Senator Scott Brown – Kennedy’s successor has big shoes to fill

The election of Senator Scott Brown was not exactly a surprise to Revere voters.

By the time election day had come around last week, everyone here who takes some interest in politics – which is just about everyone – had the strong feeling that Martha Coakley was not going to make it and that Scott Brown was.

Here we are one week later and Senator-elect Brown has already been to Washington and will shortly be seated in the US Senate.

For those of us who are tried and true Democrats, Brown’s election is anathema – as near to the end of the political world as we can come without it falling apart.

Yet there is the commonly and widely held belief that Brown connected and Coakley did not, that Brown let us know who he is, and Coakley did not, and that Brown was unambiguous about where he stood and Coakley kept herself wrapped up neatly in a shroud.

The end product of all this, obviously, was Brown’s victory.

It couldn’t have been any other way once he hooked into the thinking of independent voters and Democrats fed up with their own candidate.

By telling voters he is owned by no one and that he would go to Washington with an open mind about righting whatever is wrong, Brown’s message resonated while Coakley’s failed to take any meaningful shape and form.

When the end came last week, Coakley had suffered probably the most embarrassing loss a Democrat has ever known in the modern political history of the state.

And as for the legacy of Ted Kennedy’s 47 year run – Scott Brown showed us exactly what that legacy was worth when push came to shove.

Now it is back to reality for Brown, who must make decisions that advances Massachusetts social, moral and economic standing among all the states.

He is our senator and needs to act accordingly.

If he is going to become a right wing Republican all about God and religion and abortion, he will be biting the hands of so many who voted for him because they wanted change.

If Scott Brown remains about change and remains true to himself and remains unbought, as he likes to say, he might go a long way to establishing himself as a new political power on the national front.

If he doesn’t, he will likely have a short term as senator.

We wish Senator Brown the best.

We urge him to remain independent.

We ask him to remember where he comes from and the people whom he represents.