Fox News on Wednesday added the former Republican Senator, Scott Brown, to its contributor ranks, two weeks after Mr. Brown decided against another run for a Senate seat in Massachusetts.
Mr. Brown will make his debut as a paid pundit on Wednesday night’s edition of “Hannity,†the channel’s 9 p.m. program. “I am looking forward to commenting on the issues of the day and challenging our elected officials to put our country’s needs first instead of their own partisan interests,†Mr. Brown said in a statement.
Politico reported last week that Mr. Brown was in talks with the network. His hiring is the latest in a series of contributor changes Fox has made this winter; ast month the network renewed Karl Rove’s contract and parted ways with Sarah Palin and earlier this month it declined to renew Dick Morris’s contract.
Mr. Brown became something of a hero to Republicans in 2010 when he won a special election for the seat formerly held by Edward M. Kennedy, thereby becoming the first Republican Senator to represent Massachusetts since 1972. But his time in the Senate was brief: he lost to a Democrat, Elizabeth Warren, last November.
Another Senate seat in the state opened up when John Kerry was nominated to be Secretary of State, but on Feb. 1 Mr. Brown said he would not seek that seat.
He could instead seek the Massachusetts governorship in 2014, but for now he’ll appear pretty much exclusivel! y on Fox, a powerful platform for anyone in the Republican party.
It’s not exactly a parallel, but on Tuesday, Fox’s competitor on the left, MSNBC, added a contributor to its ranks as well: Robert Gibbs, the former White House press secretary and a close confidant of President Obama’s. Mr. Gibbs will be a paid pundit for both MSNBC and its parent network NBC.
