Though he hasn’t announced any plans to run for the U.S. Senate from New Hampshire, Scott Brown is causing a stir in in the Granite State.
The moderate Republican and former senator from Massachusetts headlined a state GOP holiday party in Nashua that drew supporters and protesters, many of them gun-rights activists who take issue with Brown’s position favoring a federal ban on assault weapons,
The Boston Globe reports.
“His coming here is calculated disrespect, just as if he went to Saudi Arabia with pork chops in his suitcase,”
protester Jay Simkin told Politico. “If he wants gun control, he should stay in Massachusetts.”
Brown, who also is pro-choice, changed course on the gun control debate after last year’ deadly shootings in Newtown, Conn. His move angered Second Amendment purists.
“If it’s Brown, flush it down,” one protester’s sign read. Others featured scrawled slogans such as “Keep New Hampshire Scott Free” and “Brownbagger go home to Mass.”
Brown has a vacation home in the Granite State, where he is relocating full-time, sparking speculation that he plans to run for office from his new state.
Republicans there are looking for someone to challenge incumbent Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the former governor elected to the U.S. Senate in 2008.
Brown has been coy about his intentions, but polling data collected before the launch of troubled Obamacare showed him trailing Shaheen by four percentage points, according to USA Today. His chances are thought to have risen since national outrage over policy cancellations and skyrocketing premiums.
"I didn't think she was all that vulnerable,'' Cook Political Report Senior Editor
Jennifer Duffy told USA Today. "I feel a little bit differently about that now. But having said that, Republicans need a candidate and they don't have one right now.''
In Massachusetts, Sen. Elizabeth Warren unseated Brown in 2012. He won the seat in 2010 in a special election.
A popular governor, Shaheen supported the Affordable Care Act, a decision that is coming back to haunt her in the form of a vicious TV spot skewering her and the president for the failed initiative.
“Obamacare, as you know, is a mess, and it’s really dramatically affecting people’s everyday lives,” Brown said.
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