BOSTON (AP) — The race for a Senate seat once held by John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, John F. Kennedy and "liberal lion" Edward M. Kennedy is shaping up as a battle of relative national unknowns, led by a state Democratic insider and a Republican lawmaker perhaps best known as a male centerfold and father of an "American Idol" contestant.
It should be a monumental race, given that the winner will replace a man President Barack Obama eulogized as "the greatest legislator of our time." But the campaign, whose top contenders will be decided in Tuesday's special primary election, has been curiously low on wattage.
"I won't say I'm surprised, but I'm disappointed," said Marc Landy, a political science professor at Boston College. "Part of it comes from having an election at this awkward time. Election Day has its own dignity; it's an occasion. Right now, it's off season. That takes away a lot of the luster."
Attorney General Martha Coakley leads the field among Ted Kennedy's fellow Democrats. The 56-year-old has targeted women and abortion rights supporters even while asking the broader electorate to make a gender-blind evaluation of her résumé that includes stints as a federal prosecutor, district attorney and, since 2007, the state's top law-enforcement officer.
The likely Republican nominee, state Sen. Scott Brown, is an attorney, lieutenant colonel in the Army National Guard and triathlete whose personal life has proved ripe for tabloid fodder. Brown's wife is a Boston TV reporter who once appeared in a bikini in a music video. His elder daughter, Ayla, was a semifinalist in the 2006 "Idol" televised talent show.
The general election between the two party nominees will be Jan. 19. The seat has been held on an interim basis by Paul G. Kirk Jr., the former Democratic National Committee chairman.
When Kennedy died in August at age 77 of brain cancer, local politicos projected a battle royale to succeed him. But one by one, the most likely inheritors of the Camelot legacy stepped aside.
Kennedy's widow, Vicki, proclaimed, "There's only one Sen. Kennedy," and former Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II — the son of the late Robert F. Kennedy — said the best way for him to contribute was to remain atop his nonprofit energy company.
On the Democratic side, Coakley is trailed in polls by Congressman Michael Capuano of Somerville, nonprofit co-founder Alan Khazei and Boston Celtics co-owner Stephen Pagliuca.
Capuano, a six-term congressman, has taken the unusual tack of campaigning as a Washington insider. He is employing a thread-the-needle strategy of targeting the relatively small crowd of party loyalists expected to vote in the primary, prompting Coakley to move even further to the left.
On the Republican side, Brown is leading businessman and attorney Jack E. Robinson.
Robinson, 49, has become a perennial candidate after unsuccessful Senate, House and secretary of state campaigns. His 2000 campaign nose-dived after he issued a pre-emptive report listing a series of legal problems. Landy thinks the GOP nominee could inject some vigor into the general election race, as Brown was already doing Thursday when he criticized Coakley for saying she was open to a war tax to pay for a troop increase in Afghanistan.
"When the Bush administration was in and the (Iraq) war dominated, it was hard for a Republican to say anything that voters here wanted to hear," Landy said. "This administration has taken positions that are very unpopular. That means Scott Brown will have the ear of the voters."
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Glen Johnson is an Associated Press political writer.
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