On the Sunday after Christmas, the senior members

On the Sunday after Christmas, the senior members of Mr. Brown’s aion gold campaign gathered at his headquarters in Needham. It was a dead time of year, politically. Mr. Brown did not have a lot of money. Ms. Coakley’s strategy seemed clear: to coast to victory with a quick under-the-radar campaign. Democrats in Massachusetts and Washington were enjoying the holiday — she was resting up; the president’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, was in India; Mr. Obama was in Hawaii — and few were aion kinah paying attention to the long-shot state senator from Massachusetts.

By contrast, the National Republican Senatorial Committee zeroed in on the race — and the possibility to seize a victory — weeks before the aion kina Democratic committee realized its candidate was in real trouble. A poll conducted for Republicans on Dec. 16 showed that Mr. Brown was within 13 percentage points of Ms. Coakley and trailing by only 3 percentage points among voters who said they definitely intended to vote.

“It almost seemed too good to be true,” said aion power leveling Senator John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the committee.