Published: January 20, 2010

This article is by Adam Nagourney, Jeff Zeleny, Kate Zernike and Michael Cooper.

BOSTON — The e-mail message from a Massachusetts supporter to one of the leaders of the Tea Party movement arrived in early December. The state was holding a special election to fill the seat held by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, it said, and conditions were ripe for a conservative ambush: an Election Day in the dead of winter with the turnout certain to be low.

“To be honest, we kind of looked at it and said, this is a long shot,” said Brendan Steinhauser, the director of state campaigns for FreedomWorks, which has become an umbrella for Tea Party groups. But the group was impressed by the determination of organizers in this decidedly Democratic state and was intrigued by the notion that this could be a way to effectively derail federal health care legislation.

And so FreedomWorks sent out a query to dozens of its best organizers across the country. Within days, the clamoring response made clear that what seemed improbable suddenly seemed very attainable; within weeks, the Tea Party movement had established a beachhead in Mr. Kennedy’s home state.

While conservatives quietly mobilized behind a state senator, Scott Brown, to fill the seat occupied by Mr. Kennedy for nearly 47 years, Democrats paid but slight attention to a contest that by every indication and by history should have been nothing to worry about.

Martha Coakley, the attorney general and Democratic Party candidate, barely campaigned in the weeks after winning her primary on Dec. 8.

The vastly different responses of the two parties contributed to a confluence of events that fundamentally altered the course of what should have been a routine special election.

A tale of two campaigns

Timeline - A percolating Candidacy

More . . .

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Great strategy and execution!