“Gas up the truck! Gas up the truck!” chanted the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd Tuesday night in a Boston ballroom, cheering U.S. Sen.-elect Scott Brown on to Washington after his victory in Massachusetts over Democrat Martha Coakley. Brown’s truck, which he drove all over the state to meet voters, became emblematic of the Republican’s grassroots, populist campaign.

Stumping for Coakley two days earlier, President Obama made several jabs about the truck, noting that voters should “look under the hood. . . . Forget the truck. Everybody can buy a truck.”

But on Tuesday, 52 percent of Massachusetts voters rebuffed Obama’s appeal and went for Brown, an attorney and part-time judge advocate general officer who has served in the U.S. Army National Guard for 30 years.

Brown, 50, is married to Gail Huff, a television reporter—they have two daughters, Ayla, 21, and Arianna, 19. He’s a member of the Christian Reformed Church of North America. He has held public office since 1995, serving as a selectman in Wrentham, Mass., then in the state House, and then in the state Senate.

For more, read here.