Former White House adviser and consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren will announce Wednesday that she is officially entering the race for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senator, to run against Republican senator Scott Brown in Massachusetts, the Boston Globe reports. The Gottlieb professor of law chaired the congressional oversight panel that monitored the Troubled Asset Relief Program—the federal mechanism for shoring up troubled banks and other financial institutions—and advocated for the creation of the consumer Protection Financial Bureau. After President Obama declined to nominate her to head that agency, Warren set up an exploratory committee for the Senate race, and has been meeting with small groups of voters across the Bay State.
The Globe reports that Warren will launch her candidacy by greeting voters throughout the state, beginning with a morning visit to a Boston MBTA station, before heading to New Bedford, Framingham, Worcester, and Springfield. “The pressures on middle-class families are worse than ever, but it is the big corporations that get their way in Washington,” Warren said in a statement given to the Globe. “I want to change that. I will work my heart out to earn the trust of the people of Massachusetts.” Warren has also enlisted political consultant Tracey Lewis of the Dewey Square Group—Hillary Clinton's 2008 New Hampshire field director and the first African-American campaign manager for the Massachusetts Democratic Party’s coordinated campaign electing Governor Deval Patrick and re-electing Senator Edward Kennedy—as an adviser to her campaign team, according to the Politico Blog. Supporters say her image as a crusader against well-heeled Wall Street interests and her national profile will give her candidacy muscle, though she's never run for political office, reports the Associated Press.
Warren has previously written for Harvard Magazine about bankruptcy and the middle class, and on her proposal for a financial-products safety commission.
