New Hampshire Republican senatorial candidate Scott Brown may have gotten Cosmopolitan Magazine's vote as the "Sexiest Man in America" vote back in 1982, but 32 years later, the magazine says it is picking "brains over brawn" in the race and endorsing Democrat Jeanne Shaheen.
“While we wish we could support the man who once posed nude in our pages, his policy positions just aren’t as solid as his abs were in the ’80s,”
the magazine said this week of former Massachusetts Sen. Brown, who is instead seeking election in New Hampshire this fall.
In 2012, when Brown lost his re-election bid to now-Sen. Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts, the racy women's magazine described him as still looking "pretty damn good for his age." But Brown's looks weren't enough this time around to attract an official endorsement from
Cosmo's editors.
The editors said Brown lags behind incumbent Shaheen on women's issues, including reproductive care, and urged readers to choose Shaheen instead.
"Brown said he disapproved of cutting family planning funding, but also supported a bill to defund Planned Parenthood," they wrote. "And when reporters tried to ask him about his views on contraception access, he literally hid in the bathroom to avoid answering the question," referring to accusations by Paul Lewis, a journalist for
The Guardian, who said Brown ducked questions about the Hobby Lobby chain store's contraception case.
It's been 32 years since
Cosmo ran its two-page nude centerfold of Brown, proclaiming him its "sexiest man" when he was just a 22-year-old law student from Boston College.
But when it comes to the current race, Cosmo's editors said that Shaheen is "one of the country's most vocal and active leaders on reproductive freedom and other women's rights issues."
The
magazine also pointed to the Shaheen Amendment, which gives women in the military who are raped the right to abortion.
Further, the editors said Shaheen has championed equal pay for women and legislation protecting pregnant women from being discriminated against in the workplace.
But Brown, the magazine complains, is not clear on such matters,
including statements on abortion, saying that he believes it should be a private matter between a woman and her doctor, except for late-term procedures. He also believes in strong parental notification laws for abortion.
"So in other words, abortion should be left up to a woman and her doctor, except when it's left up to a young woman's parents, or when legislators step in and dictate to doctors which procedures they should use," the editors wrote.
According to
polls, Shaheen is leading Brown by nearly five points overall.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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