Mann, an expert in American legal history, has played a low-key role in Warren's U.S. Senate campaign; Mann says he never envisioned being in the public eye.
Harvard Law School Professor Bruce Mann, the husband of Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, speaks to Linda Cornell, president of the Visiting Nurses Assisted Living Community in Somerville, at a campaign stop there on Oct. 12, 2012.SOMERVILLE — It was hardly the typical introduction for a Harvard Law School professor, award-winning scholarly author and fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society. “This is Elizabeth Warren’s husband,” said Linda Cornell, president of the Visiting Nurses Assisted Living Community in Somerville, as she took Bruce Mann from table to table while the community’s seniors were eating lunch.
It didn’t faze the soft-spoken Mann. “I’m usually introduced as Elizabeth’s husband, which has been fine with me,” Mann told the residents as he started his speech praising the Democratic Senate candidate’s commitment to Social Security and Medicare.
Warren, 63, and Mann, 62, – both Harvard Law School professors – have been married for 32 years. Unlike television reporter Gail Huff, the wife of Republican U.S. Sen. Scott Brown who took a leave of absence to campaign full time, Mann has played a low-key role in Warren’s campaign. Early on, Mann attended several Democratic caucuses and campaigned alongside Warren, “tagging along,” as he puts it, at parades and ice cream socials. Now, he does his own events, which are only rarely advertised to the press. Mann continues working at Harvard, teaching a seminar this semester in American legal history, focused on law, economy and society during the American revolutionary period.
Asked if he ever envisioned being in the public eye, Mann responded emphatically, “Oh God no. Never. We have each had academic careers for roughly 35 years. This is not something we ever aimed for, ever thought about, ever expected.”
In one of the closest and most high-profile Senate races in the country, Brown has used his wife to reach out to female voters and address criticism of his record on women’s issues. He ran campaign ads featuring Huff that highlight his role as a husband and father, taking care of his family and even doing laundry. But Mann’s role may be more complicated.
10-10-12 - Springfield - Republican staff photo by Dave Roback- Senate debate between Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown at Springfield Symphony Hall. THis is Elizabeth Warren and her husband Bruce Mann after the debate.Peter Ubertaccio, associate professor of political science and director of the Martin Institute at Stonehill College, said the role of a candidate’s husband is less well-defined than that of a wife. Massachusetts does not have a history of electing female candidates – Warren could be the state’s first female senator. “When the candidate is a woman, we haven’t, as a society, quite figured out the role of political spouses when it’s a man,” Ubertaccio said.
Mann said he thinks people are more accustomed to seeing male candidates with their wives supporting them. “How that translates into what the expectations are, I just don’t know,” Mann said.
(For the record, Warren, like Brown, does the laundry at home. Mann does the cooking.)
Jennifer Lawless, director of the Women and Politics Institute at American University’s School of Public Affairs, said the role of any spouse is twofold. “The first thing that person has to do is vouch for the personal integrity of the candidate,” Lawless said. Secondly, a spouse can serve as the most effective surrogate in the campaign, essentially allowing a candidate to be in two places at once.
Mann says he sees his role as helping people make the personal connection they need to support Warren. “They realize that Elizabeth can’t be everywhere at once. When I talk to them, they seem pleased to see someone who’s known Elizabeth a very long time, who knows her very well and can talk about her and give them a bit of a sense of what kind of person she is,” Mann told The Republican/MassLive.com.
Mann and Warren met at a conference for law professors in Florida. It was the first marriage for Mann, the second for Warren, who was divorced and had two children – Amelia and Alex – with her first husband. They now have three grandchildren. Mann was born in Cambridge, earned a bachelor’s degree from Brown University and a law degree from Yale University. He has taught at the University of Connecticut School of Law, Washington University in St. Louis and elsewhere. He took a job at the University of Pennsylvania in 1987, and for years commuted between Boston and Pennsylvania, until he was hired by Harvard in 2006.
While Warren is a national expert on bankruptcy, Mann has his own strong reputation in the field of American legal history. Mann is the current president of the American Society for Legal History. His 2002 book "Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence" won several awards.
Mary Sarah Bilder, a law professor at Boston College, said the book was groundbreaking in its focus on ordinary people, their economic circumstances and the law. “Before him, I think people had thought debtors and debt weren’t that interesting to write on,” Bilder said. “Now there are lots of people who work in that area, about how law affected ordinary people’s economic status and problems.”
Colleagues say Mann is not the type who would have sought the public eye. Bilder, who is on the board of directors of the American Society for Legal History, described Mann as a team player who respects good scholarship and is attentive to detail.
Bilder said she did not know Mann’s politics before Warren ran for the Senate. “He’s a quiet person, he tends to be a listener,” Bilder said. “He’s the last person I could imagine would ever want any kind of attention, other than it’s always nice to win a prize recognizing your work.”
Hendrik Hartog, a professor of history at Princeton University who has known Mann for decades, said Mann is “just one of these people who you want on every committee because he’s got great judgment, he’s unflappable, he gets to the point, he doesn’t waste time.”
Hartog said Mann is a leading figure among legal historians, but he doubts Mann ever planned to be in such a public political position. “He seems to like his life as a scholar and as a law professor,” Hartog said.
Mann acknowledges that the race has been an adjustment.
“We can’t go out without Elizabeth being recognized, people coming up and greeting her, shaking hands, encouraging her,” Mann said. “There’s no time to go to movies anymore, so we try to catch up with what we can when the DVDs come out. And we are completely at the mercy of our schedulers, which for two compulsive people I think we’ve done rather well giving our lives over to others.”
But Mann said the minor inconvenience has been worth it. “The issues are important, what’s at stake is important and Elizabeth has a real contribution to make,” Mann said. “These are the issues she has worked on, thought about deeply for decades.”