By nature, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) is intense and focused, and right now, he’s got a million other places to be. It’s the last day of Senate business before the August recess, and in just a few minutes, the junior senator will dash from his office (formerly occupied by the late Democrat Ted Kennedy) to the Senate floor for votes on a number of bills, including a contentious cybersecurity bill.

But for now, the trim 6-foot-1-inch, former model, triathlete, and National Guard colonel relaxes in his seat as if he has all the time in the world, talking about the Olympics and taking a moment to brag about his two daughters, Ayla and Arianna.

His relaxed demeanor belies the fact that he’s engaged in one of the most closely watched, hotly contested, and, in all likelihood, most expensive congressional race in the country. Brown is seeking his first full, six-year Senate term after stunning the Democratic establishment in January 2010 by winning the seat held for nearly a half century by Kennedy.

The 52-year-old is running neck and neck against former Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren. Brown’s intensity ratchets up when talking about the race. He leans forward, his brown eyes blazing. “Well, it’s the biggest race in the country. That’s what everyone is saying.”  

Brown is fully cognizant of the challenge before him. “I have every special interest group coming after me—SEIU, Emily’s List, all of the ultra-left conservation groups. They want the Kennedy seat back very, very badly. But it’s the people’s seat. It’s their seat,” he says, punctuating the point with a pointed finger on the table. “We need people like me down here who are going to work with any person of goodwill to solve problems. I represent not only Massachusetts but every other person in this country by having pro-business, pro-growth, good fiscally sound policies that affect them and their families on an every day basis.”

The candidates have stark philosophical differences, according to Brown. “Two different ways of looking at the way people create jobs in this country. And she’s a jobs destroyer,” he says about Warren, who was selected by President Obama to establish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created by the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory law. “Her policies will raise taxes. They will result in more regulations. They’ll place a larger and greater burden on our small and large businesses and will crush them and the middle class.”

In comparison, Brown points out that he is a free market advocate who treasures the hard work, dedication, creativity, and ingenuity of small business owners. “They signed on the dotted line to put their equity, time, and energy on the line. My two words to those job creators and those risk takers is ‘thank you,’” he says.

Brown takes umbrage with comments made by Warren and echoed by President Obama suggesting that small business owners did not create their own success without government help. “She [Warren] has said that nobody has become rich on their own. If you have a factory, good for you, but you know, you didn’t get those goods to market—I’m paraphrasing—but you didn’t do that on your own. You did it on roads that all of us paid for. With all due respect, I believe that many of our small businesses have done it on their own.”

A week before our interview, Brown released a video titled “Let America Be America Again.”  The 2-minute, 30-second video, which garnered more than a million views in just eight days, features the famous words of several American presidents, including Kennedy, Clinton, and  Reagan. “Well, the video speaks for itself. It shows what America once was, how we praised our job creators and the people who took risks,” Brown explains.

Brown’s actions in the Senate support his rhetoric. He led on a crowdfunding bill that allows entrepreneurs to attract legitimate small investments through networking and use of the Internet; the Hire a Hero bill, which provides tax credits to small businesses that hire a returning veteran or member of the National Guard or Reserve; and repeal of a law that, beginning in 2013, would have required federal, state, and certain local governments to withhold 3% of payment owed to government service providers.

Brown ran the first time on a promise to work to repeal the massive health care reform law, and his commitment to that pledge remains strong. “A lot of the 18-plus new taxes and the half a trillion{dollars} in Medicare cuts are going to be a jobs killer for many businesses in this country,” Brown intones.

His intensity doesn’t let up when talking about what could be done by Congress to avoid plunging the country over the impending fiscal cliff. “You can drop everything and stop playing games and work on it today. We should give up the summer [recess]. We should be working right now on it,” he says, noting that the week before recess was spent debating a bill to limit corporate campaign donations. “They [some members of Congress] just want to play games and take votes so that they can have commercials in November.”

Congress should pass a balanced budget amendment, hold the line on taxes, and pursue an all-of-the-above energy policy, including moving ahead on the Keystone pipeline, Brown says. “Massachusetts has some of the highest energy costs in the country. We need to lower energy costs. We need to let people have more money in their pockets so that they can choose where they want to go and what they want to do.”