# Scott Brown Former U.S. senator from **Massachusetts** (2010–2013), later a New Hampshire Senate candidate, and as of 2026 a candidate again — running in the **Sept 8 New Hampshire Republican primary** for Jeanne Shaheen's open seat against former Sen. [[John E. Sununu]]. ## The seat that started it Brown won the January 2010 Massachusetts special election to fill Ted Kennedy's seat — a result that briefly denied Senate Democrats their 60th vote during the Affordable Care Act endgame and was read at the time as the opening shot of the Tea Party wave. He lost the seat to [[Elizabeth Warren]] in 2012. ## New Hampshire Brown then moved to New Hampshire and ran for the Senate there in 2014, losing to Jeanne Shaheen. **2026 is his second New Hampshire Senate run**, and this time the seat is open because Shaheen is retiring — removing the incumbent who beat him. He served as U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa during the first Trump administration. > [!warning] Stub > Created 2026-08-31 to resolve links from [[MA-Sen-2026]] and [[NH-Sen-2026]]. Ambassadorship, 2014 campaign detail, and his positioning relative to Trump in the current primary are unwritten. The carpetbagging critique that shaped both New Hampshire runs deserves its own treatment. ## Why he appears in two state files Brown is one of the few figures in this vault who is load-bearing in two different states' race pages: as the historical benchmark for Republican viability in [[MA-Sen-2026]] (the last Republican to win a Massachusetts Senate seat), and as an active candidate in [[NH-Sen-2026]]. ## See also - [[NH-Sen-2026]] - [[MA-Sen-2026]] - [[John E. Sununu]]