"Brown will focus his practice on business and governmental affairs as they relate to the financial services industry as well as on commercial real estate matters," the firm, Nixon Peabody LLC, said in a press release. Brown will not be a lobbyist, the firm said, but whether he meets the specific legal requirements to be a registered lobbyist or not, it's clear that he will draw on his contacts and status to help advance clients' agenda in government. "He can offer many types of legal services to his broad network of contacts," the firm said.

The head of the Nixon Peabody's Government Relations practice is ex-New York congressman Tom Reynolds, who now lobbies for Goldman Sachs on "[f]inancial services regulatory and tax issues." According to the firm, Brown will also work with fellow Massachusettsian Jim Vallee, who abruptly left his job as majority leader of the state House of Representatives last year after getting hired by the firm.

Continue Reading...

Yes, the Daily Caller piece, to which I refuse to link, was sexist and gross. It was, as ThinkProgress's Alyssa Rosenberg put it, "part and parcel of the right’s current strategy to discredit promising female advocates," and "an attempt to make her seem less serious by impugning her sexual chastity." Was Scott Brown's strategically placed arm over the flesh he bared in Cosmo the difference between his getting elected to the Senate and not, or was it the double standard?

Continue Reading...

With time running short, Washington Republicans have begun a “full court press’’ to persuade an increasingly reluctant Scott Brown to run in the special election to replace John F. Kerry, say two leading Massachusetts GOP figures.

The eleventh-hour effort, coordinated by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, comes as those familiar with Brown’s deliberations are becoming convinced that he will not run and instead will look for a job in the private sector.

Continue Reading...

John Kerry’s confirmation as secretary of state will come either Tuesday or Wednesday, but it’s such a formality that the Massachusetts secretary of state has already gone ahead and scheduled the special election to replace him, with primaries in April and the final vote on June 25. Right now, there’s only one declared candidate from either party: Ed Markey, a Democratic congressman from outside Boston. But Democrats are convinced that Scott Brown, the Republican who won a January 2010 special election only to lose to Elizabeth Warren last fall, is going to jump in the race – and because of that, they are hoping that a second Democrat will also enter the fray to battle Markey in a primary.

Continue Reading...

On "Morning Joe," Frank said: “A month ago, or a few weeks ago, in fact I said I wasn’t interested. It was kind of like you’re about to graduate, and they said: ‘You gotta go to summer school.’ But [the fiscal cliff deal] now means that February, March and April are going to be among the most important months in American financial history."

He added that he has "told the governor that I would now like, frankly, to do that," but that he is only interested in serving for the three-month period before a special election this summer. "I wouldn't want to run again," Frank said.

Watch:

Continue Reading...

Affleck will appear Sunday on "Face the Nation," and the CBS Sunday morning show released an advance video of the interview, in which the actor sounds like he's considering a run for John Kerry's seat in the Senate.

Kerry was nominated Friday to be secretary of state in President Obama's second term, succeeding Hillary Clinton. Scott Brown, who was defeated by Elizabeth Warren in November, is considered a likely GOP nominee, and an early favorite.

Here's the key quote:

Continue Reading...

According to WBUR, Brown has a high favorability rating, despite his loss to Warren, with 58 percent of those polled saying they view him favorably, compared to 28 percent who view him unfavorably.

From WBUR:

MassINC [Polling Group] pollster Steve Koczela looked at how well Brown would fare against four current or former Democratic members of Congress.

“We matched him up theoretically against (U.S. Reps.) Ed Markey, Mike Capuano, Steve Lynch and (former U.S. Rep.) Marty Meehan, and in each one of those cases, he led by between 17 and 19 points,” Koczela said.

Of course, who cares about Brown's favorability when Ben Affleck is maybe going to run.

Continue Reading...

Right now, most of the speculation is focused on the Pentagon, with Obama preferring to place his longtime friend Susan Rice at State. But Republican attacks on Rice over the Benghazi episode threaten to produce a bloody confirmation battle if Obama taps her. Democrats will have 55 votes (counting Angus King and Bernie Sanders) in the Senate come January, so in theory Obama would have the numbers to win that battle. But some of those Democrats – like, for instance, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin – could face home state pressure to defect if it became a clearly partisan fight.

Continue Reading...

The Washington Post’s Outlook section sure tried. It asked 13 authorities for election predictions, even going so far as to reach beyond the usual Beltway pundits, strategists and gadflies. But with one exception, anyone looking for unique opinions will be disappointed.

Mostly respondents fell in line with mainstream numbers and predicted a narrow victory for President Obama. A 12th-grade government class, a meteorologist, a couple pundits and operatives, two tech guys and a poker player all have him beating Mitt Romney with 314 electoral votes or fewer. (A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win.) Only GOP strategist Leslie Sanchez and the Post’s horse-racing writer Andrew Beyer predict Romney winning a close race.

