Elizabeth Warren - 2012 U.S. Senate Run

2012 U.S. Senate Run

See also: United States Senate election in Massachusetts, 2012

On September 14, 2011, Warren declared her intention to run for the Democratic nomination for the 2012 election in Massachusetts for the United States Senate. The seat had been won by Republican Scott Brown in a 2010 special election after the death of Ted Kennedy. A week later, a video of Warren speaking in Andover gained attention on the internet and became a viral video. In it, Warren replies to the charge that asking the rich to pay more taxes is "class warfare", pointing out that no one grew rich in America without depending on infrastructure paid for by the rest of society, stating:

"There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own – nobody. ... You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless – keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."

Barack Obama echoed her sentiments later in 2012 in a speech made famous for the phrase "You didn't build that".

Warren ran unopposed for the Democratic nomination, and won it on June 2, 2012, at the state Democratic convention with a record 95.77% of the votes of delegates. She was endorsed by Governor of Massachusetts Deval Patrick. Warren and her opponent Scott Brown agreed to engage in four televised debates, including one with a consortium of media outlets in Springfield and one on WBZ-TV in Boston.

In April 2012, the Boston Herald reported that in the 1990s, Harvard Law School had, in response to criticisms about the lack of faculty diversity, publicized Warren's law directory entries from 1986 to 1995, which listed her as having Native American ancestry. Warren said she identified as a minority in the law directory listing (of the 1980s and 1990s) in hopes of being invited to events to meet people of similar background. Harvard Law professor Charles Fried, who had served as Solicitor General in the Reagan administration and sat on the appointing committee that recommended Warren for hire in 1995, said that her heritage was never mentioned and played no role in the appointments process.

Warren encountered significant opposition from business interests, with a United States Chamber of Commerce representative claiming in August that "no other candidate in 2012 represents a greater threat to free enterprise than Professor Warren." She nonetheless raised $39 million for her campaign, the most of any Senate candidate in 2012.

Warren received a primetime speaking slot at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, immediately before Bill Clinton on the evening of September 5, 2012. Warren positioned herself as a champion of a beleaguered middle class that "has been chipped, squeezed and hammered." According to Warren, "People feel like the system is rigged against them. And here's the painful part: They're right. The system is rigged." Warren said Wall Street CEOs "wrecked our economy and destroyed millions of jobs" and that they "still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting like we should thank them."

On November 6, Warren defeated incumbent Scott Brown with a total of 53.7% of the votes. Warren will be the first woman ever elected to serve as a US senator from Massachusetts.