Scott Brown: 'It's me against the machine'

Republican candidate Scott Brown, who is vying for the seat vacated after the death of U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., holds a set of defibrillator paddles while visiting the Zoll Medical Corporation in Chelmsford, Mass., Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Chelmsford, Massachusetts -

Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown is touring the headquarters of Zoll Medical Corporation, one of the nation's leading makers of heart defibrillators, when he picks up a pair of the paddles that, applied to a patient's chest, can shock a failing heart back to life.

"What would that feel like?" Brown asks his guide.

 "Like a horse kicking you in the chest," is the answer.

If anyone is feeling that way here in Massachusetts, it's Democrats, who are still trying to grasp the stunning possibility that Brown, gaining ground daily on Democrat Martha Coakley, might actually win the seat formerly occupied by Sen. Ted Kennedy. To say Brown's campaign is surging is an understatement.  His campaign offices are buzzing with energy and crowded with volunteers.  He's all over the media.  And his fundraising is hitting highs he never expected.

Things are going so well, and moving so fast, that the Brown team is having a hard time keeping up.  At his headquarters in Needham, people walk in off the street asking for a Brown sign to put in their yard.  But the campaign is out of them -- can't keep up with demand.  "I've never seen anything like this," says a volunteer who's answering the phones, apologizing for the shortage, and advising supporters to print out their own signs from the Internet.

There's a lot of talk about the possibility that Brown will become the 41st Republican senator, the lawmaker who can stop the Democrats' national health care plan.  That's important, but here in Massachusetts, it's perhaps more important that Brown is seen as the solution to the problem of too much one-party government. As the Brown team sees it, the political situation in Massachusetts, dominated by the Democratic party and increasingly marked by corruption (three consecutive state Speakers of the House have been indicted and forced to resign in disgrace) is making state voters wary about the one-party domination of Washington, where Democratic leaders are rushing toward new extremes of federal spending and government intrusion.  "I think I represent a breath of fresh air, where people know that I'm going to go down to Washington to be a check and balance," Brown says.

When Brown talks about what he's up against, he says it very simply: "It's me against the machine."  By that, he means the Massachusetts machine -- the Democratic party, the patronage, the entrenched network -- as well as the national machine that has targeted him since word got out that he might win.  "It's revving up," Brown tells reporters at Zoll.  "They have MoveOn.org, SEIU just took out a major buy, potentially the president is coming this weekend."  Brown has his own weapons -- talk radio and conservative Web activists have been huge helps -- but in Massachusetts at least, he's still outgunned.

Brown has come to Zoll Corporation to talk about health care and taxes.  Zoll is a profitable company, making a lifesaving product -- the defibrillators you see in offices, hospitals, and fire departments -- but company officials are worried about its future under the Democratic health care regime.  That's because both Democratic bills, House and Senate, feature a new tax on the makers of medical devices, a tax that could kill, or seriously weaken, some of the industry's top manufacturers.

"The way it's written right now, Zoll's portion of the medical device tax that's in the health care legislation would be somewhere between five and ten million dollars," says Richard Packer, the company's chairman and CEO.  "Our total profit last year was less than ten million dollars, so if this goes through, as we understand it, it will move Zoll toward being a break-even company." That, Packer says somewhat euphemistically, is "not a sustainable place."

Zoll isn't the only business facing a possible crisis. The medical device industry is huge in Massachusetts -- 225 companies employing about 50,000 people.   That's a lot of jobs and a lot of lives that could fare badly under a new health care system.  "It's going to hurt Massachusetts businesses at a time that we can't afford it," Brown says.

Brown is speaking in front of a sizable contingent of reporters and television cameras.  They go everywhere he goes these days -- an amazing change from the early weeks of the campaign when, assuming an easy Democratic victory was on the way, nobody paid any attention to the Republican candidate. "Two days after Scott won the primary, we had a news conference at headquarters and one reporter showed up," recalls one advisor, "and he ended up writing a story about the fact that one reporter showed up."  Brown couldn't get his message across even to a captive audience.

But while no one was watching, Brown worked hard, made contacts, put out his own signs, even called up radio shows himself to try to draw attention to his campaign.  He told his staff he was noticing something; people seemed receptive and open to the idea of a Republican senator.  A good while later, when Brown visited the venerable Erie Pub in Dorchester, and the equally venerable Doyle's in Jamaica Plain, his staffers were astonished to see customers who fit the profile of lifelong Democrats tell Brown he had their vote.  "The last Republican I voted for was Reagan," one man said. "I haven't voted for a Republican since Bush's dad," said another.  Now, they may cross party lines one more time.

Whether there will be enough of them to defeat the enormous power of the Massachusetts Democratic party is another question.  But even if there aren't, next Tuesday's election will still likely be the closest such race in many, many years.  It's Scott Brown against the machine, and right now Brown has all the momentum.