It can’t be called “lobbying,” because there’s a two-year ban on any lawmaker becoming a registered lobbyist. But that’s the most logical way to read this news.
Former senator Scott Brown (R-Mass.) is joining the law firm Nixon Peabody LLP as counsel in the firm’s Boston office, Nixon Peabody announced Monday. Brown’s practice will focus on business and government affairs, particularly in the finance and real estate industries.
Because Brown managed to narrowly win a special election against a shoddy opponent in ideal Republican circumstances, his every move is looked at as a possible step to a new election. After Brown passed on this year’s special Senate race, he didn’t say he was finished; he said that running in 2010, 2012, 2013, and 2014 would have been too much for him. In one interview, he said explicitly that he might have entered the Senate race if the victor’s term lasted longer. So, joining a law firm to work on finance/government affairs may have validated Elizabeth Warren’s chief line of attack against him. It’s not the first thing you’d add to a resume before running for a new office. Nor did it stop WaPo, in the item I link here, from speculating that Brown may run for president.
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, there’s no poll showing the GOP’s non-Brown candidates in the hunt for the open Senate seat. The candidate who’s gotten the most national attention thus far is Gabriel Gomez, who’s 1) Hispanic, 2) a former Navy SEAL, and 3) simpatico with Brown on social issues. He’s never won an election, though. Why the buzz? Gomez had signed on with the weirdly unsuccessful 2012 super PAC that promised to run ads shaming President Obama for taking credit for the bin Laden operation. The PAC flopped, but its square-jawed adherents got noticed—thus, a Gomez Senate campaign that could set him up for a more winnable race.
