When I spoke with Rep. Richard Neal, the veteran Democratic congressman from Springfield, Mass., on the afternoon of the special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, he told me, “It’s an alarm-clock moment for us.”<\/p>\n
That is no exaggeration. Scott Brown, the little-known candidate who pulled out a victory over state Attorney General Martha Coakley, is the first Republican to win a Massachusetts Senate race since 1972 and will be the only Republican in what has been an all-Democratic congressional delegation from the Bay State.<\/p>\n
Ron Kaufman, the longtime Republican National Committee member from Massachusetts, said that “it was a perfect storm” that made it possible.<\/p>\n
“We had a really good candidate,” Kaufman said. “A military veteran, a family guy, a fiscal conservative, moderate on social issues, a pro-choice Catholic. But it was bigger than that. The Democrats didn’t understand that people here are very upset with the way things are going in Washington, just as they are elsewhere. They see big sums being spent, big deficits piling up, and they want to send a message.”<\/p>\n