As a wise parrot once said, I could have a heart attack and die from not surprise over the results.

Now, to address pieces of business old and new. The old business: after last week’s issue I heard from a few people who wondered why Stephen G. Pagliuca and Alan A. Khazei got the full interview treatment while everyone else got mini-profiles.

It’s very simple: if they bothered to return my phone calls and made time for me, they got interviewed; if they blew me off, they didn’t.

The exception to this rule is Sen. Brown. By mutual agreement we’d planned to get together after the primary election since, at the time, he was the only Republican running — then Jack E. Robinson popped up at the 11th hour. After speaking with him about this, he said he was cool following our original game plan and we will be getting together soon.

Presumptuous, you say? In principle, yes, but it’s hard to hold it against him in light of his opponent; Robinson simply was not a viable candidate, especially when he appears in the race at the 11th hour and apparently goes out of his way not to make himself especially visible.

Or maybe Sen. Brown has a low-grade precognitive ability and predicted Robinson’s defeat, along with AG Coakley’s win; the day before the election, Sen. Brown issued a press release challenging the Democratic candidate to “tell the special interests to stay out of the Massachusetts special election.”

Sen. Brown was referring specifically to a $214,000 radio ad campaign funded by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in support of AG Coakley.

“It reinforces the perception that she is the candidate of the status quo who will protect big government spending programs at the expense of taxpayers,” Sen. Brown said in a press release. “Martha Coakley needs to tell the big government unions to stop trying to buy this election. This election can’t be bought and we should let the people decide without any outside interference. We should be looking out for the people’s interests and not the special interests.”

Uh, Sen. Brown? Question over here. The SEIU represents (as per their website): “nurses, LPNs, doctors, lab technicians, nursing home workers, home care workers…local and state government workers, public school employees, bus drivers, and child care providers…workers who protect and clean commercial and residential office buildings, and…private security officers and public safety personnel.”

Are you saying the SEIU is a big government union – slash – special interest and not looking out for “people’s interests”? They seem pretty people-interest-oriented to me. Just sayin’.

Follow-up question: will you be returning the $1,000 donation from the United Services Automobile Association Employee PAC, which represents employees of the USAA, which provides insurance and financial services to military personnel? Or the $4,500 from Mitt Romney’s “Free and Strong America PAC,” which supports candidates who conform to an arch-conservative platform? Or are those not big government unions and/or special interests?

And what about the PAC money you received in your 2008 state senatorial campaign? Will you be returning any donations from the PACs representing Bank of America, the Mass. Credit Union League, the FMR LLC (Fidelity), MA Correction Officers Federated Union, the MBTA Police Association, the Association of Builders and Contractors, the Fraternal Order of Police, Insurance Agents and Brokers of Massachusetts, the Mass. Association of Realtors, the Mass. Hospital Association…

Again: just sayin’.

(FYI: the above lists provided courtesy of, respectively, the Federal Election Commission and the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance.)

Now, I’m not trying to insinuate that AG Coakey’s campaign is free of PAC influence because it sure ain’t – 27 PAC donations and counting! – but if Sen. Brown is going to play the “refuse special interests money” card, he should play by the same rules.

Political news and announcements may be sent to Michael Bailey, Region editor and senior political reporter, at bailey@capenews.net

Yeah, I know it’s a primary election held at a weird time of year, but c’mon, people. If you’re reading this and you didn’t vote, I am officially revoking your right to crab about anything the eventual winner of the election does once he or she gets to the US Senate.

And that’s the new question: who will voters send to the Senate next month? Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley or State Senator Scott Brown (R – Wrentham)?

Before I weigh in on that, let’s look at the primary race and how Coakley and Brown got their wins.

Well, with Brown it’s an easy answer: Jack E. Robinson sucks as a candidate. Sorry, Jack E., but it’s true; you popped up about a month before the election, then didn’t do a whole heck of a lot to promote yourself. You waste space on the ballot every time you half-heartedly run for something. Next time, get serious or get out of the way.

Coakley benefited from several factors, only some of which were within her control. Frankly, her ideas didn’t stand out in any huge way from Congressman Mike Capuano’s, Alan Khazei’s, or Steve Pagliuca’s, so I think it’s not unfair to say that she got by on superior name recognition born of a strong grass roots campaign, her mostly positive track record as AG, the fact that she wasn’t part of a federal government structure that has spent much of the year spinning its wheels and getting bogged down in pointless in-fighting (especially among the Dems), and her very disciplined presentation.

(That latter point, which was a plus in the primaries, may be a drawback from here on out, but I’ll get to that in a bit.)

That she was the sole female in the race? I think that heightened her visibility, but it’s tough to say whether it crossed the fine line into swaying voters…let’s just say it didn’t hurt her.

Capuano sank himself by playing the Ted Kennedy card as hard as he did. Perhaps he was trying to appeal to voters who liked Kennedy — and they are many — but instead he came across as a wannabe Kennedy carbon copy at a time when people are kind of tired of the same-old same-old.

Khazei’s story is lamentable. Of the four Dems I believe his desire to serve the public was the most sincere and selfless, but he showed his political inexperience by failing to get his message out early and often. He made a decent showing in the final weeks of the campaign — enough to barely surpass at the polls Steve Pagliuca, who came out of the gate at a respectable gallop — but it was too little too late. I for one would like to see Khazei regroup and take another shot, if not for this office in 2012 then for another major elected office.

Pagliuca, as mentioned above, started strong but couldn’t keep the momentum up, and time eventually proved his enemy. The more people got to know him, the more he came across as a businessman dabbling in politics rather than a serious candidate. And really, wheeling out a Celtics championship trophy during your later campaign stops just smacks of desperation.

So, now we come to January’s Big Game, and I think most would agree that Coakley has the edge in a state that, despite the fact more than half of its voters are unenrolled, is still very blue. She also has the advantage of greater exposure; Brown has been pounding the pavement a lot, but the limp GOP primary did him no favors as the Boston media’s spotlight has been solidly on the Democrats — therefore on Coakley — for months.

Brown is doing himself a disservice with some of the stuff he’s tossed out in his opening salvos against Coakley. On Monday he threw down what has become a standard gauntlet for whoever has less money to blow on a campaign: the challenge to refrain from accepting special interest money. Yeah, that old chestnut.

The Brown campaign issued the challenge earlier this week in response to an SEIU-sponsored radio ad series supporting Coakley.  It read, it part: