ACA Members Help Influence Brown Election

January 25, 2010

Mobilization efforts contribute to Scott Brown’s election victory in Massachusetts.

ACA International and its members played an important role in Scott Brown's (R-Mass.) stunning win in the Massachusetts special election to succeed the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.).

ACA Immediate Past President Jay Gonsalves and fellow New England Collectors Association member David Sands reached out to ACA members and mobilized them to contribute approximately $11,000 to the Brown campaign to assist with its get-out-the-vote efforts. Not only did members send money, but many agencies offered use of their phones as an in-kind contribution to the campaign.

This kind of ACA member mobilization just days before an election is unprecedented. With the very real threat of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency looming in Congress, as well as wholesale changes to a health care system that would affect many credit and collection professionals' livelihoods, ACA members helped the Brown campaign create a groundswell to victory. 

On election night, ACA member Adam Plotkin wrote, “What a huge victory for the industry, and a huge opportunity for ACA. Look how quickly we mobilized and how much money we brought in from all over the country. Seriously, this is awesome. Our members should be extremely proud of how well ACPAC [ACA's political action committee] functioned. Honestly—I am proud just to be a part of it!”

The conventional wisdom had been that the Democrats would host a competitive primary in December 2009, and the party's nominee would cruise to victory in the Jan. 19, 2010, general election. Massachusetts voters hadn't elected a Republican to the Senate since Ed Brooke won re-election to a second term in 1972. Democrats control all 10 congressional seats and every statewide constitutional office, and have overwhelming majorities in both houses of the state legislature. President Obama took 62 percent of the vote in 2008, and according to Gallup, Massachusetts was the most Democratic state in the nation that year based on party self-identification.

Remarkably, Brown carried seven out of 10 congressional districts—including that of Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.)—and ACA members helped make the difference.