Former nude model could win Kennedy’s Senate seat

A former male centrefold could deal President Obama a huge blow on the anniversary of his inauguration by winning one of the safest Democratic seats in the US Senate for the Republicans.
 
Scott Brown, who was once voted 'America's sexiest man' and posed nude for Cosmopolitan, is on course to take the seat in Massachusetts left vacant by the death of Edward Kennedy last year. The state is one of the most liberal in America and a Republican victory would not bode well for Obama ahead of mid-term elections. The last time Massachusetts elected a Republican senator was in 1972.
 
To make matters worse, the seat has great significance for the Democrats. Ted Kennedy won the seat nine times and held it for more than 46 years. Before that his brother, John F Kennedy, held it from 1953 until 1960, only leaving when he became President.
 
Ted Kennedy was one of the first senior Democrats to back Obama for President and was an ardent supporter of the liberal healthcare reforms that he is trying to force through the Senate. If Brown beats the Democratic candidate, Martha Coakley, then Obama will lose his crucial 60-40 super-majority in the Senate, and that could derail the healthcare bill.
 
So important is Tuesday’s vote that Obama himself flew into the state on Sunday to campaign on Coakley's behalf, and  former President Bill Clinton has also taken time out from the Haiti relief effort to visit Massachusetts.
 
"The fact that it's even close is stunning. If [Brown] actually wins, it will be one of the greatest upsets in modern times," the University of Virginia's Larry Sabato told the New York Daily News.
 
The man who could end the Democrat's stranglehold on Massachusetts has a colourful past. Brown is a 50-year-old lawyer and a lieutenant-colonel in the National Guard. He has served on the Massachusetts Senate since 1996, but first rose to prominence at the age of 22 when he won an America's sexiest man contest and posed nude in Cosmopolitan magazine. He told the magazine that he liked "slinky girls" and had no qualms about stripping off to become a centrefold.
 
His rival Coakley has a somewhat less exotic background. She is also a lawyer and her biggest claim to fame is that she acted as lead prosecutor in the trial of British nanny Louise Woodward - who was convicted in 1997 of killing the baby boy she was looking after.
 
Coakley was 31 points ahead in the polls last November but is now trailing Brown. The vote takes place on Tuesday, the day before the anniversary of Obama's inauguration. ·