BOSTON — Nearly one year to the day after President Barack Obama was sworn into office as an agent of change, Massachusetts Senate candidates battled to the wire Monday in an election that threatened his agenda and reflected voter frustration with the status quo.
Democrat Martha Coakley and Republican Scott Brown scoured the state for votes on the eve of the special election to succeed the late Edward Kennedy, with the Democrats’ 60- vote Senate supermajority at stake.
The president made one last appeal in a TV ad for Coakley, his words reflecting how much was on the line for Democrats in the face of a surprisingly strong challenge by Brown in a state that hasn’t elected a Republican senator since 1972.
“Every vote matters; every voice matters,” Obama said in the ad that showed him campaigning with Coakley a day earlier. “We need you on Tuesday.”
Obama needs Coakley, the state’s attorney general, to win to deny Republicans the ability to block his initiatives — specifically the nearly complete health care plan — with a filibuster-sustaining 41st GOP vote. A Coakley loss also would be an embarrassment, particularly because Obama has put so much political capital on the line.
A Suffolk University survey taken Saturday and Sunday shows Brown with double-digit leads in three counties identified as bellwethers: Gardner, Fitchburg and Peabody. But internal statewide polls for both sides show a dead heat.
A third candidate in the race, Joseph L. Kennedy, a Libertarian running as an independent who is no relation to Edward Kennedy, said Monday he has been bombarded with e-mails from Brown supporters urging him to drop out and endorse the Republican. But Kennedy, who is polling in the single digits, said he’s staying in.
In the final hours, Democrats were making a play for independent women who have not yet rallied around Coakley, even as she is running to be the state’s first elected female senator. Her campaign organized a conference call Monday with female Massachusetts mayors who said they support her.
Brown was trying to capitalize on his advantage among men. He appeared before a heavily male crowd at a Boston Bruins hockey game.
