Brown Has Romney's Team To Thank

Scott Brown's upset victory in Massachusetts wasn't just a win for him, and for Republicans across the country: it was another high-profile, GOP statewide victory for the political team that worked on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's presidential bid in 2008. CQ-Roll Call's Shira Toeplitz reports that Brown's consultants at The Shawmut Group included former Romney campaign manager and gubernatorial chief of staff Beth Myers and communications director Eric Fehrnstrom (who currently works on Romney's Free and Strong America PAC), and deputy campaign manager Peter Flaherty.


Romney himself accounted for the last major, statewide victory for Republicans in Massachusetts; in the 2008 presidential race, his team ran an on-message, high-production value campaign, with slick ads and a focused message of pro-business, social (despite Romney's previous pro-choice stance), and national security conservatism--but ran into the populist, more-socially-conservative out-of-nowhere juggernaut of Mike Huckabee in Iowa.