BOSTON – Elizabeth Warren, the creator of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who was driven from Washington by Republican opponents last month, will announce her candidacy for the Senate today, sources close to Warren said.
Warren will run as a Democrat and would square off against incumbent Republican Scott Brown if she wins the primary in this heavily Democratic state.
If successful in her campaign it could make for strange bedfellows in the Senate, where Warren’s candidacy was roundly opposed by Republican Senators who continue to fight to rein in the new consumer agency. With Republicans adamant against her leading the agency she helped create, Warren left Washington last month, presumably to return to her job as Harvard law professor.
The consumer advocate has had a checkered history with credit unions, which fought her for almost a decade over consumer bankruptcy reform and opposed creation of the new consumer agency. She also was an advocate for credit card and mortgage reform opposed by the credit union lobby. But she has long courted the credit union lobby, which she sees as a natural ally of her fight for consumer protection, and has met numerous times with representatives of CUNA, NAFCU and other credit union lobby groups to try to gain their support.
“The pressures on middle class families are worse than ever, but it is the big corporations that get their way in Washington,” Warren said in a statement. “I want to change that. I will work my heart out to earn the trust of the people of Massachusetts.”
The new consumer agency, which is based on Warren’s idea, has been caught in stalling tactics by the Republicans in the Senate who insist they will not vote to confirm anyone as director of the new bureau until Democrats and President Obama agree to expand the governance to a five-member board and other amendments watering down its powers.
