THE HANDSTAND

FEBRUARY-MARCH2010


Scott Brown: From Cosmo centrefold to Massachusetts senator

Republican lawyer who has won Ted Kennedy's seat reveals details of colourful past

Scott Brown, Cosmo centrefold

Scott Brown, model politician. Photograph: Cosmo

Scott Brown, who described himself as a "long shot" only last week, has come a long way since posing as a Cosmopolitan centrefold when he was a student.

A wild youth who liked Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, and a self-confessed "jerk" whose mother was "on welfare, a little bit", the 50-year-old lawyer has revealed how he was arrested for stealing albums from a store in Salem, Massachusetts, when he was 12.

Brown's parents divorced when he was one, and each remarried three times. For a time, he lived with his grandparents.

Until recently, he was probably the third most famous person in his family. His wife, Gail Huff, is a Boston TV news reporter, while one of his two daughters was an American Idol contestant.

Cosmo's "America's sexiest man" 1982 was then a 22-year-old law student. Even then, he described himself as "a bit of a patriot".

"You don't see anything [in the centrefold]," he told the Boston Globe in a recent interview.

He got $1,000 (£614) for the shoot. At the time, he and Huff were models and actors in TV commercials, and met when they were trying to recoup money from their agents.

Brown is a committed triathlete who rises at 5am to train and describes himself as a driven man.

"I'm always doing something, whether I'm home watching TV, I'm always maybe licking envelopes or writing notes to people," he told the Boston Globe. "If I'm riding my [stationary] bike, I'm reading a newspaper or watching the news."

Brown is considered one of the more conservative members of the Democratic-led Massachusetts senate.

He has served in the US army's National Guard for 30 years, although he has never been deployed to a war zone.

His defence of waterboarding – simulated drowning, a now-banned interrogation technique for terror suspects – and denial that it was torture sparked fury among Democrats, as did his belief that terror suspects should be not be represented by "taxpayer-funded" lawyers in US courtrooms.

He has regularly upset gay activists, but claims this is unfair because he favours civil unions but not gay marriages. His stance, he says, is the same as that of Barack Obama.

Brown says he is basically in favour of abortion rights, although against the procedure called "partial-birth" abortion and strongly in favour of parental consent.

In 2006 he supported healthcare reforms in Massachusetts that bear some resemblance to the Senate bill passed before Christmas, but has pledged to oppose Obama's reforms in Congress, saying they are too costly and would interfere with his state's arrangements.

"One thing is clear – voters do not want the trillion-dollar healthcare bill that is being forced on the American people," he said.

Months ago he promised that: "I'm going to be the only person down there [in Washington] who is going to be the independent voter and thinker."