By Karl Vick and Paul Kane-WApo).On the eve of the Senate election that could determine the fate of President Obama's agenda, Democrats scrambled to build a firebreak around the candidacy of Martha Coakley against the phenomenon of Scott Brown, the Republican Massachusetts state senator whose underdog campaign has surged as the vessel for national opposition to the Democrats' supermajority in the chamber.
Both teams, reinforced by senior political operatives from Washington and bevies of volunteers from beyond Massachusetts, made ardent appeals for supporters to brave freezing temperatures to vote in Tuesday's special election to fill the seat vacated by the death of Edward M. Kennedy (D).
Democrats focused on trying to persuade independent women to vote for Coakley, who would become the first female senator from the Bay State. Republicans championed Brown as the best brake on runaway spending in Washington.
"We are going to bring this home tomorrow," Coakley said to cheers in a half-filled middle school gymnasium in Framingham, a Boston suburb where she made her fourth of six stops Monday. "Let's get to work."
Enthusiastic crowds greeted Brown, whose prospects sharply ascended when his candidacy was identified as an opportunity to deprive Democrats of the 60th vote required to stop debate on health-care reform, an issue that was Kennedy's lifelong quest. Chants of "Forty-one!" broke out at his campaign stops.
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"I'm up in some polls, down in others," said Brown, who has based his campaign on soliciting independents and even Democrats. "We'll see tomorrow."
Several late polls suggested that Brown's remarkable surge may be pushing him beyond the dead heat where the race appeared to be a week ago. Over the weekend, Suffolk University surveyed three Massachusetts communities where past returns have mirrored statewide results, and found Brown leading by 14 to 17 percentage points.
A Brown campaign official predicted that independent voters rallying to the insurgent Republican would push turnout above 50 percent, twice that of the last special election.
"The enthusiasm is just unbelievable," said Brad Marston, a Brown campaign volunteer who was handing out placards. The placard features the candidate's name on a field of brown, and stylized lines curving in the "o" of Brown. The image, like the campaign itself, summons deliberate associations with the campaign of the president it has arrayed itself against.
"The half of my family who voted for Obama are for Brown," said Dennis Sheehan, an electrical technician from Lowell, who cheered the Senate candidate outside a Boston Bruins game. "They felt sold out. He said he'd bring the whole country together. I've never seen the country so divided in my life, and I grew up in the '60s, with Vietnam."
Brown has called his effort "the politics of hope" and, like candidate Obama did, admonished campaign workers to maintain courtesies -- at a Saturday stop in a call center in Worcester, he even complimented the "very respectful" behavior of the Democratic "trackers," the fixtures of modern campaigning who record a candidate's every move on video.
Both teams, reinforced by senior political operatives from Washington and bevies of volunteers from beyond Massachusetts, made ardent appeals for supporters to brave freezing temperatures to vote in Tuesday's special election to fill the seat vacated by the death of Edward M. Kennedy (D).
Democrats focused on trying to persuade independent women to vote for Coakley, who would become the first female senator from the Bay State. Republicans championed Brown as the best brake on runaway spending in Washington.
"We are going to bring this home tomorrow," Coakley said to cheers in a half-filled middle school gymnasium in Framingham, a Boston suburb where she made her fourth of six stops Monday. "Let's get to work."
Enthusiastic crowds greeted Brown, whose prospects sharply ascended when his candidacy was identified as an opportunity to deprive Democrats of the 60th vote required to stop debate on health-care reform, an issue that was Kennedy's lifelong quest. Chants of "Forty-one!" broke out at his campaign stops.
ad_icon
"I'm up in some polls, down in others," said Brown, who has based his campaign on soliciting independents and even Democrats. "We'll see tomorrow."
Several late polls suggested that Brown's remarkable surge may be pushing him beyond the dead heat where the race appeared to be a week ago. Over the weekend, Suffolk University surveyed three Massachusetts communities where past returns have mirrored statewide results, and found Brown leading by 14 to 17 percentage points.
A Brown campaign official predicted that independent voters rallying to the insurgent Republican would push turnout above 50 percent, twice that of the last special election.
"The enthusiasm is just unbelievable," said Brad Marston, a Brown campaign volunteer who was handing out placards. The placard features the candidate's name on a field of brown, and stylized lines curving in the "o" of Brown. The image, like the campaign itself, summons deliberate associations with the campaign of the president it has arrayed itself against.
"The half of my family who voted for Obama are for Brown," said Dennis Sheehan, an electrical technician from Lowell, who cheered the Senate candidate outside a Boston Bruins game. "They felt sold out. He said he'd bring the whole country together. I've never seen the country so divided in my life, and I grew up in the '60s, with Vietnam."
Brown has called his effort "the politics of hope" and, like candidate Obama did, admonished campaign workers to maintain courtesies -- at a Saturday stop in a call center in Worcester, he even complimented the "very respectful" behavior of the Democratic "trackers," the fixtures of modern campaigning who record a candidate's every move on video.
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