theMReport.com Your trusted source for mortgage banking news
It's official: ""Elizabeth Warren"":http://www.elizabethwarren.com/announcement?sc=ad_g_nat_s_ad2_h&gclid=CMC2iKipoKsCFVsS2godM0kVmA will mount a bid for the Senate as a Democratic candidate. If she makes it through a crowded primary, the ""Consumer Financial Protection Bureau"":http://www.consumerfinance.gov/ (CFPB) architect, onetime presidential advisor, and political lightning rod for the right will face off against ""Sen. Scott Brown"":http://scottbrown.senate.gov/public/ (R-Massachusetts) over the 2012 election year.
[IMAGE]""I'm going to do this,"" candidate Warren declared Wednesday in her ""announcement video"":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx2H31ZgkIQ, available via an official feed that links to her campaign Web site. ""I'm going to run for the United States Senate.""
The Harvard law professor made fighting for the middle class her mantra, saying that ""middle-class families have been chipped at, hacked at, squeezed, and hammered for a generation now.""
She described Washington, D.C. ├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔé¼┼ô a place she knows all too well after a high-profile and ultimately failed nomination bid to head up the CFPB ├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔé¼┼ô as ""rigged for big corporations that hire armies of lobbyists.""
""President Barack Obama"":http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/president-obama ""withdrew"":https://themreport.com/articles/obama-bumps-warren-taps-cordray-for-cfpb-2011-07-18 Warren from a stalled nomination process in August after nearly a year of back-and-forth hearings, flare-ups with lawmakers, and a pledge by 44 Republican senators to prevent her confirmation and the confirmation of any nominee for the top job.
Nominating former Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray to take her place, Obama, standing then with Warren in the White House rose garden, praised her for her ""sheer force of will, intelligence, and a bottomless well of energy"" in her efforts to standup the CFPB.
[COLUMN_BREAK]By declaring her candidacy, Warren pits her celebrity status with liberal supporters and those in favor of financial services regulations against establishment support for Brown, who more recently lost Tea Party backing when he sided with Senate Democrats in recent votes, according to _The Daily Beast_.
She also arrives with a fresh bag of donations, totaling approximately $100,000, a money-bomb from a liberal Political Action Committee that ""announced"":https://themreport.com/articles/pac-raises-100k-for-elizabeth-warren-senate-run-2011-08-16 the contribution in August. By comparison, filings by Brown boast over ""$10 million"":http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00031174&cycle=2012 in campaign funds ready to deploy against the CFPB architect.
The ""GOP party for Massachusetts"":http://www.massgop.com/index.php came out swinging with a statement before Warren made her announcement, with Chairman Jennifer Nassour alleging a string of failures for the new candidate and relating her to Martha Coakley, who lost the seat to Brown in 2009.
""These embarrassing mistakes call into question whether Professor Warren and her DC-based [sic] supporters have what it takes to survive for the next year in the crowded Democratic party,"" she said in a ""statement"":http://www.massgop.com/index.php?id=120&newsid=218.
Before she can go toe-to-toe with Brown, the new candidate will need to come out on top in an already-crowded Democratic primary. She joins a field of six other candidates well into the race but lacking her star power.
And if she wins in a general election?
If Warren is faithful to her past remarks and testimony, supporters and opponents alike should bank on the tireless consumer financial protection advocate going to bat for her brainchild and the legal framework at large.
""_The Washington Post_"":http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/16/AR2011031602268.html quoted Warren as once telling a congressional committee that ""[f]or too long, regulation has been described as undermining the free market. This is wrong.""
The _Post_ quoted her as adding, ""Good regulation is not about impeding market forces; it is about channeling those forces to make the market work better. Good regulation is not about retribution designed to make an industry suffer; it is about rooting out deception and promoting transparency so that honest competition actually works.""
