Warren kicks off Senate bid

Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren, credited with creating and standing up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, officially announced Sept. 14 that she will run for the U.S. Senate.

Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren, credited with creating and standing up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, officially announced Sept. 14 that she will run for the U.S. Senate.

“I’m going to do this. I’m going to run for the United States Senate – and the reason is straightforward. Middle-class families have been chipped at, hacked at, squeezed and hammered for a generation now, and I don’t think Washington gets it. Washington is rigged for big corporations that hire armies of lobbyists,” Warren said in a video posted at ElizabethWarren.com.

She will challenge Republican Sen. Scott Brown for his Massachusetts seat. In the Democratic primary, she faces Setti Warren, mayor of Newton, Mass.; Bob Massie, an activist; and Alan Khazei, founder of CityYear.

Warren previously led the Congressional Oversight Panel that oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program and led the CFPB for a year, until just after it opened its doors on July 21, 2011.

When Republicans in the Senate blocked her nomination as CFPB director, she returned to teaching at Harvard and Raj Date took her position as the interim head of the Bureau. The Senate just held its first hearing for Rich Cordray, who has been nominated for the director post.

Warren has never run for office, but she has established a national fan base because of her work in Washington, D.C. She also has authored two books with her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi: All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan and The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke.

“I’m so humbled by the strong grassroots support I’m receiving across Massachusetts and online today as I launch my campaign for U.S. Senate,” Warren wrote yesterday on her Facebook page, where she has more than 33,000 followers.

Fredrikson & Byron Law