A state senator's victory in the Republican primary for the special election to fill the late Edward M. Kennedy's Senate seat gives the Massachusetts GOP something it's sorely missed: a place in the political spotlight.

Since Mitt Romney left the Statehouse to pursue his 2008 presidential campaign, and his one-time running mate Kerry Healey failed to hold the governor's office after 16 years of GOP control, the Massachusetts Republican Party has further atrophied.

Now its most immediate hope for revival in one of the nation's bluest Democratic states is state Sen. Scott Brown, one of just five Republicans in the state Senate. He won Tuesday's Republican primary and will go head-to-head in the Jan. 19 special election with the winner of the four-way Democratic race, Attorney General Martha Coakley.

Brown and his team are relishing the opportunity.

"The voters will have a clear choice: Do they want to send somebody down there who is going to be in lockstep with (Senate Majority Leader) Harry Reid and do what they're told, or do they want somebody who's going to be down there looking for the interests of Massachusetts?" Brown told The Associated Press in an interview.

Coakley ignored Brown in her victory speech, but she didn't shy away from aligning herself with President Barack Obama or congressional Democrats during an interview with the AP this week.

"We overwhelmingly elected a Democratic president who has an agenda to bring change to the way we do business here in this country," she said. "So I look forward to making that part of why it's important to send a Democratic senator to Washington to help affect that change."

Coakley added, "By and large, the Republican Party has sort of sat on their hands, refusing to acknowledge that we're in a huge economic mess, that we need to do something about it _ by the way, one created under their jurisdiction over the last eight years."

Jeffrey Berry, a Tufts University political science professor, said the challenge confronting Brown is highlighted by the lack of national financial support he received for his campaign.

"The (Republican National Committee) and its affiliated committees have decided he doesn't have a chance, which makes it something of a self-fulfilling prophecy," Berry said. "They are hard-nosed, and they don't see it as a very good investment amid competing demands."

RNC spokesman Tyler Brown said the national party will work with the state party "to make sure he has the resources he needs to win," but he wouldn't discuss dollar figures or strategies.

Kennedy died of brain cancer in August at age 77, ending a nearly 47-year political career that saw him become the fourth-longest-serving senator in U.S. history.