PAC Raises $100K for Elizabeth Warren Senate Run

Elizabeth Warren for Senate? Those four words may take a turn as real as the next sound-bite if the ""Progressive Change Campaign Committee"":http://boldprogressives.org/home has anything to say about it.

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The liberal Political Action Committee (PAC) made news Monday with the announcement that it had raised $100,000 to help the ""Harvard Law School"":http://www.law.harvard.edu/index.html professor and political lightning rod mount a Senate run against ""Sen. Scott Brown"":http://www.scottbrown.com/splash/splash.php (R-Massachusetts).

The fundraising bomb is no empty gesture, as Warren has made moves toward a Senate bid from Massachusetts. The ""_New York Times_"":http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/11/warren-edges-closer-to-senate-run/ reported that the former Treasury special adviser recently hired longtime Democratic strategists Doug Rubin and Kyle Sullivan to assess the political playing field.

Representatives at Warren's office at Harvard could not be immediately reached for comment.

Commenting on the fundraising drive in an e-mail to _MReport_, Adam Green, co-founder of Progressive Change, says the committee is ""making sure that if Elizabeth Warren decides to run, she'll have the grassroots army she needs to win on Day 1. Warren is a bold fighter who stands up for regular people against big corporate interests, and that's exactly what people want during this tough economic time.""

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The ""Massachusetts Republican Party"":http://www.massgop.com/ released a ""statement"":http://www.massgop.com/index.php?id=120&newsid=215 jabbing Warren and the PAC, with Jennifer Nassour, chairman of the state party, quoted as saying, ""If the Masschusetts Democratic party were decided by Washington insiders and policy wonks in ivory towers, Professor Warren would likely be the frontrunner. Time will tell whether the Massachusetts Democratic political machine caves into Washington DC [sic] establishment pushing her candidacy.""

Asked whether Warren would make the leap from Harvard to the Senate, Tim Buckley, a spokesperson for the state GOP, says ""it's difficult to say,"" citing her moves to put Rubin and Sullivan on her payroll.

""That posting on that super liberal Web site"" for Progressive Change ""would certainly leave one to consider that she's considering a run,"" Buckley says. ""Hiring high paid lobbyists would also lead one to believe that she's considering a Senate run.""

The GOP statement highlighted recent remarks by commentators, with a ""_Roll Call_"":http://www.rollcall.com/issues/57_22/elizabeth-warren-massachusetts-senate-race-208119-1.html post by Joshua Miller alleging that ""Massachusetts Democrats said serious questions remain about how effective a candidate she could be and whether she can win over voters"" in blue collar areas.

If Warren runs, it will mean her reentry into a political arena that all but forced ""President Barack Obama"":http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/president-obama/ to oust her in July. A known opponent of deregulation in the banking and financial sectors, the then-Treasury advisor faced off with a stiff cast of Republican House members in several hearings.

Her most famous spat occurred in May when ""Rep. Patrick McHenry"":http://mchenry.house.gov/ (R-North Carolina) accused her of lying in a scheduling dispute. Her replacement, former Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray, continues to face unrelenting Republican opposition as GOP senators persist with their vow to vote for any CFPB director-nominee.