Tipsheet

Scott Brown Seriously Weighing Bid in NH?

It would seem so. Why else would he be selling his house in Massachusetts and moving to the Granite State?

Former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown plans to move to New Hampshire, the latest sign that he’s considering a U.S. Senate bid there, which would complicate Democrats' effort to hold their majority in the chamber.

Brown, 54, has found a buyer for his Wrentham home and is set to close on that deal this week, Andrew I. Glincher, managing partner and chief executive officer at Brown’s employer Nixon Peabody LLP, said in an interview. Brown will continue to work out of the law firm’s Boston office because he isn’t licensed to practice law in New Hampshire, Glincher said.

Remember, after Brown lost to Elizabeth Warren in 2012, he hinted that his career in politics wasn’t over. “Defeat is only temporary,” he said at the time. Then, of course, after declining to run for governor in Massachusetts, he passed all the legal hurdles enabling him to spend money from his own political action committee in the state of New Hampshire. What’s more, he’s also the main attraction at the Republican State Committee’s holiday party later this month and, as noted above, is moving north permanently. Thus presumably by Christmas he’ll be a full-time resident of New Hampshire (where he also owns a vacation home). His only ties to the Bay State, then, would probably be his love for Boston sports teams and his position at a law firm.

In other words, all his actions since leaving the upper chamber suggest that he’s heavily weighing a bid in New Hampshire. Of course, he’d need to convince the state GOP and the voters of New Hampshire that he does indeed have “nine generations of ties” to the state, which might be rather difficult. But if he does, per NRO, considering three conservatives have already entered the fray and will presumably split the far-Right vote, this makes it a lot easier for a squishier and more moderate candidate like Brown to emerge victorious. And indeed, if he won the nomination, his heavy and at times blistering criticisms of Obamacare would improve his stature, and make him a plausible alternative to his Democratic opponent, who barely won a majority of the vote last time she ran for a U.S. Senate seat. Finally, since Brown isn’t a no-name candidate in New England -- many Granite State voters already seem to know who he is -- it’s not like he’s starting from scratch, either.

So maybe Brown fooled many of us by having his sights set on Jeanne Shaheen’s Senate seat all along? We’ll see.