Middle-Class Warrior: Elizabeth Warren to Run For Senate

With all of the Presidential politicking and the unending media parade that is the GOP presidential candidates' daily "he said, she said", it's easy to forget that there will also be a number of smaller elections in 2012. One of those will be for the Massachusetts senate seat currently held by Republican Scott Brown, formerly that of the late Senator Teddy Kennedy. Tomorrow, Democratic and progressive favorite Elizabeth Warren will announce her bid to challenged Brown; a move that is sure to make corporations and a "billionaire friendly congress", to quote Warren Buffet, uneasy. Elizabeth Warren if a former White House staffer, and was also the force behind the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a government agency meant to police Wall Street in order to better protect consumers from unfair banking and credit card fees and from dangerous financial products like the sub-prime mortgages that ultimately destroyed the housing market and forced thousands out of their homes.

Should Warren be elected to the Senate, it could mean a power advocate for consumers' protection and a powerful adversary to corporate influence. "The pressures on middle class families are worse than ever, but it is the big corporations that get their way in Washington,” she said in a statement reported by Huffington Post. “I want to change that. I will work my heart out to earn the trust of the people of Massachusetts.” There are some strong signs, even as Warren is yet undeclared, that she will provide Brown with some tough competition. The same day that she put together an exploratory committee to investigate the possibility of a campaign, the largest nurse's union in Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Nursing Association, officially endorsed her campaign. Numbering 23,000 medical professionals, the endorsement shows strong support among her potential constituency. Of the union's endorsement, a union official stated that they're, "hoping it will show her up front what kind of support she has and encourage her to jump in." In addition, a poll recently published in Boston Daily shows Elizabeth Warren only 9 points behind Scott Brown, even though there's more than a year until elections and she hasn't even declared her candidacy. Though there are other challengers, including Newton Mayor Setti Warren, social entrepreneur Alan Khazei and state Rep. Thomas Conroy, Warren will likely be Brown's greatest threat to retaining his seat in 2012.

Warren created waves in 2009 when she pursued a campaign to create a financial consumer's protection agency (the eventual Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) after infuriating congressional hearings with Wall Street CEO's after the housing collapse and subsequent banking crisis. Warren famously made the comment that consumers have regulations and consumer protections in place from faulty toasters that might spark and burn their house down, but not sub-prime mortgages that would force them into default and have their house taken away. The Bureau was created this year by the Obama administration, and though Republicans have been working hard to block nomination of a chief to the bureau, Warren was not named. She commented that she wanted the position with the bureau that bears her legacy, but that she knew a Senate nomination would be out of the question. Instead, it seems, she's eyeing a Senate run, which may allow her better leverage in creating financial consumer protections and regulations on investment banking. What's certain is that Wall Street campaign donors and PACs will be floating Brown through his entire campaign if it means keeping Warren out of office.

Anyone that creates that kind of fear from banks is a good thing.