Scott Brown has been touring New Hampshire since April, when he announced he would be running for the state's Senate seat. Hitting the campaign trail in his trademark pick-up truck, Brown has portrayed himself as an accessible candidate, introducing himself to voters at supermarkets, car shows, lobster shacks and a Harley Davidson-themed cookout.
A former Republican senator from neighbouring Massachusetts, Brown plans to win the election in his adopted state one handshake at a time. “Join Scott,” his website implores visitors. “Get on the trail.”
That was precisely what I did last Friday, when my unexpected arrival at Brown’s statewide tour revealed a different side to his campaign. Just a few miles from a town named Freedom, no less, I was expelled from two consecutive Brown campaign events, banned from asking him questions and, when I declined to abide by those terms, questioned by an officer of the law.
It turned out that Brown did not want to talk about about Hobby Lobby, the recent supreme court decision critics argue will deny some women contraceptive care in their insurance plans.
Brown, 54, is a former military colonel, lawyer and shirtless model turned Republican politician, who came to prominence when he unexpectedly won the Massachusetts Senate seat in 2009.
After losing that seat three years later, Brown flirted, briefly, with running for president, before switching his allegiance to New Hampshire and, in an attempt to dispense with his reputation as a carpetbagger, taking to the road to meet voters.
It is unclear if the strategy is working. A recent poll suggested the gap between Brown and his Democratic opponent – incumbent senator Jeanne Shaheen – has more than doubled since he announced his candidacy and began touring the state three months ago.
The anti-woman label: especially toxic in New Hampshire
He now trails Shaheen by 12 points – and also lags behind her in the fundraising contest. Further, Brown still has to win the GOP primary, which in New Hampshire is not held until September 9. Even though he is widely expected to win the Republican nomination, the primary is proving a distraction.
Meanwhile, the Shaheen campaign, in a repeat of the playbook that saw Brown defeated in Massachusetts by Elizabeth Warren, has been relentlessly painting Brown as anti-women.
It is a line of attack echoed across the US as midterm campaigns heat up, and Democrats seek to activate a key demographic constituency. It is not just women whom Democrats have come to rely on, but single women in particular.
And, like minority voters, while unmarried women tend to lean Democratic, they’re also disinclined to vote in midterm elections.
Democrats have been accusing Republicans of waging a “war on women” since 2010, citing their opposition, for example, to enforcement of equal pay, or restrictions on access to abortions.
The anti-woman label is especially toxic in New Hampshire, which has an impressive record of electing women. Four years ago, New Hampshire became the first state in US history to have a state legislature comprised mostly of women. It currently has the first ever all-woman congressional delegation – and a female governor.
The Brown campaign, with some justification, believe the anti-women accusation is an unfair slur on his name. Unusually for a Republican, Brown is pro-choice, mostly supports access to birth control, and recently denounced a supreme court decision that critics say allows anti-abortion activists to intimidate women when they visit clinics.
But Brown has an Achilles heel, left exposed by a second, more high-profile supreme court decision: the judgment in favour of the Christian, family-run business Hobby Lobby.
A majority of justices ruled that companies like Hobby Lobby can, on religious grounds, deny their employees insurance coverage for some types of birth control.
The ruling was a setback for Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, but was far less consequential than a piece of legislation – the so-called Blunt Amendment – which Brown championed as a senator in 2012.
That legislation would have gone further than the supreme court ruling in allowing employers to use religious exemptions to opt out of providing coverage for a wide range of health services – even, critics say, preventive care and mammograms.
In the Massachusetts race, Warren used Brown's support for the controversial amendment as evidence of his hostility to women. She won the election decisively, and exit polls showed Brown lost the women's vote by 18 points. He recently told Ellen Kolb, a pro-life blogger, that his support for the Blunt Amendment "cost me the election" in Massachusetts.
The Hobby Lobby verdict has reignited the issue, and the Brown campaign's reaction has been stumbling. It took several hours to respond to the judgment earlier this month, eventually releasing a vague, two-line statement that shed no real light on his position.
Asked about the issue on a local radio station days later, Brown appeared to back the Hobby Lobby ruling when he said he supported religious freedom "even though that may be out of touch with social opinion". But it was still unclear where he stood. "The court made their decision and we’ll see what happens thereafter,” he said.
'You’re getting in the face of people that don’t care to talk to you'
I decided to find Brown – whose wife, Gail, is a former TV journalist – on the campaign trail, and ask him to clarify his stance. That, it turned out, was easier said than done.
While an inquiring member of the public will be told about Brown's forthcoming campaign stops, the schedule is kept secret from anyone who, like me, self-identifies as a journalist. Fortunately, I received a tip-off that Brown would be appearing later in the day at a diner 100 miles north, in the foothills of the White Mountains.
