Brown Wins Special Senate Election

Wrentham Republican Defeats Democratic Attorney General

– Allison Goldsberry

A Republican State Senator from Wrentham will be the next US Senator from Massachusetts.

Scott Brown defeated Attorney General Martha Coakley, garnering 52% of the vote to Coakley’s 47%, with just over 80% of precincts reporting statewide. Coakley conceded the race to Brown just before 9:30PM.

Coakley, a Medford resident, did win Medford, earning 57% of the vote, while Brown, a Tufts University graduate, earned 42%.

Coakley nabbed 11,415 votes in Medford while Brown received 8,381.  Liberty Party candidate Joe Kennedy, of no relation to late Senator Edward Kennedy, received 206 votes.

Turnout was high in Medford and across the state, with voters braving the snow and sleet to cast ballots in an historic election. Some polls in the city even ran out of ballots. Temple Shalom ran out of ballots after about 1,800 people had voted and a half hour before the polls closed at 8PM, Medford resident Stephanie Geuns-Meyer reported on InsideMedford.com’s Facebook page. More ballots were brought to the poll and voters were able to cast their ballots.

City Clerk Edward Finn said 57.5% of Medford’s voters turned out to vote Tuesday. That is higher than the December primary, in which 30% turned out to vote, and the municipal elections last fall, where 26.5% cast ballots. By contrast, 76% voted in the 2008 presidential election.

It’s been over thirty years since a Republican represented the state in the US Senate.  The last Republican US Senator from Massachusetts was Edward Brooks, who served from 1967-1979.  Brooks served alongside the former Sen. Kennedy, who occupied his Senate seat for forty-seven years, following his brother John F. Kennedy, who also served in the seat prior to becoming president.

Brown, a Wrentham lawyer, graduated from Tufts University in 1981 with a history degree. He was elected state rep in 1998 and became a state senator in 2004. The former college basketball star has served in the National Guard for thirty years and is a lieutenant colonel. He is married to Channel 5 reporter Gail Huff.