JAN. 19: Republican Scott Brown wins the special election in Massachusetts.
The year began with a monumental upset. Little-known Republican state Sen. Scott Brown shocked the pundit elite and rocked the political establishment by upsetting Democrat Martha Coakley in a special election to replace the late Ted Kennedy, the lion of American liberalism. Coakley was so certain of victory that she took time off from campaigning to celebrate the holidays. Bad idea.
Brown, right, a truck-driving lawyer and an independent-minded Republican, put together a coalition of blue-collar Democrats, suburban independents and Tea Party conservatives to win a Senate seat that Democrats had never expected to even be at risk. It was a sign of things to come.
JAN. 21: The Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case.
A bitterly divided U.S. Supreme Court decided, 5-4, that corporations, like individuals, have “free speech” rights. The majority in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission opened the door to unlimited and undisclosed contributions by American corporations, unions and individuals designed to influence elections. The result has been a flood of special-interest money — almost all of it masked by innocuous-sounding political committee names. Republicans have been the beneficiaries by a ratio of more than 5-to-1. The ruling had the immediate consequence of erasing the Democratic Party’s financial edge in 2010.
MARCH 2: Rick Perry routs Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Republican primary for Texas governor.
Texas Republicans delivered the first electoral repudiation of a powerful, veteran Washington insider. Gubernatorial contender Kay Bailey Hutchison had a 17-year record as an effective legislator, and she garnered endorsements from influential Republicans such as former President George H.W. Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey.
But she badly miscalculated the anti-Washington sentiment in Middle America, particularly among the conservative grass roots of the Republican Party. Gov. Rick Perry breezed to victory. Hutchison was the first of more than a dozen Washington lawmakers to fall before the primary season ended.
MARCH 21: The House gives final approval to sweeping health care reform.
For weeks before President Barack Obama signed the Democratic health-reform package into law, White House spinners had insisted that public opinion would reverse — and support — the president’s accomplishment after it passed, when they learned how they would benefit. But polls actually revealed a decline in public support.
APRIL 20: The Deepwater Horizon explodes off the coast of Louisiana.
The explosion in the Gulf of Mexico caused the biggest oil spill in U.S. history and created a backlash against both BP and the federal government. President Obama’s rating for leadership slid in the months following as many Americans considered the government response slow, ineffective or controlled by the polluter.
