Elizabeth Warren to make Massachusetts U.S. Senate bid official tomorrow

Con­sumer advo­cate and bank­rupt­cy expert Eliz­a­beth War­ren, who recent­ly formed an explorato­ry com­mit­tee to con­sid­er a U.S. Sen­ate bid in Mass­a­chu­setts, has decid­ed to make her can­di­da­cy offi­cial, accord­ing to a spokesperson.

War­ren will for­mal­ly announce that she’s run­ning tomor­row in com­mu­ni­ties across the Com­mon­wealth. Her cam­paign says stops are planned in Boston, New Bed­ford, Fram­ing­ham, Worces­ter, and Springfield.

War­ren’s deci­sion is sure to delight pro­gres­sive activists in Mass­a­chu­setts and across the Unit­ed States who have strong­ly urged her to run.

A “Draft Eliz­a­beth War­ren” effort start­ed by the Pro­gres­sive Change Cam­paign Com­mit­tee has already raised more than $100,000. Act­Blue reports that total con­tri­bu­tions to Eliz­a­beth War­ren have already exceed­ed $200,000 — and all of those came before her cam­paign became official.

Oth­er can­di­dates seek­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion for U.S. Sen­ate include Herb Robin­son, Alan Khazei, Jim King, Bob Massie, Marisa DeFran­co, Set­ti War­ren (no rela­tion), and Tom Con­roy. So it’s a crowd­ed field. But none of these oth­er can­di­dates real­ly has the high­er pro­file that War­ren has.

It’s no secret that big banks and insur­ance com­pa­nies don’t like War­ren, who is an unapolo­get­i­cal­ly fierce advo­cate for con­sumer pro­tec­tion and for work­ing fam­i­lies. Wall Street will like­ly spend a huge amount of mon­ey attempt­ing to defeat her, as will the Nation­al Repub­li­can Sen­a­to­r­i­al Com­mit­tee (NRSC).

At Moth­er Jones, Rick Ungar notes that Repub­li­cans may be sor­ry that they promised to block any attempt by Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to nom­i­nate War­ren to run the Con­sumer Finan­cial Pro­tec­tion Bureau:

The pos­si­bill­ty of War­ren’s elec­tion presents GOP sen­a­tors with a rich dose of irony. War­ren was the obvi­ous and most deserv­ing per­son to serve as the first leader of the CFPB, the con­sumer pro­tec­tion agency she almost sin­gle-hand­ed­ly cre­at­ed. How­ev­er, in an effort to pro­tect their Wall Street cronies and finan­cial back­ers, the Repub­li­cans in the Sen­ate made it very clear that her nom­i­na­tion would nev­er be approved.

As the admin­is­tra­tor of the CFPB, War­ren would have been under the thumb of Con­gress. As a mem­ber of the Sen­ate, it will be a very dif­fer­ent story.

If War­ren’s can­di­da­cy is suc­cess­ful, extrem­ist Repub­li­can sen­a­tors will soon have to put up with her as a col­league in just a year and a half.