BOSTON (CBS) – President Donald Trump nominated former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown Thursday to be his ambassador to New Zealand. 
 
 JUST IN: Trump nominates former Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) to be his ambassador to New Zealand. — Steven Portnoy (@stevenportnoy) April 20, 2017 
 
 The U.S. Senate will need to confirm the nomination. 
 
 After Trump was elected, Brown had been in the running to be the next Secretary of Veterans Affairs, but the president chose David Shulkin for the post in January. 
 
 Brown has been a political contributor at Fox News. 
 
 He gained national recognition when he managed an upset victory over Martha Coakley in the 2010 U.S. Senate special election race to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat. 
 
 Brown was defeated by Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2012 and then lost a 2014 bid for U.S. Senate in New Hampshire. 
 
 Congrats @SenScottBrown on your nomination for New Zealand Ambassador! You have my support & I'm sure you'll make the people of MA proud. — Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) April 20, 2017 
 
 He endorsed Donald Trump in February 2016 before the New Hampshire Primary. ||||| President Trump announced Thursday he is nominating Scott Brown to serve as ambassador to New Zealand. 
 
 Reports first surfaced in February that Brown, a former Republican senator from Massachusetts, was under consideration to serve in the post. 
 
 Brown was also a rumored pick for Trump's secretary of Veterans Affairs, but the position was ultimately given to David Shulkin, who led the VA's healthcare system during the Obama administration. 
 
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 Brown backed Trump early in his campaign. 
 
 Brown was elected to the Senate a 2010 special election following the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy (D). 
 
 Two years later, he was unseated by Democrat Elizabeth Warren Elizabeth Ann WarrenWarren: Trump should have fired Pruitt ‘28 scandals ago’ Warren fires back at Trump: Don’t ‘obsess over my genes’ Trump: I would offer Warren M to prove her Native American heritage MORE. 
 
 He lost another Senate race in 2014, when he ran in New Hampshire. ||||| Complaints against Brown, who was Donald Trump’s first ambassadorial appointment after coming into office, surfaced after a trip to Samoa 
 
 The US ambassador to New Zealand Scott Brown has admitted he has been investigated over allegations he made inappropriate comments on his inaugural trip to Samoa, of which he is also the US representative. 
 
 Brown told New Zealand media on Wednesday he wanted to address “innuendo and rumour” about his visit to Samoa in July to celebrate 50 years of the peace corps in the country. 
 
 Brown – speaking with his wife, Gail Huff, by his side – confirmed he was the subject of an official administration inquiry by the US state department, which sent investigators to Wellington to look into what took place on the trip. 
 
 Brown said the official complaints related to comments he had made at a party in the Samoan capital, Apia, where he told attendees they looked “beautiful” and could make hundreds of dollars working in the hospitality industry in the US. Brown and Huff said they had “no idea” the comments would be regarded as offensive. 
 
 “I was told by my people that you’re not Scott Brown from New Hampshire any more, you’re an ambassador, and you have to be culturally aware of different cultures and sensitivities,” Brown said. 
 
 “We are in a different culture: even though we all speak English, sometimes when we say one thing it means the complete different thing.” 
 
 Brown went on to say “politics is a blood sport” and there were a lot of people at the event who did not like US president Donald Trump. Brown was Trump’s first ambassadorial appointment after he took office. 
 
 Huff said the “takeaway” from the incident was: “We are going to be very, very careful about what we say and how it’s perceived.” 
 
 The Guardian understands that complaints against Brown came from two serving female members of the peace corps. 
 
 
 
 The Guardian first contacted the US state department in Washington, the US embassy in Wellington and the US high commission in Samoa in August, requesting details of the ambassador’s trip to Samoa and comment on the complaints. All requests have gone unanswered. 
 
 On Wednesday a spokesperson for the US embassy in Wellington said: “Ambassador Brown has nothing to add to the comments he made in this afternoon’s interview.” ||||| CONCORD, N.H. — It would have been a bizarre fantasy five years ago, when he was a little-known state senator from Wrentham. And it would have been hard to fathom two years ago, when he was a US senator from Massachusetts. 
 
 But Tuesday night Scott Brown became the Republican nominee for Senate in New Hampshire and will now face the incumbent, Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, in what has already become a competitive and bitterly contested race that has drawn millions of dollars in attack ads from outside groups. 
 
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 Brown comfortably dispatched several party rivals, including his two most serious opponents, former state senator Jim Rubens and former US senator Bob Smith, according to the Associated Press. 
 
 Brown and Shaheen, who did not face a challenge for the Democratic nomination, are expected to continue running campaigns with starkly divergent themes: the challenger speaking about national issues, the incumbent sticking to local accomplishments. Aides to both say they don’t expect that messaging to substantially change in the general election race. 
 
 Brown is focusing on retail political events, meeting voters while discussing federal issues — from immigration to the growing threat from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria — and trumpeting his independence. He paints his opponent as painfully partisan, and he rarely misses an opportunity to note that she votes in lockstep with President Obama, who polls have found is increasingly unpopular in the Granite State. 
 
