By Alex Beam Contributor, Updated August 24, 2026, 10:00 a.m.
What’s missing from this picture? Brown’s opponent for the GOP Senate nomination, John E.
Sununu. A colorless appendage of New Hampshire’s Sununu dynasty (his father, John H. Sununu, is a former
governor and served as President George H.W. Bush’s chief of staff), John entered the race last fall when it became clear
his more popular brother Chris, who had just finished four terms as New Hampshire governor, wasn’t interested.
Even though Brown was already running, the GOP establishment immediately embraced
Sununu. President Trump proffered his “complete and total endorsement,” even though Sununu supported Trump’s
opponent Nikki Haley in the last presidential cycle. Last month, the National Republican Senatorial Committee started
running pro-Sununu ads.
“He’s wealthy and they like self-funders,” Brown explains. “Just follow the money. It’s the same
with almost every candidate they endorse.”
The RealClearPolitics poll average has Sununu leading the race by 35 points. The Cook Political
Report’s “race summary” mentions only Sununu and his presumed Democratic opponent Representative Chris
Pappas.
Watching Sununu ads dominate the airwaves, and hearing his opponent droning platitudes
about how “The New Hampshire way needs to be the American way,” Brown could be forgiven for thinking: Why am I
losing to this guy?
I am biased. I think Scott Brown may be the smartest man in North America. Here’s why: In
March 2020, when the COVID-19 virus paralyzed American life, Scott Brown was in Camperdown, “a palatial estate with
a sweeping front lawn,” the residence of the American Ambassador to New Zealand. Trump appointed Brown
ambassador in 2017.
In 2020, the Globe’s Joshua Miller noted sardonically that “Brown’s time as ambassador has not
been under duress.” Among his scheduled activities: “he hosted a tea this week with dozens of people”; “He went to
a rugby game in a packed stadium”; “He hits the pool with a swim team in the 5 a.m. hour, and then the gym.”
As it happened, Brown and his family had landed in the safest place on earth. New Zealand’s
elimination strategy was “one of the most successful in the world,” according to The Guardian.
So while you were wondering whether to disinfect your mail and quailing at the thought of visiting Star Market, Scott Brown was playing some “rockin tunes” with his band at the embassy’s July 4 celebration.
I repeat: Scott Brown is a genius.He is also an indelible part of Massachusetts history. After the death of Senator Edward M.
Kennedy in 2009, Brown, then a little-known state senator, faced off in a special election against Attorney General Martha
Coakley. Brown ran an Everyman campaign, famously posing in a barn coat next to his pickup truck.
He had one talking point, but it was a good one: I’m not running to fill “Ted Kennedy’s seat,” he
would say. “It is the magazine dubbed “America’s Sexiest Man” in 1982.
Later, at the podium, Brown evinces a star quality that the other two down-ballot candidates
distinctly lack. Born in the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (his father was serving at the nearby Pease Air Force Base), Brown
can jaw about NATO and the War Powers Act and simultaneously project Regular Guy mojo. What’s up with the
Granite State’s lousy phone service, he asks the crowd. “I’m at the Portsmouth traffic circle and my phone dies.”
Against all odds, he won. (“GOP Senate Victory Stuns Democrats,” wrote The New York Times.)
That was then. Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren unseated Brown in 2012. Two
years later, after moving to Rye, N.H., Brown lost a Senate race to incumbent Jeanne Shaheen.
In 2022 his wife, former Channel 5 reporter Gail Huff Brown, made some history of her own,
losing a primary race for a House seat to a shiny-faced, 25-year-old newcomer — future White House press secretary
Karoline Leavitt. Completing the circle of political life, Leavitt then lost to Chris Pappas, the expected Democratic
nominee for the Senate seat Scott Brown wants.
Things look grim for the Brown campaign. A recent University of New Hampshire survey of likely
Republican voters shows Sununu with a 54 percent favorability rating, compared to Brown’s 32 percent. More
ominously, 35 percent of voters don’t like Brown, slightly more than twice Sununu’s unfavorability rating. “I bet a fair
number of voters, when they hear ‘Sununu,’ are thinking of John’s brother Chris, and not of him,” says University of New
Hampshire political science professor Dante Scala.
Brown professes to be unfazed. “If I thought I would lose, I wouldn’t be in the race,” he says.
“We will have been at this for 17 months, there’s no reason to worry — New Hampshire breaks late.”
So can Massachusetts — just ask Martha Coakley.
