Former U.S. Marine Jesse Brown Preparing For Potential GOP Congressional Run In Massachusetts Ninth District

Printed from: https://newbostonpost.com/2021/04/08/former-u-s-marine-jesse-brown-preparing-for-potential-gop-congressional-run-in-massachusetts-ninth-district/

A former Massachusetts Senate candidate may soon be a congressional candidate.

Plymouth resident and former U.S. Marine Jesse Brown, a Republican, is strongly considering running for the U.S. House of Representatives seat in the Massachusetts Ninth Congressional District, which includes the South Shore, parts of the South Coast, and Cape Cod and the Islands. It’s the district that U.S. Representative Bill Keating (D-Bourne) currently represents. 

Brown has a donation page on the Republican fund-raising web site WinRed. He also has a campaign site jessebrownforcongress.com that is currently private, but an advanced Google search indicates that it is in the process of being built and has been since at least last month.

Ben Hincher, an adviser to Brown, sent NewBostonPost a comment on why Brown is thinking about running.

“There are few members of Congress who have been in Washington so long and accomplished so little as Representative Keating,” Hincher said Tuesday afternoon by email. “As a former enlisted Marine and small businessperson, Jesse Brown knows we need a change of leadership in the 9th District. Jesse is moved by the encouragement he has received and has taken initial steps to prepare for a candidacy, but a final decision will be made in the coming weeks.”

Brown unsuccessfully sought the Republican Party nomination in a pair of races last year, both in the Plymouth & Barnstable district running against Bourne attorney Jay McMahon.

Brown was one of two Republicans to seek a seat in the Massachusetts Senate representing the district in the special election last spring to fill a vacancy. McMahon, who was also the Republican Party’s attorney general nominee in the state, won the March 2020 primary with 55.9 percent of the vote to Brown’s 43.8 percent, according to the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office. In the Republican state committeeman race, which drew three candidates, Brown was the runner up with 38.5 percent to McMahon’s 54.5 percent. 

McMahon went on to lose the special election to former Falmouth selectman Susan Moran 56.2 percent to 43.7 percent. Brown did not seek the nomination in the September 2020 GOP primary. McMahon won that nomination, too, and then lost the general election. 

If Brown enters the 2022 Republican primary for the Ninth Congressional District, he will be the second candidate in the race. The other is Marshfield resident Mark Littles. More information on his campaign is available at littles4congress.com.

As currently construed, the Ninth district is the most Republican-friendly of the bunch in Massachusetts. The Cook Partisan Voting Index says that it is a D+4, meaning that it votes four points more Democratic than the United States as a whole, on average. 

Keating had no problem winning re-election in 2020. He won every single town in the district in a three-way race where his opponents were Republican Helen Brady and pro-life independent Michael Manley, whose designation on the ballot was Coach Team America.

The Massachusetts Ninth Congressional District currently includes: Barnstable, Bourne, Brewster, Chatham, Dennis, Eastham, Falmouth, Harwich, Mashpee, Orleans, Provincetown, Sandwich, Truro, Wellfleet, Yarmouth. Bristol County: Acushnet, Dartmouth, Fairhaven, Fall River Wards 1, 2, 3, Ward 4, Precincts A, B, Ward 5, Precincts A, B, Ward 6, New Bedford, Westport, Aquinnah, Chilmark, Edgartown, Gosnold, Oak Bluffs, Tisbury, West Tisbury, Nantucket, Carver, Duxbury, Halifax, Hanover, Hanson, Kingston, Marion, Marshfield, Mattapoisett, Middleboro, Norwell, Pembroke, Plymouth, Plympton, Rochester, Rockland, and Wareham.

The configuration of the district may change before the 2022 election. The Massachusetts Legislature may redraw the lines based on data from the 2020 U.S. Census.

A Republican has not won a U.S. House seat in Massachusetts since 1994.

A press spokesman for Congressman Keating could not be reached for comment on Tuesday or Wednesday.