They are members of a rare political club: Republicans who have won statewide elections in Massachusetts. Now they’re poised to campaign together north of the border.
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is set to officially endorse Scott Brown’s bid for US Senate in New Hampshire today at an Independence Day kickoff this afternoon.
The endorsement is significant for a number of reasons. (1) While Romney has endorsed some 30 Republican candidates in recent months, he rarely, if ever, appears in public to do so. This suggests that the former Massachusetts governor is deeply concerned about the outcome of the senate contest in New Hampshire, and therefore is fully committing himself to helping out an old friend. (2) You’ll recall that Mitt Romney won the Granite State’s GOP presidential primary in 2012. Hence, Romney's endorsement (who is widely known and broadly popular in the state) could give Brown a badly needed bump in the polls. (3) The Republican also-ran is making the announcement at the exact same spot he officially launched his unsuccessful bid for president three years ago. This is a curious coicidence, to say the last:
He insists he's not running for president a third time, but Mitt Romney is campaigning again in New Hampshire.
The former Republican presidential nominee is set to endorse Senate candidate Scott Brown on Wednesday, campaigning publicly in New Hampshire for the first time since the early hours of Election Day 2012 as he continues a larger effort to re-emerge as a force in Republican politics.
The day is supposed to be focused on Brown's quest to defeat Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen this fall. But Romney's return to the state where he began and ended his last presidential campaign looms over the Senate endorsement.
The former Republican presidential nominee has emphatically and repeatedly denied he will run for president in 2016, despite the wishes and hopes of his most ardent supporters. So his chief and only concern for being in New Hampshire today, then, is helping to elect Scott Brown to the United States Senate -- or so it seems.
We'll see.