The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee says Ed Markey's victory in Massachusetts over Gabriel Gomez proves there won't be anymore Scott Browns. In a memo provided exclusively to BuzzFeed DSCC executive director Guy Cecil says that "Democrats must never take a race for granted" and that their win means Republicans can't expand their Senate map into blue or purple states.
"The lesson from Scott Brown's accidental win in 2010 was that Democrats must never take a race for granted. Months before Senator John Kerry resigned to become Secretary of State, the DSCC began preparing for a likely special election in Massachusetts," Cecil writes. "It's unclear whether Republicans in Washington intended to compete in this race and truly let an opportunity slip away, or they were just blowing smoke the whole time. Either way, Democrats came together at the local and national level, and executed a campaign plan to ensure victory."
Cecil says that Democrats at the national level acted quickly to recruit and get behind a candidate, coalescing around Ed Markey in a primary that included two long-time Massachusetts Congressmen. He adds that Republicans "fumbled" the race from the start, beginning their campaign around Gomez with a serious of bad news headlines. Spending from the DSCC made it impossible for Republicans to define Ed Markey to voters on their own terms, he says.
Cecil concludes by saying the loss is a bad omen for Republican efforts to expand their Senate map into purple or even blue states and that they fail to compete states beyond those won by Mitt Romney in the 2012 election.
"Not only are Republicans facing the prospect of divisive primaries in nearly all of the red states, their failure to compete even in states where Romney was competitive, such as Colorado, Virginia, and New Hampshire, has dramatically shrunk the Senate map," Cecil says.
The full memo has been posted below.