Scott Brown In Strong Position For Kerry’s Senate Seat
Scott Brown may be headed back to the Senate some time next year:
BOSTON — A WBUR poll of 500 registered voters (PDFs - topline, crosstabs) finds U.S. Sen. Scott Brown is in a strong position should there be a special election to fill U.S. Sen. John Kerry’s seat.
Kerry is believed to be President Obama’s choice to replace Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The poll, conducted by the MassINC Polling Groupon Monday and Tuesday, finds voters view Brown favorably, despite the fact that in November they chose to elect Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren in his stead. Fifty-eight percent of those polled say they have a favorable view of Brown, compared with 28 percent who view him unfavorably. Rounded off, 12 percent say they are undecided, and 1 percent say they have never heard of him.
MassINC pollster Steve Koczela looked at how well Brown would fare against four current or former Democratic members of Congress.
“We matched him up theoretically against (U.S. Reps.) Ed Markey, Mike Capuano, Steve Lynch and (former U.S. Rep.) Marty Meehan, and in each one of those cases, he led by between 17 and 19 points,” Koczela said.
Meehan, now the president of the University of Massachusetts Lowell, has already said he’s not interested in running.
Aides to Reps. Capuano and Markey said they were unavailable to comment.
Lynch did issue a statement saying if a Senate seat were to become available, he “would give serious consideration to running.”
Brown’s office did not respond to a request for an interview.
If these numbers hold up, we should see Scott Brown back in Washington soon.
Right now Scott Brown beats generic Democrat. When a real Democrat turns up, things will be different.
I bet that the White House is keeping a watchful eye on how things are developing in Massachusetts . If it looks like they are going to cock up the Kerry succession, look for the WH to pivot to someone else.
Well, if Obama gets his way and keeps mucking around with Social Security and Medicare, the Democrats won’t stand a chance in hell.
This poll is obviously skewed. They only polled MA voters.
For that to happen Kerry’s going to have to resign and Scott Brown’s going to have to stop the legislature from changing the law again. More likely you’ll be seeing Scott Brown at some lobbying shop in DC.
The problem is that, as much as the Dems rule MA, there really isn’t any Dem that is in position to beat Brown right now. None of the MA House Dems have enough state-wide name recognition now that Barney Frank is out. Patrick could probably win, but I doubt he’d leave as Governor to run for Senate. There’s not really any Dem bench in MA at all.
@Ben:
Dunno. According to the Boston Globe, there are a whole slew of Democrats looking to run, including Ed
wartd Kennedy, Jr, who would not have a name recognition problem.
To a certain extent, the MA banch is too strong, since there are three or four quite qualified candidates , who may have credentials even superior to Scott Brown.
What the White House is looking for is whether the MA politiical establishment is going to get its sh*t together and coalesce behind a solid candidate for Kerry to “hand off” to. If that doesn’t look like its going to happen, expect the future headline, ” White House mulls alternatives to Kerry .”
I don’t see why Brown would run at this point for another 18-month term. Kerry is up for re-election in 2014, which means Brown will have run in 4 elections in 4 years. On top of that, he would probably end up facing off against Governor Patrick in 2014, unless Pres. Obama appoints him AG between now and then. I think Brown is going to take his chances running for Governor in 2014
@stonetools:
Not a single one of them (other than the fact that they’ve heard of the last name Kennedy) has a name recognition within 30 points of Brown.