Top Lawyer Wins Primary to Replace Kennedy

Top Lawyer Wins Primary to Replace Kennedy
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: December 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/us/politics/09mass.html?th&emc=th


BOSTON — Martha M. Coakley, the Massachusetts attorney general, captured the Democratic nomination Tuesday in the race for Edward M. Kennedy’s United States Senate seat, easily defeating three men in a race that was notably bereft of drama.

State Senator Scott P. Brown reacted Tuesday night to the news of his victory in the Republican contest.

On the Republican side, State Senator Scott P. Brown of Wrentham defeated Jack E. Robinson, a lawyer. Ms. Coakley and Mr. Brown will face off in a special election on Jan. 19 for the seat Mr. Kennedy held for nearly five decades until his death in August.

With 98 percent of the precincts reporting, Ms. Coakley had 47 percent of the vote, followed by Representative Michael E. Capuano with 28 percent. Alan Khazei, who runs a national service program, had 13 percent of the vote, and Stephen Pagliuca, a co-owner of the Boston Celtics, had 12 percent.

Mr. Brown was the landslide winner in the Republican contest, with 89 percent of the vote compared with Mr. Robinson’s 11 percent.

Although this is the state’s first Senate race with no incumbent since 1984 — for a legendary seat that John F. Kennedy, Daniel Webster and John Quincy Adams held before Edward Kennedy — polling places reported strikingly low turnout. Election officials said that may have been because voters were preoccupied with the holiday season.

Mr. Kennedy’s seat has been held on an interim basis by Paul G. Kirk Jr., a longtime Kennedy friend and aide whom Gov. Deval Patrick appointed in September with the backing of Mr. Kennedy’s widow and sons.

Ms. Coakley, 56, stood out as the only woman in the Democratic race, a distinction that probably played to her advantage even though Massachusetts has never elected a woman as governor or senator.

She secured an early endorsement from Emily’s List, the influential fund-raising network for candidates who support abortion rights. And she quickly came out against the amendment restricting abortion access in the House health care bill last month, saying, “It’s personal with me, and it’s personal with every woman.”

About 37 percent of the state’s 4.1 million registered voters are Democrats, and about 11 percent are Republicans, giving Ms. Coakley an advantage over Mr. Brown in the general election. Although Massachusetts has elected three Republican governors since 1990, it has not sent a Republican to the Senate in 37 years.

Mr. Brown, 50, is a lawyer and a lieutenant colonel in the Massachusetts National Guard who has served in the state legislature since 1996. He opposes same-sex marriage and the health care legislation being debated in Congress, and supports President Obama’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan.

Winning unaffiliated voters, who make up half of the state’s electorate, will be crucial for Mr. Brown. He has emphasized his ability to work across party lines, while casting himself as the only candidate with conservative values.

Although they gushed tributes to Mr. Kennedy throughout the short primary campaign, none of the Democrats won a coveted endorsement from Victoria Reggie Kennedy, his widow, or any high-profile member of the Kennedy clan. In the most visible hint of such support, Caroline Kennedy attended a fund-raiser for Mr. Khazei last month.

Ms. Coakley was the first to declare her candidacy, barely a week after Mr. Kennedy’s death in August, and made fewer references to him than her rivals. She billed herself as “a different kind of leader,” even though all four Democrats had nearly identical positions on most issues. All, like Mr. Kennedy, espoused liberal values, supporting abortion rights, same-sex marriage and universal health care and opposing the death penalty.

Mr. Capuano billed himself as a scrappy Washington insider who knows how to get things done. Mr. Pagliuca, a wealthy investor, said his business acumen would help solve the state’s economic problems, while Mr. Khazei, whose organization, City Year, recruits young adults for a year of community service, promised to challenge the status quo as a political outsider.

But Ms. Coakley raised more money than the three men and enjoyed higher name recognition because of her three years as attorney general. Earlier, as a prosecutor in the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office, she won fame as the lead prosecutor in the high-profile trial of Louise Woodward, a British au pair convicted in 1997 of killing a baby boy in her care.

Ms. Coakley got a last-minute boost from former President Bill Clinton, who recorded a phone message on her behalf that was sent to thousands of likely primary voters. She backed his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the Democratic presidential primary last year, even though Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Patrick and other top Massachusetts Democrats strongly supported Barack Obama.

None of the candidates have an outsize personality like Mr. Kennedy’s, and some went to unusual lengths to capture voter attention during the sleepy contest. Mr. Pagliuca took the Celtics’ 2008 NBA championship trophy on the campaign trail, and Mr. Khazei ran a television advertisement featuring talking babies.

Mr. Brown, however, did not draw attention to the fact that he posed nude for Cosmopolitan magazine in 1982, when he was a first-year law student at Boston College.