Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) hasn’t yet announced if she will throw her hat into the presidential ring, but she continues to put in place all the necessary components to launch a 2020 bid.
“It looks like she has her national apparatus in place and all she has to do is pull the trigger,” Jim Demers, a New Hampshire-based political consultant who worked for Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigns, told Politico.
That apparatus includes more than $12 million left over from her 2018 midterm campaign — not including a more than $3 million investment in digital infrastructure and advertising for that campaign that could be used for a presidential run.
Politico reported:
Her aides have been quietly shopping for presidential campaign headquarters space in the Boston area in recent weeks, according to a source with knowledge of the move.
All that’s left is for her to give the green light.
When and if she does, she’ll be rolling out arguably the most advanced and sweeping infrastructure in the Democratic field, a plug-and-play campaign that could give her a massive head start on nearly every contender in the burgeoning primary roster, with only Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) coming close.
And there are other clues about Warren’s plans, including her looking at people to staff a national campaign by building on the trusted circle she works in as a senator, according to Politico.
“The campaign-in-waiting is working with the mail firm Deliver Strategies, and the digital firms Bully Pulpit and Blue State,” Politico reported.
Warren is also working on some of her own ground game by contacting people in early presidential states, including Iowa, New Hampshire, South Caroling, and Nevada, to pick the brains of other Democrat candidates and officials, with Politico reporting that Warren has spoken to as many as 100 people.
“Let me say that of all the people who are running that I can see from my perspective — and I don’t have visibility into everything everybody is doing — there isn’t anybody who had done more to position themselves for 2020 than she had up to that point,” Barack Obama strategist David Axelrod said in a recent taping of Politico’s “Off Message” podcast.
But Warren has had some rough patches in her effort to grow support nationally, including announcing she had a DNA test that proved she had Native American heritage — a move that proved controversial and was criticized by some Native Americans.
And her own Boston Globe — which has repeatedly defended her on the Native American claim — recently ran an editorial that said her glory days might already be behind her.
“Warren missed her moment in 2016, and there is reason to be skeptical of her prospective candidacy in 2020,” the editorial said.
“While Warren is an effective and impactful senator with an important voice nationally, she has become a divisive figure,” the editorial said.
Follow Penny Starr on Twitter
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.