CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen wasted no time contrasting Republican Scott Brown’s recent arrival in New Hampshire to her deep connections and decades of service, running ads against him hours before he won the Republican nomination. But Brown was just as quick to dismiss her claims as “bumper-sticker rhetoric” and pledged to answer only to New Hampshire voters, not party leaders.
Brown faced nine primary opponents on Tuesday, though only two mounted serious campaigns. The front-runner from the start, he spent months tailoring his message toward a November showdown with Shaheen, and he spent Tuesday reminding voters that Republicans need to gain six seats to win a majority in the Senate during the last two years of President Barack Obama’s term.
“After six years of missed opportunities at home and growing dangers around the world, we need change,” Brown said in his victory speech. “And the problem is a vote for my opponent will change exactly nothing.”
This is Brown’s third U.S. Senate campaign in five years. One of the original tea party favorites, he shocked the nation by winning a 2010 special election to replace the late Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Democrat. That win in a Democratic stronghold going back decades vaulted Brown to the top of the GOP’s list of rising stars, but he was soundly defeated by Democrat Elizabeth Warren in 2012. Last year, he moved to New Hampshire, where he had a vacation home and had lived as a toddler, seeking to return to Washington from another state.
Shaheen has lived in New Hampshire for decades, and served as a state senator before becoming the first woman elected governor in New Hampshire and the state’s first female U.S. senator.