Timing is everything: The Herald on Scott Brown, pre-truck--updated!

Today's Boston Herald cover story takes a fascinating look at Scott Brown's youthful modeling career--a period Brown would apparently rather not discuss, and in which he didn't yet have the average-Joe-with-a-truck persona that propelled him into US Senate. Writes Jill Radsken:

[P]hotographer Carolyn Ross...photographed Brown for Jordan Marsh and Work Guard, a workwear company. “He had a good look - dark hair and handsome,” she said.

Ross lost track of Brown, but re-enountered him last year at a charity event. She had won a Boston-themed basket in a silent auction that included a lunch date with then-state Sen. Brown. But when her husband called to arrange the get-together, his assistant seemed reluctant to acknowledge Brown’s pin-up past.

“The assistant told me, ‘Scott Brown doesn’t know your wife and never modeled,’ ” Ross’ husband said.

“I was floored. His assistant said, ‘You must be mistaking him for someone else....'"

Most photographers who worked with him recalled Brown as “ordinary” and “nondescript,” but fellow model Jake Tedaldi remembers him as a “a little full of himself.”

“Some people are genuine and others are not,” said Tedaldi, now a veterinarian. “He was not the kind of person who I would want to have my back.”

Tedaldi recalled several catalog shoots he did with Brown in Boston’s Leather District. He also remembers getting a lift from Brown, who in those days was driving a beat-up white Mercedes sedan, not a macho pickup truck.

Given how key Brown's "regular guy" persona was to his victory, here's an interesting question to ponder: if the Herald had delved into Brown's modeling, Mercedes-driving days before the election, instead of one week after it, would it have had any effect on the outcome?

I've contacted Herald editor Kevin Convey to see if the paper considered tackling this subject * prior to the election; if he responds, I'll post an update here.

Cross-posted at Beat the Press.

*NOTE: I originally wrote that I'd asked Convey if the Herald considered "running this piece" before the election, which could be read as implying that the piece was written and then held. I have no reason to think that's the case.