Continue Reading...

The Boston Herald reports that Benjamin Thompson, who is African-American, is running “Obama supporters for Brown” that is paying about 20 "volunteers" a daily rate that works out to about $8 per hour. Their responsibilities include wearing pro-Brown T-shirts. At least four of the participants are homeless.

The storefront operation has support from the GOP’s MassVictory push but the Brown campaign had no comment.

The Herald reports:

Continue Reading...

From the AP:

"In Massachusetts, GOP Sen. Scott Brown witheringly mocks Democrat Elizabeth Warren's claims of Native American heritage. In Montana, Democratic Sen. Jon Tester pummels Rep. Denny Rehberg for suing a local fire department. Nevada's Sen. Dean Heller calls his opponent, Democratic Rep. Shelly Berkley, the most corrupt' person he's ever met."

Continue Reading...

But actually it was Warren who had significantly less time than Brown to make her case last night, as moderator David Gregory, of NBC’s "Meet the Press" often let Brown speak at length and occasionally cut Warren off. Salon’s tally of the debate found that Warren spoke for about 18 minutes and 15 seconds, while Brown had about 23 minutes and 40 seconds. We didn’t count time taken up by Gregory’s questions, unless they were part of a rapid-fire back and forth with a candidate. Gregory said at the beginning of the debate that there would be no time limits, but the extra five-plus minutes Brown was allowed to speak are significant, representing a little more than 10 percent of the total 42 minutes combined that the candidates had to speak.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

Elizabeth Warren's campaign holds a slight lead, but her surest path to victory is reminding Massachusetts voters that they're Democrats. The state where Barack Obama leads Mitt Romney 60-32 percent in the latest WBUR poll shouldn't be sending a Republican senator to Washington to thwart the president. Scott Brown knows this, which is why he described himself as "independent" so many times Monday night. But given the chance to show real independence, he told Gregory that his model Supreme Court justice was the right-wing Antonin Scalia – and thus reminded voters of what may be the best reason to elect Warren.  The crowd's loud boos let Brown know he made a mistake, and he began scrambling to name other justices, but the damage was done.

Continue Reading...

Watch:

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

If the cocktails are appropriately strong and inhibitions are consequently reduced, executives will likely tell you in a moment of candor that the best politician, from their perspective, is the one who is incurious and who possesses very little policy expertise. They don’t want people with inconvenient morals, ethics or brains getting in their way. They want the equivalent of T-1000s from the “Terminator” films: unthinking, fully programmable cyborgs willing and able to shape-shift in order to carry out a mission.

Alas, it is rare to get such an admission in public, and it is even more rare to get said admission in the pages of a major publication. That’s why Businessweek’s recent examination of the country’s marquee U.S. Senate race is so significant. In looking at the Massachusetts matchup between Republican incumbent Scott Brown and Democratic nominee Elizabeth Warren, the magazine quotes Brown fundraiser Lawrence McDonald, a former Lehman trader, acknowledging that he and his Wall Street friends hate the idea of an independently informed legislator who might bring her own wisdom to Washington.

Continue Reading...

Alas, it is rare to get such an admission in public, and it is even more rare to get said admission in the pages of a major publication. That’s why Businessweek’s recent examination of the country’s marquee U.S. Senate race is so significant. In looking at the Massachusetts matchup between Republican incumbent Scott Brown and Democratic nominee Elizabeth Warren, the magazine quotes Brown fundraiser Lawrence McDonald, a former Lehman trader, acknowledging that he and his Wall Street friends hate the idea of an independently informed legislator who might bring her own wisdom to Washington.

Continue Reading...

"The apologies that need to be made and the offensiveness here is the fact that professor Warren took advantage of a claim, to be somebody -- a Native American -- and using that for an advantage, a tactical advantage."

Clearly Brown is sticking to his Jesse Helms strategy, updated for the 21st century.

North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms was infamous for his racism, but even he had to tone it down and code it for the modern era. In 1990, running against North Carolina Gov. Harvey Gantt, an African-American, Helms ran the infamous "white hands" ad, written by Romney advisor Alex Castellanos. It opened with a white man's hands crumpling a job-rejection letter, and the voice-over went like this:

Continue Reading...

According to WCVB-TV in Boston, several staffers were making "war whoops" and "tomahawk chops" at a rally for Brown in Boston:

"Brown's deputy Chief of Staff Greg Casey and Constituent Service Counsel Jack Richard, and GOP operative Brad Garrett are pictured in the video, NewsCenter 5's Janet Wu confirmed."

Watch:

Continue Reading...