction the TEA Party would subsequently take. You may recall that, among the early arguments between movement partisans, there was the debate of whether to create a third party. While the Conservative Party in New York was an established party with a ballot line, the fact that it was a minor party meant its ballot placement was disadvantageous.31 “Coming off Line D, it became increasingly difficult to get out of the 40s,”32 said Watertown mayor Jeff Graham. New York's ballot at the time was grouped by party, with the Democratic Party line on top (line A), followed by Republicans on line B, the Independence Party on line C, then the Conservative and Working Families parties on lines D and E, respectively. It was intentionally grouped to make straight party-line voting easier.
So while there were some TEA Party members and groups who gravitated to existing third parties such as the Libertarian, Constitution, or Reform parties, most decided consciously after the Hoffman fiasco they were better off trying to work through the Republican Party despite its flaws. Thus, new political activists had to learn about the Buckley Rule, named after National Review founder William F. Buckley: he preached the idea of supporting the most right-leaning candidate who was viable in a general election. Those who supported Dede Scozzafava in the 23rd District race obviously believed they were simply following the Buckley Rule as Hoffman was just a little too conservative for such a centrist district. While the Buckley Rule concept would make John Birch-style conservatives – especially those in the TEA Party – scoff and accuse the establishment of selling out, the idea behind Buckley was to at least move the needle in the right direction by getting a slightly less desirable winner as opposed to letting the perfect be the enemy of the good and losing entirely thanks to an extremist candidate who repelled too many voters.
This was a bitter pill for some TEA Party regulars to swallow, though. A few days after his defiant remarks, Kruiser added, “The reality is that overhauling the GOP and getting it to focus on conservative principles and candidates is the pragmatic approach.”33 (Emphasis in original.)
Thanks to Ted Kennedy's passing and the subsequent special election, the TEA Party would soon enough have an opportunity to be pragmatic, Buckley style.
In many places, Scott Brown would not be considered TEA Party material thanks to centrist views on certain social issues, like abortion – in fact, based on his Massachusetts State Senate voting record, political analyst Dr. Boris Shor argued Brown was even farther left than the rejected NY-23 Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava.34 But because the locale was the royal-blue state of Massachusetts, the election was a non-standard special balloting at an odd time on the political calendar, and the need was dire because a Democratic win would allow them to maintain their 60-40 filibuster-proof edge in the Senate where bad bills could steamroll their way through, Scott Brown was the TEA Party's choice in the early days of 2010. He was definitely the “right-leaning, but viable” candidate of that moment.
The election for what many pundits called the “Kennedy seat”35 was a special election that would be held at a time on the calendar unusual for balloting outside of Presidential years – and even in those instances, it wasn't until the 2004 election cycle that Presidential primaries were first held in January. So once the off-year 2009 election was over, all eyes began to focus on this Massachusetts race, which held its primary on December 8. As expected, state Attorney General Martha Coakley beat three other Democrats to win their nod while Brown, who had the political background of being a state senator, won handily on the GOP side over a perennial candidate.
Early on, the polls suggested Coakley would be the winner, with the Intrade market-prediction service giving her a nearly 90 percent chance of winning as late as nine days before the election.36 Just like Coakley's campaign, the Left was smugly sure they would keep the seat:
Sorry rightards, but Intrade gives Coakley a nearly 90 percent probability of winning...Yep, read and weep. Martha Coakley, a Democrat, will replace the Honorable Ted Kennedy. The Obama-thon continues.37
Undaunted, the TEA Party put together a two-pronged effort to assist Brown, who was a naturally good retail campaigner in his own right. Initially criss-crossing the state in his old GMC pickup truck, Brown ran his campaign reminding people it wasn't the “Kennedy seat” but the people's seat. (He even had the break of the Libertarian candidate for the Senate seat having the Kennedy surname, which may have affected the chances of that gentleman being a spoiler.) To assist Brown, hundreds of volunteers from around the nation came to Massachusetts in the dead of winter to knock on doors and do political grunt work on his behalf. They were “freezin' for a reason,” and that reason was to provide the 41st Senate seat for the Republicans and slow down the ultra-left Obama agenda.
Brown was certainly not a purist conservative, and there was an element of the local TEA Party that remained opposed him on principle,38 but many of the volunteers, whether they came from the suburbs of Boston, drove from Missouri two days to get there, or were making a political run of their own,39 were made pragmatic by the November failure of NY-23's Doug Hoffman and were determined not to make the perfect the enemy of the good.
