Scott Brown

Scott Brown is an American Republican politician and lawyer who served as the 53rd US Senator from Massachusetts from February 4, 2010 to January 3, 2013 — winning the January 19, 2010 special election to fill the seat of the late Senator Edward Kennedy. He was born Scott Philip Brown on September 12, 1959, in Kittery, Maine, and raised primarily in Massachusetts by his divorced mother. He attended Tufts University (Bachelor's degree, 1981) and Boston College Law School (J.D., 1985).

His political career began with his 1992–1995 service on the Wrentham, Massachusetts town board of selectmen, followed by his 1998–2010 service in the Massachusetts state legislature (including state house and state senate seats). His moment came when he won the January 19, 2010 special election for the US Senate seat that had been continuously held by the Kennedy family since 1953 — first by John F. Kennedy (1953–1960) and then continuously by Edward Kennedy (1962–2009).

The Brown 2010 special-election victory was seen as a major political earthquake — Massachusetts had not elected a Republican to the US Senate since 1972, and the Kennedy seat had been continuously Democratic since 1953. The Brown victory came at the peak of the early-2010s American Tea Party movement and was driven by Brown's opposition to the Affordable Care Act (which was being debated in Congress at the time of the special election).

His three-year US Senate tenure (2010–2013) was characterized by his moderate Republican voting record — he frequently broke with Republican leadership on social issues and on the 2010 financial-reform Dodd-Frank Act. He lost the 2012 reelection to Democrat Elizabeth Warren by 7.5 percentage points. He subsequently relocated to New Hampshire and ran unsuccessfully for the 2014 New Hampshire US Senate seat. He served as US Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa under President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2020. He has continued to be a recurring American Republican-party political figure.

His name Scott is from the Old English scotti meaning "Gaelic-speaker" or "from Scotland." Scott has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names for decades.