Vennochi examines role of gender in Coakley’s defeat

Three days after an election that had once seemed almost certain to produce Massachusetts’ first female U.S. senator, Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi wondered about the role of gender in the race.
 
“What if Scott Brown was Sarah Brown?” she asked during the Women Elected Municipal Officials luncheon in Boston, referring to the senator-elect’s victory over Martha Coakley. “Would a basically unknown female state senator with charisma and a pick-up truck be taken seriously as a candidate for U.S. Senate?”
 
Alluding to Brown’s having once posed for Cosmopolitan magazine, Vennochi continued, “Could that woman beat Martin Coakley, a cool, cerebral prosecutor, especially if Sarah Brown had posed nude in college?”
 
Vennochi suggested that women running for political office continue to be held to higher standards.
 
Vennochi acknowledged that she, like most political observers, “missed the story right before my eyes” as Brown’s campaign began picking up momentum en route to victory over Coakley, the state’s attorney general, on Jan. 19.
 
It was not until she attended a New Year’s Eve party in Melrose, Vennochi said, that she began to sense that Brown might have a chance. It was at the party that she heard about the television ad that compared Brown to John F. Kennedy.
 
“My neighbors, who were a mixture of Republicans and Democrats and independents, asked me what I thought,” Vennochi recalled. “I said I thought it was interesting and I started calling the usual suspects [political analysts and strategists]. The usual wise guys just laughed, and said, ‘Joan, no one is ever going to confuse Scott Brown with J.F.K.’
 
“But every time I would turn on the TV, there was this man, he was driving a pickup truck. He was pretty good looking. … He was smiling, he was friendly. You couldn’t get away from him.
 
“Meanwhile, the Coakley campaign seemed to have gone underground,” Vennochi said. “And all of a sudden she came out with ads that were horrific.”
 
In the campaign’s final days, Coakley inadvertently suggested that former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, a Brown supporter, was a New York Yankees’ fan.
 
At that point, Vennochi said, “I really knew she was in trouble, because my 15-year-old daughter, who keeps investing her heart in these female candidates, said, ‘Mom, how could she say that?’
 
“And my son, who is 20 and into voting, said he didn’t like the sound of her voice. And my husband was mumbling about [Coakley’s remarks on] Afghanistan.”