Scott Brown (politician)

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Scott Brown
2010 Massachusetts by-election results

Scott Philip Brown (* 12. September 1959 in Kittery , York County , Maine ) is an American politician of the Republican Party . From 2010 to 2013 he represented the state of Massachusetts in the US Senate as the successor to Ted Kennedy . He applied unsuccessfully for the US Senate in New Hampshire in 2014 and is repeatedly discussed for political leadership positions. He has been the United States' Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa since 2017 .

Family, education and work

After his parents got divorced, Scott Brown grew up in Wakefield, Massachusetts with his grandparents and an aunt. He attended Wakefield High School and then studied history at Tufts University . He also worked as a model ; When he was photographed for Cosmopolitan magazine , he moved to New York for two years, let himself be looked after by the Wilhelmina modeling agency and began taking courses at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law . He then graduated from the Law School of Boston College .

At the age of 19, he joined the National Guard in his home state, Massachusetts, where he served until 2014, most recently as a colonel . Brown is a lieutenant colonel in the Judge Advocate General's Corps . He works as a lawyer specializing in family law.

Brown is married to television journalist Gail Huff. They have two daughters, whose older Ayla (born 1988) appeared on the American Idol talent show in the fifth season of 2006. He is a member of the Calvinist Christian Reformed Church in North America .

Political career

Scott Brown began his political career in 1995 as a councilor in Wrentham . He was then a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives for three terms from 1998 and was elected to the Massachusetts Senate in 2004 , of which he was a member until 2010.

U.S. Senator for Massachusetts

From January 2010 to January 2013, Brown was an elected representative of the state of Massachusetts in the US Senate. After the death of Edward Kennedy , who had held the Senate seat for 47 years as the figurehead of the political left, a by-election was necessary on January 19, 2010. In this case, Brown prevailed with 52 to 47 percent of the vote against the Democratic candidate Martha Coakley , Attorney General of the state, which was interpreted by many observers as a vote against President Obama's health care reform . This made him the first Republican since Edward Brooke to be elected to the Senate for Massachusetts in 1972, as well as the first member of his Massachusetts party in Congress since 1997. With Brown's assumption of office in February 2010, the Democrats in the US Senate lost their far-reaching Majority (“super majority”) of 60 seats, which made it possible to legislate without the opposition filibuster and thus made it difficult to implement Obama's far-reaching reform plans.

Since the electoral term of his Senate seat, which began with the election of Edward Kennedy in January 2007, ended in January 2013, Brown had to defend it in the Senate election on November 6, 2012 and was defeated by his Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren . He resigned from the Senate on January 3, 2013.

US Senator Application for New Hampshire and Speculation

Brown continued to be present in the media and was repeatedly discussed for further political offices. For example, when John Kerry left the US Senate in January 2013, he was the preferred candidate of many Republicans to win the vacant seat in the by-election in June 2013, which he rejected; In the following months, however, he fueled speculation that he would run against the Democratic US Senator Jeanne Shaheen in the neighboring state of New Hampshire in the 2014 election or in the same year for the successor to Deval Patrick in the office of governor of Massachusetts .

Brown eventually decided to run in New Hampshire. There he put the democratic incumbent Jeanne Shaheen under great pressure in a hard-fought race by declaring the election to be a referendum on President Obama's unpopular politics as in 2010 and emotionalizing the issues of terrorism, border security and internal security, losing the election in November In 2014, however, with 48.6 to 51.4 percent of the vote. He would have been the third US Senator to represent more than one state and the first in over a century.

In early 2016, the polls leading Republican candidate for the November 2016 US presidential election , Donald Trump , brought up Brown as a possible candidate for the vice presidency and his running mate . A few days before the primary in New Hampshire, the second vote in the nomination process for the Republican presidential candidate, Brown endorsed Trump, who had already made a joint appearance in Trump's election campaign in December 2015.

Ambassador to New Zealand

In mid-April, the White House announced that President Trump had nominated Scott Brown as United States Ambassador to New Zealand ; confirmation by the Senate took place in June. Brown also received the votes of the Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jeanne Shaheen; He had previously stood against both of them in Senate elections. In October, he announced that he was the subject of an investigation by the US State Department after offering misleading compliments on a visit to Samoa.

Political positions

Brown is considered a centrist Republican with moderate positions on sociopolitical issues. So he advocates the right to abortion ( Pro-Choice ) and a ban on firearms. At the same time, he cultivates the image of an approachable normal citizen and has been described as close to the people, but also populist in his appearance.

Fonts

  • Against All Odds: My Life of Hardship, Fast Breaks, and Second Chances. Harper, New York 2011.

Web links

Commons : Scott Brown  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
  • Scott Brown in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

Individual evidence

  1. https://nz.usembassy.gov/our-relationship/our-ambassador/
  2. ^ A b Thomas Frankenfeld : Brown - lawyer and triathlete. In: Hamburger Abendblatt , January 21, 2010.
  3. ^ A b Frank Bruni: Where Scott Brown Is Coming From. In: The New York Times , February 22, 2010 (English).
  4. ^ Matthias Rüb : Scott Brown: Kennedy's legacy. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , January 21, 2010.
  5. a b Michael Cooper: GOP Senate Victory Stuns Democrats. In: The New York Times , January 19, 2010 (English).
  6. ^ Boston Tea Party. Massachusetts Voters Tell Democrats to Shelve ObamaCare. In: The Wall Street Journal , January 20, 2010.
  7. ^ Shira Schoenberg, Dan Ring: Massachusetts Republicans regroup after defeat in US Senate special election. In: Masslive , July 6, 2013 (English).
  8. David Welna: Brown's Entry Ends Democrats' Supermajority. In: NPR.org , February 4, 2010 (English).
  9. Christina Hebel: Democrats defend Senate majority. In: Spiegel Online , November 7, 2012.
  10. James Hohmann: Scott Brown Says No to Senate Bid. In: Politico , January 2, 2013 (English).
  11. Katharine Q. Seelye: Ex-Senator Is Tempted by Neighbor: Scott Brown Hints at Another Senate Race - in New Hampshire. In: The New York Times , April 5, 2013 (English); James Hohmann: Scott Brown's New Hampshire Flirtation. In: Politico , April 24, 2013 (English).
  12. ^ A b Katharine Q. Seelye: In New Hampshire, Jeanne Shaheen Beats Scott Brown to Keep Senate Seat. In: The New York Times , November 4, 2014.
  13. Ed Kilgore: Scott Brown Pioneered Trump's Signature Scare Tactic of Alleging Terrorists Are Flooding Across 'Porous Borders'. In: New York Magazine , January 4, 2016 (English).
  14. ^ New Hampshire Election Results. In: The New York Times Election 2014, December 17, 2014.
  15. ^ Bonnie K. Goodman: Trump Considering Scott Brown as his Vice Presidential Running Mate. In: The Washington Examiner , January 16, 2016.
  16. Heather Haddon: Scott Brown Endorses Donald Trump. In: The Wall Street Journal , February 2, 2016.
  17. https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=115&session=1&vote=00141
  18. Jim O'Sullivan: President Trump to nominate Scott Brown as ambassador to New Zealand. In: The Boston Globe , April 20, 2017.
  19. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/98231060/us-ambassador-to-new-zealand-scott-brown-faces-complaints-over-comments-to-women
  20. ^ Robert Costa: Scott Brown to endorse Trump. In: The Washington Post , February 2, 2016.