NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

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.

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