On the other end of the scale, once Brown was formally endorsed40 by the group, the money that was pouring into the TPX coffers through their Our Country Deserves Better PAC was being put to good use. OCDB spent nearly $350,000 on the Brown race, and most of it was committed to a campaign of carpetbombing the airwaves with pro-Brown commercials. Even so, their spending was dwarfed by groups supporting Coakley, who attracted nearly $1 million more than Brown in a race where independent campaign spending totaled $6.2 million.41 This spending gap made far more important the disparity in volunteer work between the enthused backers of the Brown campaign and Coakley's forces, who were going through the motions because they figured the election was in the bag. Ten days out, the Coakley folks received the rude shock of a Public Policy Polling survey that had Brown up in the race for the first time, 48-47.42 Yes, the candidate endorsed by the “extreme right-wing Tea Party group”43 was winning in reliably blue Massachusetts.
One asset the Tea Party Express had that others in the TEA Party movement did not was their political savvy of running previous campaigns. For example, as the Massachusetts Senate election drew closer local television spots became harder and harder to come by, and they were getting more expensive – pricing was approaching the cost of national spots. So TPX shrewdly paid the little bit extra and bought the national spots,44 which had the dual effect of getting out the message and further nationalizing the race as it became more of a referendum on Obamacare and less about local Massachusetts concerns. (Contrast this to what happened in NY-23: rather than a rural Congressional district, the city of Boston has a media market which covers most of the state and is accustomed to national attention for a variety of reasons.) In an election that was supposed to follow the usual Massachusetts script of a lopsided Democratic win, the fact that President Obama had to come in and do some last-minute campaigning45 for Coakley revealed how caught off guard the Democrats were regarding the race.
Even then, Brown proved to be quick on his feet. When the President complained about Brown being in the pocket of Wall Street and poked fun at his method of transportation, saying “Forget the truck. Everyone can buy a truck,” Brown retorted, “Mr. President, unfortunately in this economy, not everybody can buy a truck. My goal is to change that by cutting spending, lowering taxes and letting people keep more of their own money.”46 In essence, this soundbite was the mainstream TEA Party root message of being “Taxed Enough Already” and it propelled Scott Brown to a surprisingly easy win on January 19.
As it turned out, though, Scott Brown was sort of a “flavor of the day” for the TEA Party. It didn't take long for him to split from the movement on some key issues47 and by the time Brown's 2012 re-election campaign rolled around (since Ted Kennedy was last elected in 2006, the 2009-10 special election was to complete his term) the TEA Party was much less enthused about helping him. Also factor in that Brown was running for re-election in the midst of a Presidential campaign with the entirety of the House and over 1/3 of the Senate also on the ballot, and you'll realize his race wasn't quite as unique the second time around. January, 2010 was a special opportunity for the TEA Party and in that case they came together with the GOP, swallowed some of their independent pride and stubbornness, and did a job that needed to be done in denying the Democrats more or less free rein in the Senate.
Yet the other effect of Brown's victory was to serve as a wakeup call to the Left which believed the TEA Party was a passing fad or just too extreme for the electorate at large. In reality the TEA Party was closer to the political center than the progressives were, but a set of narratives about the movement that started taking shape in the spring of 2009 became the Left's major talking points as the 2010 midterms approached. Of course, they had a willing set of accomplices in the mainstream media.
Notes - bearing in mind some of these links may now be dead ones:
1 While there were only 58 elected Democrats, the two Senate independents – former Democratic VP candidate Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and eventual 2016/2020 Presidential candidate (as a Democrat) Bernie Sanders of Vermont – caucused with the Democrats. So for practical purposes they had their 60 votes.
2 http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/21/nation/na-kennedy21
3 http://articles.latimes.com/2009/sep/25/nation/na-kennedy-seat25
4 That election was held on March 31 to replace Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, who was elevated to the Senate to replace former Senator Hillary Clinton. Democrat Scott Murphy edged out Republican Jim Tedisco in a close race – a 401 vote margin out of 160,940 cast. One could only speculate the result if the race were held concurrently with the NY-23 race.
5 http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2009/08/democrats_nominate_bill_owens.html Owens, the eventual winner, served out the remainder of the term and was re-elected twice before declining another term in 2014.
