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Coakley, Brown the buzz at MLK breakfast

By Peter Schworm, Globe Staff

 

Racing toward the finish line in an unexpectedly close contest that has drawn national attention, Democrat Martha Coakley and Republican Scott Brown both attended this morning's annual breakfast honoring the life and work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

With more than 1,000 people in attendance at Boston's Hynes Convention Center, Coakley entered the room to a light smattering of applause and took her place at the head table. Brown arrived a bit later and quietly took his seat at a table on the main floor.

A bit later, the two candidates took the opportunity to do some 11th-hour politicking, glad-handing attendees and posing for pictures. Coakley went from table to table through a sea of television cameras and promised to "work the vote" until the last minute.

"We're going to see this through," Coakley, the state's attorney general, told one guest.

Just days ago, that statement would have been taken as fact. But with polls now showing Coakley and Brown neck and neck, Tuesday's election is very much up for grabs. The surge by Brown, until recently a relatively little-known state senator, has been so alarming to Democrats that President Obama put his political capital on the line to visit the state Saturday, telling voters he needed leaders like Coakley by his side to move his agenda forward.

Coakley, in her remarks at the breakfast, linked her candidacy to the legacy of King and Edward M. Kennedy. "If you send me to the Senate, I will be guided by those values," she said. "It's not about me anymore. It never was. It's what Martin Luther King stood for. It's what Ted Kennedy stood for."

She said King would have been on the "front lines" fighting for health care "not as a privilege but as a right, as Senator Kennedy often said."

And in a veiled criticism of Brown, Coakley said she understood that "people are frustrated and angry," but said there were no "easy answer to the tough questions.

Brown did not speak from the dais. When not circulating in the room between speakers, he sat near the back, at Table 85. He was a guest of Jane C. Edmonds, a former chair of the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, who called herself ''a Brown Democrat.''

Brown stuck around for a talk by Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino in which he urged the crowd to vote Tuesday to continue Obama's agenda. Brown left, followed by a horde of TV cameras, before King's son, Martin Luther King III, told the crowd to do the same thing. "The eyes of the nation are watching Massachusetts,'' King said.

After leaving the breakfast, Brown blasted Coakley for using her appearance for "politicking."

"I didn't realize that this was a rally for Martha. And I thought it was inappropriate that she started asking for votes," Brown told reporters, according to State House News Service.

Both Coakley and Brown have a full plate of events around the state today, as they press for any undecided voters still out there.

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