From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail… FR friend John Fund recounts his dinner with newly minted MA Republican Senator Scott Brown, but you’ll be most interested in who they saw, but didn’t disturb, after dinner…
Senator Scott Brown and Fred Thompson have a fair bit in common so it’s no surprise they’ve become friends. In 1994, Mr. Thompson won a come-from-behind Senate victory in Tennessee driving an old pickup truck between campaign stops. Mr. Brown drove a 2005 GMC Canyon truck and solidified his "everyman" appeal to score an upset Senate win last month in Massachusetts.
Mr. Thompson, now a successful radio talk show host whose memoirs will come out this spring, was so tickled by Mr. Brown’s victory that he offered to rent him his Washington D.C. apartment, which is a convenient short drive from the Capitol.
I was able to join the two and their wives for dinner at the Palm Restaurant on Saturday night. Mr. Brown acknowledged he was being lobbied every which way on the jobs bill that came up for a Senate vote yesterday. He ultimately voted "yes" along with four other Republicans, saying that while he wished the bill contained more tax cuts he supported its incentives for small-business job creation. The move burnishes his credentials as an independent thinker and someone striving for bipartisan solutions while not alienating the GOP leadership.
Mr. Brown says that while many thought the frenzy surrounding his victory would fade, "it really hasn’t at all." He has received over 2,000 requests to speak, endorse candidates or appear somewhere. "It’s crazy," he told me. "I went to a basketball game in North Carolina a couple days ago and had to have security with me."
As for settling into the Senate, he says he’s been well received by colleagues on both sides of the aisle and has established good working relations with John Kerry, his fellow Massachusetts Senator. While Mr. Brown is still housed in a trailer as his regular offices are being prepared and he still hasn’t gotten his committee assignments ("Washington has had other things to worry about, including snow"), the Senate’s newest member is looking forward to getting a committee slot that will allow him to use his knowledge as a National Guard officer and military lawyer.
As we left the restaurant, Mr. Brown enthusiastically shook hands with people who greeted him. But as we passed a side room, someone noticed that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife Maria Shriver were having dinner with Kennedy family members. Mr. Brown turned aside a suggestion that he go in and say "Hi." "This is their event, and let’s pass," he said. The encounter would certainly have been friendly, but Mr. Brown showed admirable tact in not wanting to remind members of the Kennedy family that he’s the new kid in town occupying a Senate seat that was something akin to a family possession for over 50 years.
— John Fund