Too much Democratic power, too much spending, too many special interests spur Brown backers

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Too much Dem power, spending spurs Brown backers

FITCHBURG, Mass. — John Triolo, a 38-year-old retail sales manager, is like more than half the voters in “true-blue Democratic” Massachusetts: an independent.

Triolo supported Barack Obama’s bid for the presidency because he wanted change. But Tuesday, in a referendum on Obama’s legislative agenda, Triolo voted for upstart Republican Scott Brown, helping to carry Brown to victory over Democrat Martha Coakley for the Senate seat held by Democrat Edward M. Kennedy for 47 years.

“I wanted change,” Triolo said of Obama. “I thought he’d bring it to us, but I just don’t like the direction that he’s heading.”

Here in what has stood up as a reliably Democratic state, Coakley, 56, the state’s attorney general, was seen as an early shoo-in after soundly defeating three primary challengers. But the 50-year-old Brown, a state senator, used his everyman image and message of stopping Obama’s agenda to tap into voter exasperation and gain support among independents.

Karla Bunch, 49, a married school teacher who is registered as unenrolled, said she voted for Brown because she was worried about spending.

“I think it’s time for the country, for the taxpayers, to take back their money,” said Bunch, of Fitchburg. “It’s not a vote against the president. It’s a vote because of the economy … what is happening to hardworking people across the United States.”

Jim Mirick, a retired U.S. Army staff sergeant and telecommunications worker, was never politically active before this fall. An independent-leaning Republican, he said he’d always been turned off by the partisan fighting and focused instead on his military duties in Iraq, Germany, Panama, South Korea and the many other locations he was sent over the years before retiring in 2002.

Yet Tuesday, the 47-year-old impulsively accepted a Brown supporter’s request to don a sandwich board with Scott Brown campaign signs and stand in the snow outside his Worcester polling place.

“This health care issue has gotten out of control,” he said. “There’s too many special interests in the bill. I’m for health care reform, but it needs to be done in a clean way, and that’s not what I’m seeing.”

Griffin Smith, a 24-year-old teacher, said his vote for Brown was not a vote against Obama, even though he supported him a year ago November.

“The Democrats have the White House. The Democrats have the Senate, as well,” he said. “I would like to have more of a checks-and-balance system.”

Rich Theg, 46, of Dartmouth, a sales manager for a chemical company, is a registered Republican but likes some of Obama’s ideas, including health care for all. But he said Obama’s plans are going too far and will be too expensive.

“I never would have thought that this would ever be close in Massachusetts, but I do believe it’s following a national trend of people being less than satisfied about the size of some of the things being put together,” he said.

Associated Press writers Michelle R. Smith in New Bedford, Stephanie Reitz in Springfield and Steve LeBlanc in Peabody contributed to this report.