Can Bob Massie Beat Sen. Brown in the Bay State?

Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown polls strongly enough to dissuade most high-profile Democrats who might be interested in running next year to reclaim the seat formerly held by Teddy Kennedy. However, a few potential candidates are beginning to assemble talent that lends credibility to their campaigns.
 
One of these is Bob Massie, who ran for lieutenant governor in 1994 but otherwise possesses a highly unconventional resume for a political candidate. A graduate of Princeton with a divinity degree from Yale and a Ph.D. in business administration from Harvard, Massie founded a company that works with corporations to enforce voluntary environmental regulations. He is a hemophiliac and contracted HIV from a blood transfusion and was diagnosed in 1984, but has exhibited no symptoms of the disease, making him a popular subject of study by medical professionals.
 
Massie, who managed to win the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor in 1994 without any prior political experience, recently took on Joe Trippi as a campaign consultant. According to Jim Spencer, a Boston-based Democratic consultant with The Campaign Network, this is an indication of the seriousness of Massie’s candidacy. “Having Trippi on his team shows that he is serious and has a plan in operation,” says Spencer. “He will be announcing other members of his team soon. He has been interviewing pollsters and fundraising consultants to put together a top-tier Senate operation.”
 
There is, of course, plenty of time for other candidates to enter the race. For now, Massie faces Alan Khazei, the co-founder of the Boston-based nonprofit organization City Year, an AmeriCorps-affiliated national service program. Khazei ran in the 2009 special election Democratic Senate primary to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, but finished third among the four primary candidates.
 
Trippi, a veteran of New England campaigns, managed the 2004 presidential campaign of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and began his career as a staffer on Sen. Kennedy’s 1980 presidential campaign. In 2010, Trippi produced media for Jerry Brown in his successful run for California governor and (briefly) for the Democratic Senate primary campaign of businessman Jeff Greene.
 
Maurice Cunningham, the chair of the political science department at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, says that hiring Trippi is a good move by Massie, but unseating Brown remains a significant challenge. “Frankly, [Trippi’s] profile is higher than Massie’s,” says Cunningham. “It is a plus. [Trippi] is an innovative guy and an out-of-the-box speaker, which will be required in Massachusetts.”
 
Kenneth Cosgrove, an associate professor of politics at Suffolk University, agrees that the addition of Trippi to the Massie campaign is a net positive. “I think that Massie will run an insurgent campaign,” says Cosgrove. “I think an insurgent campaign is the way to go, and I think Joe Trippi is good at that.”
 
Cunningham says that whoever emerges as the Democratic nominee will have to overcome Brown’s appeal among working class white Democrats who crossed over to vote for him in January 2010. Despite the large number of Democratic senators up for re-election, Cunningham believes that the Massachusetts candidate will get help from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “A lot of other seats [up in 2012] are ones they can’t win,” he says. “If someone lively presents themselves after the primary, I think they’ll have to come in.”
 
Spencer adds that Brown’s popularity should not be overestimated “Every time they mention that Brown is the most popular politician in the state with $7 million in the bank, I keep trying to remind the media that before Scott Brown, the most popular politician in the state was Martha Coakley,” he says. Brown defeated Coakley in the 2010 special election with nearly 52 percent of the vote.
 Noah Rothman is the online editor at C&E. E-mail him at nrothman@campaignsandelections.com