Warren takes first steps toward Senate run

By Theo Emery

Globe Staff

WASHINGTON – Elizabeth Warren, the architect of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, sent her clearest signal yet yesterday that she is considering a challenge to Republican Senator Scott P. Brown.

In a posting on a website supportive of the Democratic Party, Warren tells the tale of her Aunt Bee and Aunt Bert. Her father’s heart attack and the family’s struggle to pay its bills. Her battle scars from Washington, her empathy with middle class families in Massachusetts, and lastly, her entreaties for idea on fixing “a badly broken political system.”

“If the question is ‘will she run,’ I think she’s putting her track shoes on,” said Tufts University political science professor James M. Glazer. “It’s pretty clear.”

There has been widespread speculation that Warren might challenge Brown for the seat that he won in a special election early last year after the death of Ted Kennedy. Until yesterday, Warren not tipped her hand, but some Democrats have urged her to add her name to the field that already includes seven Brown opponents, including Newton Mayor Setti Warren and City Year founder Alan Khazei.

Though Warren’s posting does not definitively say she’s running, it dispels any uncertainty about her interest. And she has enlisted the assistance of two Democratic operatives with a track record: Governor Deval Patrick’s former campaign manager, Doug Rubin, and Patrick’s former communications manager, Kyle Sullivan.

Sullivan, reached yesterday, declined to comment beyond what was in the blog posting.

The posting, titled “Coming Home,” contains some of the language of a campaign kickoff, including folksy details on her family history and her observations on how Washington is broken.

“It is time for me to think hard about what role I can play next to help rebuild a middle class that has been hacked at, chipped at, and pulled at for more than a generation—and that that is under greater strain every day,” Warren wrote.

Most tellingly, it includes her entreaty for Massachusetts residents to offer their ideas “about how we can fix what all of us – regardless of party – know is a badly broken political system.”

“I want to hear your thoughts about how we can make sure that our voices –our families, our friends, and our neighbors — are heard again,” she wrote.

What may be most notable about the post is what it does not contain: any mention of Harvard University, where she has returned to teach this fall after setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as interim director. She had been on leave from Harvard.

The Harvard professor had been considered the top nominee as chief of the agency, which was her idea in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse. But her populist attacks on banking institutions for their policies and opaque business practices spawned across-the-board opposition from Republicans in Congress and the Obama administration officially never nominated her.