Coakley Struggles Against Enthusiasm For Brown; Backlash On Health Care Gives Lead To Republican

January 19, 2010 Tuesday
By Joseph Curl THE WASHINGTON TIMES

FRAMINGHAM, Mass.
A discernible "enthusiasm gap" has emerged in Massachusetts ahead of Tuesday's Senate special election, leaving Democrat Martha Coakley wheezing as Republican Scott Brown races toward the finish line, powered by passionate crowds enraged at President Obama's health care plans.

Last-minute polls showed Mr. Brown, a state senator, grabbing a lead over Ms. Coakley, the state's attorney general, in a race that both sides now say will determine whether Mr. Obama can carry through on his nascent agenda.

"Right now, people are disgusted at the health care bill and how it's going and why it's going that way, the carve-outs, the special exceptions. We can do better," Mr. Brown said as he shook hands outside a Boston Bruins hockey game.

The election to fill the seat of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who died last summer, is coming down to whether the Democratic machine he created will turn out to vote and overcome anger at the health care bill Kennedy would have been pushing were he still alive.

"Every vote matters, every voice matters," Mr. Obama said in a new TV ad for Ms. Coakley.

In a last-minute appeal that showed the president campaigning with Ms. Coakley a day earlier, Mr. Obama declares: "We need you on Tuesday."

But in the run-up to voting, anger appears to be winning.

Hours before a last-day rally for Ms. Coakley, workers pulled a long drape across midcourt at a middle school gymnasium in Framingham, a bedroom community 20 miles west of Boston. The curtain cut the small space in half, but the gym was still only a quarter full, with just a couple of hundred people standing near a podium. Thirty minutes before the event, workers slid back into place a stack of bleachers to prevent a huge gap in front of the candidate.

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