Former Trump ambassador eyes Senate return, potentially setting up key swing state campaign rematch

RYE, NH – EXCLUSIVE – Scott Brown is on the move.

A former senator from neighboring Massachusetts and the 2014 Republican Senate candidate in New Hampshire, who later served four years as the US ambassador to New Zealand in Trump’s president-elect of the first administration, is seriously considering a bid to return to Congress in 2026.

If Brown goes ahead and launches a campaign in the coming months, it could potentially lead to a high-profile rematch with Democrats His. Jeanne Shaheen, in what would likely be a competitive and expensive Senate showdown in a key swing state.

Brown, 65, who has competed in nine triathlons this year and averages about 40-50 gigs a year as lead singer and guitarist for the rock group Scott Brown and the Diplomats, is doing more than just thinking about running back to the Senate.

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He has been meeting with various Republican and conservative groups in recent weeks in New Hampshire.

Brown said in a nationally exclusive interview with Fox News Digital that he’s doing his “due diligence, meeting with everybody and everybody. So you’re going to see me a lot, whether it’s parades, triathlons, my rock band, meetings and getting out and really learn.”

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And Brown is targeting New Hampshire’s all-Democrat congressional delegation.

“The thing that really annoys me is how they actually covered up [President] Joe Biden over the last four years, what they did or didn’t do on the border, what they did and didn’t do on inflation, and they’re just completely out of touch with what we want here in New Hampshire. And the more I think about it, I think we can do better,” Brown asserts.

Brown made headlines in 2010 when the then-state senator in the blue state of Massachusetts won a special Elections for the US Senate to serve out the remainder of the term of late longtime Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy.

After losing re-election in 2012 to current Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Brown eventually moved to New Hampshire, the state where he spent the first years of his childhood and where his family traces its roots back to colonial times. A few months later, he launched a campaign for the Senate and narrowly lost to Shaheen in the 2014 election.

After hosting nearly every Republican presidential candidate in the 2016 cycle at speaking events he called “No BS backyard BBQs,” Brown ended up endorsing Trump in the weeks leading up to New Hampshire’s primary. After Trump was elected president, he nominated Brown to be the US ambassador to New Zealand, where the former senator served for four years.

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Returning to New Hampshire at the end of the first Trump administration, Brown supported his wife, Gail, a former television reporter and anchor, as she ran for Congress in 2022.

And the Browns have also remained politically active in other ways, once again hosting many Republican presidential candidates, as well as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., at their “Backyard BBQs” during the 2024 presidential cycle.

When asked in May 2023 whether he would consider another candidacy for the Senate, Brown told Fox News Digital “of course.”

Now, as Brown considers another run for the Senate, time is not working against him.

Brown stepped in at the end of the 2014 campaign, just seven months before Election Day.

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This time he emphasized: “I have a long runway. Obviously, I didn’t have it the first time, and I will do what I have been doing for almost a decade, going around, meeting with people who participate in the process.”

During his first run for the Senate, which came a few months after he changed his residence to New Hampshire, he repeatedly faced allegations of racketeering.

Last week, a progressive group in New Hampshire took aim at Brown.

Amplify NH claimed in a statement that “the gentleman from Massachusetts is grabbing another shot at power, re-introducing himself as a Senate candidate for New Hampshire.”

Brown says he’s not worried.

“We’ve had a house here for over three decades and we’ve been here full-time for over a decade. So now I think it’s old news.”

And he claimed that New Hampshire’s congressional delegation “votes 100% for Massachusetts.”

While Shaheen cruised to re-election in 2020, winning by roughly 16 points, and Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan won re-election in 2022 by nearly nine points, Senate Republicans are eyeing New Hampshire in 2026 as they aim to expand their coming 53-47 majority. in the assembly hall. New Hampshire, along with Georgia and Michigan, will likely be under attack from Senate Republicans.

Trump lost New Hampshire last month, but has cut his deficit to just three points against Vice President Kamala Harris, compared to a seven-point loss to President Biden in the Granite State in 2020.

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And the GOP kept the open governorship in party hands — former Sen. Kelly Ayotte succeeded longtime Gov. Chris Sununu — while expanding its majorities in the New Hampshire state House and Senate.

Asked if he would like Trump to join him on the Granite State campaign if he decides to run, Brown said “if there’s time, of course.”

Pointing to Trump, Brown said “not only has he obviously helped, nationally, he’s helped here in New Hampshire.”

Shaheen has yet to announce whether he will run for another term in the Senate. That decision will probably come at the beginning of the new year.

Ali Shaheen, a former three-term governor of New Hampshire, takes over next month as the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the first woman to hold one of the two top positions on the powerful committee.

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Shaheen also turns 78 next month.

Asked if age would be a factor in a potential Shaheen-Brown rematch, Brown said he liked Shaheen and greatly appreciated her support during his confirmation as ambassador to New Zealand, but added that “it certainly depends on her”.

“I’m 65 years old. I can’t believe it. I feel like I’m 40. My wife says I act like I’m 12,” he added.