Scott Brown: Shoplifting Teen, Cosmo Centerfold, Kennedy Seat Upset

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Scott Brown grew up in Wakefield, Massachusetts, after his parents divorced when he was one, and at 13 or 14 he stood before Judge Samuel Zoll in Salem for shoplifting record albums. Instead of detention, Zoll ordered a 1,500 word essay on how his siblings would feel watching him play basketball in jail, a moment Brown credited with ending his stealing. He earned a history degree at Tufts, attended Boston College Law School, and joined the Massachusetts Army National Guard at 19, inspired by its rescues during the blizzard of 1978; he served 35 years and rose to colonel. In 1982, at 22, he won Cosmopolitan's America's Sexiest Man contest after a diet of three cans of tuna a day, putting the $1,000 fee toward tuition.

He climbed from property assessor in Wrentham in 1992 to the state House in 1998 and the state Senate in 2004, where he was one of five Republicans among 40 senators and wrote a 2007 law helping veterans claim a $1,000 welcome home bonus. In January 2010 he won the special election for Ted Kennedy's seat over Martha Coakley, campaigning in a pickup truck with more than 200,000 miles and calling it the people's seat. In the Senate he coauthored the STOCK Act with Kirsten Gillibrand, then lost to Elizabeth Warren in 2012 and to Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire in 2014, 51 to 48 percent.

• When a late Coakley ad attacked his record on emergency contraception, his daughter Ayla, an American Idol semifinalist, called it a lie on camera.
• His campaign raised $1.3 million in 24 hours and about $5 million within days.
• In February 2016 he became the first current or former senator to endorse Donald Trump.
• Confirmed 94 to 4 as ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa, he gave the New Zealand prime minister a New England Patriots jersey.
• After a brief 2021 stint as dean of New England Law Boston, he lost the September 8, 2026, New Hampshire Senate primary to John E. Sununu.