6 http://swingstateproject.com/diary/5072/amazing-political-history-of-ny23
7 McHugh's ACU lifetime score by 2008 was 71.55, placing him fifth out of the six Republicans representing New York in the House at the time. http://acuratings.conservative.org/acu-federal-legislative-ratings/?year1=2008&chamber=12&state1=45&sortable=1
8 http://www.politico.com/story/2009/10/gop-pick-sparks-revolt-on-right-028071
9 http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20090928/BLOGS09/909289984/BLOGS09
10 http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/63455-gingrich-endorses-scozzafava-in-ny-23-race
11 http://www.politico.com/story/2009/10/ny-23-race-an-early-2012-test-028760?o=0
12 http://www.politico.com/story/2009/10/top-republicans-jump-ship-in-ny-23-028671 Of that group, only Bachmann, Pawlenty, and Santorum ran in 2012.
13 http://www.politico.com/story/2009/10/palin-backs-hoffman-in-ny-23-028641
14 http://www.politico.com/story/2009/10/scozzafava-bows-out-of-ny-23-race-028970?o=0 An unnamed Democrat quoted in the story conceded, “If we don't get her on board (for Owens) we lose.”
16 http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2009/11/its_not_over_recanvassing_shows_ny23_race.html
17 http://www.elections.ny.gov/NYSBOE/Elections/2009/Special/23rdCDSpecialVoteResults.pdf Scozzafava's vote was also significant as she represented both the Republican and Independent parties, and her total vote was over twice the difference between Hoffman and Owens, who won with a plurality, not the majority.
18 http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/04/tea-partiers-hone-skills-in-ny-house-race/
19 http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/11/04/lloyd-green-new-york-congressional-district-victory.html
20 http://www.weeklystandard.com/scozzafava-spoils-doug-hoffmans-run/article/271401
21 http://www.politico.com/story/2009/11/conservatives-on-ny-23-we-didnt-lose-029161
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 http://www.politico.com/story/2009/10/calif-race-in-new-yorks-shadow-028710?o=0
25 http://teapartyexpressblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/wow-huge-crowd-turns-out-in-walnut.html
26 http://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/special-elections/2009-cd10/final-official-results-cd10-primary.pdf
27 Ibid.
28 http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2010/12/02/harmer-still-not-ready-to-concede/
29 http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2009/roll887.xml
30 https://caliblues.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/the-real-story-behind-newt-dedes-breakup/
31 Unlike other states where names appear on the ballot once, candidates in New York can show up multiple times as well. As you'll read much later, this also had potential to affect a key 2018 New York race.
32 http://www.weeklystandard.com/scozzafava-spoils-doug-hoffmans-run/article/271401
33 https://caliblues.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/hoffmanscozzafava-let-the-spin-begin/
34 https://research.bshor.com/2010/01/15/scott-brown-is-a-more-liberal-republican-than-dede-scozzafava/
35 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/08/massachusetts-senate-prim_n_379365.html
36 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.politics.bush/W7S9DdmuDmM However, Brown still had a better chance than Donald Trump in 2016 and we know how that went.
37 http://rightardia.blogspot.com/2010/01/coakley-to-win-massachuesets-special.html You know, it's funny reading those on the Left who consider themselves so smart – sort of like Wile E. Coyote.
39 http://monoblogue.us/2010/01/20/freezin-for-a-reason/ I posted this right after the Brown election. One of our 2010 U.S. Senate candidates, Dr. Eric Wargotz (who won the GOP nomination but lost in the general election) went up to Massachusetts to serve as a Brown volunteer.
40 http://canadafreepress.com/article/tea-party-express-endorsement-of-republican-scott-brown-for-u.s.-senate-in- Accessed February 4, 2017. This is a republication of an e-mail appeal purportedly sent by TPX.
41 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaign/2010/spending/MA-S1.html
43 http://bluemassgroup.com/2010/01/extreme-right-wing-tea-party-group-endorses-scott-brown/
44 http://teapartyexpressblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/scott-brown-campaign-shhh-secret-we-can.html
45 http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/17/health-care-line-obama-heads-massachusetts.html
46 Ibid.
47 http://web.archive.org/web/20110223181605/http://www.examiner.com/american-politics-in-vancouver/scott-brown-rejects-tea-party-says-it-s-not-productive-to-criticize-obama This is a relatively short but reasonable indictment of the Brown record. Original no longer available.
Next Tuesday will continue my series with Chapter 5: The Story Slanted.
In the meantime, you can buy the book or Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there now. And remember…