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 Shaheen is relentlessly focused on the town-by-town, city-by-city specifics of what she has done for New Hampshire, while framing the former Massachusetts senator as driven by self-interest and woefully out of touch with his new home state. (Brown moved his primary residence to New Hampshire last year.) 
 
 With 75.7 percent of precincts reporting Tuesday night, Brown led with 49.9 percent of the vote, according to the Associated Press. Rubens, his next closest rival, had 23.7 percent. 
 
 In Manchester Tuesday, Shaheen addressed a crowd of about 500 supporters for 10 minutes. Her remarks were sharp and pointed in the direction of Brown. 
 
 “No matter where he lives, Scott Brown will not be there for working people,” said Shaheen, ticking off a list of Brown’s financial ties to Wall Street and business alliances she says have hurt the workforce here by exporting American jobs to China. 
 
 The crowd booed, on cue. 
 
 “Fact is, he may have changed his address but he hasn’t changed his stripes. New Hampshire is not for sale and New Hampshire is not Scott Brown’s consolation prize,” she continued, alluding to his 2012 loss to Elizabeth Warren. 
 
 Brown spoke to an upbeat crowd of supporters in Concord late Tuesday evening in a speech that stretched for about 20 minutes, touching on a number of topics but focused squarely on his Democratic rival. 
 
 “Nobody in the Senate is more invested in the policies and failures of President Obama than Senator Shaheen,” he said, standing in front of a large image of an American flag. “Listen, they campaigned together in our state six years ago. They were elected on the same day. And from that day to this day, she has voted for the failed Obama agenda more than 99 percent of the time,” he said, emphasizing the salient number. The crowd booed, on cue. 
 
 New Hampshire Republican strategist Jim Merrill said the incumbent was trying to run as locally focused an effort as possible, “like she’s in a campaign for mayor of New Hampshire.” 
 
 Shaheen aides and allies see that emphasis as an inherent advantage. “There’s nothing [Brown] can point to and say: ‘I’ve done that for New Hampshire,’ ” said campaign spokesman Harrell Kirstein . “We can.” 
 
 Brown, for his part, has spoken about what he could do for the state and how it would be to New Hampshire’s benefit to have “an independent voice” who doesn’t vote with the president so frequently. 
 
 He has recently held six in-person town halls, a New Hampshire tradition that gives voters a chance to ask politicos anything, and has repeatedly criticized Shaheen for not hosting any similar events. At those forums, and others, he often speaks about federal issues — such as Obama’s health care overhaul — while connecting them to their impact on the state. 
 
 While analysts said the specifics of the campaign will matter, the New Hampshire race is part of a furious nationwide battle for control of the US Senate, where the GOP must pick up a net of six seats in this year’s midterm elections to win the chamber. 
 
 National factors, which currently favor Republicans as likely voters sour on Obama, could have a significant impact in the Granite State, which often swings with the broader political winds. 
 
 Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan political analyst who closely follows US Senate races, said he was not convinced that the Republican wave would be enough to carry Brown. Still, he said, if the national environment is extremely good for the GOP, Brown “can win, but he’s going need a strong wind at his back.” 
 
 Polling has found the race to be competitive. One poll, conducted in August by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, found the race to be a dead heat. Other recent surveys have found Shaheen with a single-digit lead. 
 
 Juliana Bergeron, the Republican national committeewoman for New Hampshire, said Brown was the underdog, as Shaheen is well known from her years in the public eye as a US senator, governor, and state senator. But Brown, she said, “is trending up.” 
 
 Wherever the race stands, it is set to become substantially more heated. 
 
 “Let’s go,” Brown said as he finished his speech Tuesday night. “Let the games begin!”
– After losing his Massachusetts Senate seat to Elizabeth Warren in 2012—and then failing to nab the New Hampshire seat in 2014—Scott Brown appears to have again found a political post. President Trump on Thursday announced his intention to nominate Brown, an early Trump supporter, as ambassador to New Zealand, reports CBS Boston. How is New Zealand taking the news? Its largest paper used the following headline earlier this week as Brown's name started to bubble up: "Man tipped for US ambassador role in NZ a former nude model who supports waterboarding." The nude modeling bit is a reference to this Cosmopolitan spread. As for Brown, it's potentially brought him closer to checking off one bucket list item: The New Zealand Herald article also quotes this line from a 2015 GQ interview with Brown: "I've always wanted to go to New Zealand or Scotland or Wales and just ride 100 miles, hit a pub, drink, eat, sleep, do some exploring, and then get up, ride another 100 miles, do that for a couple weeks." Brown—named as a possible candidate for Secretary of Veterans Affairs before the job went to David Shulkin, per the Hill—has lately been a Fox News contributor and was named in a sexual harassment lawsuit by a former Fox host last year.