It’s a Thursday night in late July, and Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown — lead singer of Scott Brown and the Diplomats — is belting out classic rock covers on a stage at Wally’s, a seaside bar in Hampton, New Hampshire. Brown is 6-foot-2 and angular. He’s 67, but his biceps bulge from a sleeveless denim vest. His jeans are tight, his voice is deep. “I feel like makin’ love,” he sings, “feel like makin’ love … to … you.”
His words are, it seems, a siren call to the smattering of mostly middle-aged women who’ve migrated from the bar toward the stage, to dance in their beach sandals. “The more you drink, the better we sound,” Brown tells them — and then dives into a cover of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.”
During a break, I meet Elizabeth Furbush, a New Hampshire real estate agent whose Scott Brown and the Diplomats T-shirt is Sharpie-signed by the man himself. “Rock On,” reads the looping script. “He’s so down to earth,” Furbush gushes. “He’s not one of those uppity, better-than-you-type politicians.”