Scott Brown says he helped Trump win in NH

Printed from: https://newbostonpost.com/2016/02/10/scott-brown-says-he-helped-trump-win-in-nh/

Scott Brown, the former U.S. senator for Massachusetts, reflected on Donald Trump’s decisive New Hampshire presidential primary victory on Tuesday, telling Boston Herald Radio that his support factored significantly in the New Yorker’s big win.

“He had no ground game in Iowa,” Brown said on the Tuesday night webcast. “So my job was to actually you know, in a week-and-a-half, mobilize a much as we could the ground game here in New Hampshire with, you know, my people that I had in place just a short couple of years ago.”

“We were really able to kind of get the wheels moving and let them understand what you need to do in the GOTV effort and taking nothing for granted,” Brown said, referring to get-out-the-vote efforts. The former senator lost a bid for re-election to Elizabeth Warren in 2012 and subsequently moved to Rye, New Hampshire.

Brown went on about his contributions to Trump’s political “ground game.”

“Just some little nuanced changes and a lot of the things that I was suggesting I was seeing being implemented, so it was nice to play a small role in it,” he said. “And you know they’re excited. Listen, they’re new at this. It’s kind of fun to be with somebody who’s never done this before.”

In his remarks claiming victory Tuesday night, Trump thanked more than a dozen family members and campaign aides by name, including manager Corey Lewandowski, a longtime political operative from Boston’s North Shore.

“Does Corey have a ground game or what?” the brash billionaire shouted to the celebrating crowd in Manchester. “Boy do we have a ground game.”

But the candidate went on about picking up pointers in recent days:

“You know we learned a lot about ground games in one week. I have to tell you that.”

Brown’s decision to back Trump caught many of his fans off-guard. The former lawmaker, who narrowly lost a 2014 bid to unseat U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat, has been active on social media and responded to numerous comments posted to his Facebook page Tuesday.

Responding to a self-proclaimed supporter who described his Trump endorsement as “troubling,” Brown pointed out that he hosted events at his home for “all of the candidates” and added that he identifies with Trump’s policy platform.

“Time to relax a bit,” Brown wrote, noting that he became familiar with congressional gridlock during his three years in the Senate. “I want a `change agent’ to go down there and shake things up. He is the only independently funded, truly independent person to be able to do that.”

Brown also praised Trump’s record as a businessman “having created tens of thousands of good-paying jobs” and noted that he agrees with Trump on border security and terrorism issues.

“I may not like how he is saying it, but with people like me guiding him, it may help,” Brown wrote. “Remember, he has only been doing this six months. Still learning.”

On his Twitter account, Brown noted that he spent part of primary day in Manchester at Saint Anselm College discussing voter turnout with Fox News:

Brown also in recent days lashed out at the Boston Globe’s coverage of his candidate’s campaign, echoing Trump’s much-publicized disdain for the media: Who cares what the Globe thinks? I sure don’t. Haven’t read it in years. #nhpolitics https://t.co/iD1PAZ4tuw — Scott P. Brown (@SenScottBrown) Feb. 5, 2016

Brown publicly threw his support to Trump on Feb. 2.

“When I endorsed him, I told him what needed to be done,” Brown said in an interview posted Monday on Breitbart.com. “There was basically no ground game.”

Brown said Trump asked him if he would help.

“So, I dropped everything and we’ve already gotten the phone banks humming. We’ve gotten the door knockers out,” Brown said, according to Breitbart. “We had a great 72-hour plan that’s been implemented.”