I found Brown at a table at a restaurant called Priscilla's, introduced myself as a Guardian reporter and enquired if I could ask him some questions. Brown smiled nervously and replied: "What do you want to ask me about?"
"Hobby Lobby? That would be a start," I said.
“I’m all set," he replied. "We’re enjoying ourselves right now.”
“But you’re standing for Senate. It is routine for journalists to ask you questions and usually the candidates answer.”
“Not without notifying my office."
Brown stood up, walked to the back of the diner, and took shelter in the bathroom. A campaign aide, Jeremy, looked bewildered. He lingered beside me for a few moments, before politely excusing himself – “Nice to meet you” – and joining his boss in the bathroom.
I decided to wait in the parking lot for Team Brown to emerge into the sunlight. Four minutes later, a white SUV swung round and parked next to the steps of the diner. Brown came out with a phone pressed to his ear. "Get in! Get in!" said a campaign worker holding open the car door. Another man asked me to leave. “You’re getting in the face of people that don’t care to talk to you,” he said.
That, I explained, is what journalists must sometimes do. We’re used to politicians giving us evasive answers. But we don’t expect them to run away from questions – unless, that is, they’re in crisis mode.
The truth is the fallout from the Hobby Lobby ruling puts Brown in a tight spot.
Shaheen, who in 1999, as New Hampshire governor, signed a law requiring insurance companies to offer contraception coverage, has been quick to exploit her opponent's discomfort, and last week put her name to legislation that would undo the Hobby Lobby judgment.
"This is not just an issue about who makes those decisions," she told me. "It is also an economic issue, because when women are not able to get insurance coverage for contraceptives, they're paying more."
With Brown's primary more than six weeks away, he cannot afford to alienate pro-life Republican voters by altering his stance. At the same time, he is facing pressure from the upper ranks of his own campaign to do just that.
Julie Brown, a senior Republican figure in the state who the candidate chose as the co-chair of his Women for Brown leadership team, believes he is wrong about religious exemptions to contraceptive coverage.
"A woman chooses what she decides to do with her body – it is between the woman, her doctor and her God," she told me.
Her view was shared by “many, many” women in the state, she said, adding that she planned to discuss the contraception issue with Brown in the coming days.
I asked if she thought he needed to change his policy. "I think he should, yes," she replied.
"I will discuss it with him,” she added. “I give anybody credit who changes their mind."
'I’m not making any more news'
With Brown's own ambassador to women urging a U-turn on such a critical issue, I thought I should try, once again, to press the candidate on where, precisely, he currently stands.
His next campaign stop, I was told, would take place three hours later, on the second floor of the Hobbs Tavern and Brewery, in West Ossipee. I was at the tavern, mingling with about a dozen locals, when the candidate arrived. Brown walked up the stairs, spotted me in the audience, frowned, turned around and walked back downstairs.
Jeremy, looking even more anxious than he did at Priscilla's, took me to a corner and told me that while I could witness Brown's electioneering, under no circumstances was I permitted to ask questions.
I was explaining to Jeremy that Senate candidates don’t get to dictate when and where journalists ask them questions, when Brown re-emerged. Gruffly, he told me I had intruded in a private event. He was not going to answer my questions about Hobby Lobby. "I’m not making any more news," he explained. "You’re being unprofessional and you’re being rude."
A large man with chest hair poking out of his shirt put it more bluntly. “You have to go,” he said. “We can either do this the right way, or we can do this the wrong way.”
“What is the wrong way?” I asked. “I don’t want you to find out," he said.
I left the campaign event in the company of the tavern's owner. He and I were talking on the porch, several minutes later, when a police car pulled up.
I don't know if Officer Valley, from the Ossipee Police Department, had ever before been called to deal with an errant reporter. I do know he walked up to the porch with an amused look on his face. “How you doing?” he said, shaking everyone's hand. “What’s up?”
None of the parties disputed the facts of the case. I was the journalist. My job was to ask questions. The man holed up inside the tavern was Scott Brown, a would-be senator who didn’t want to answer. I was eventually asked to leave. I left.
Officer Valley mulled over the situation before delivering his summary judgment. “There’s no crime,” he said. “No issue here at all.”
Three days later, in response to continued questions about Brown’s position on Hobby Lobby, his press secretary, Elizabeth Guyton, emailed a response.
It was the same statement as the one the campaign released the day after the Hobby Lobby decision. It avoids any reference to the supreme court ruling.
“Scott Brown supports women's healthcare and access to contraception, but by injecting government into every aspect of our lives, Obamacare threatens all our freedoms,” Guyton said. “The best solution is to repeal it."
Comments (…)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion