Frustrated by the lack of a more liberal alternative to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race, progressive groups are planning to hold an event Saturday in New Hampshire to call on Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., to jump into the presidential race.
Moveon.org and the Howard Dean-founded group Democracy For America will host the event, dubbed “Run Warren Run” in Manchester. The two groups have been attempting for several weeks to persuade Warren to reconsider her refusal to run by showing her that there is grassroots support for such an effort.
“[M]any in the Democratic Party are hungry for Elizabeth Warren to run for president. Not only is Senator Warren able to marshall the grassroots energy to achieve what too many in Washington say is impossible, but if she were president Wall Street bankers wouldn’t be at the helm of our economic policy in the first place,” said Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Democracy for America.
The organizations have hired staff and will be opening offices in the Granite State. They plan similar efforts in other states key to the presidential race like Iowa. The groups will recruit volunteers as well as produce ads and videos making the case for the senator’s liberal economic positions. They previously pledged to raise more than $1 million for the effort.
Warren’s office declined to comment. The senator has repeatedly said she will not run and given scant indication that she is changing her mind. The closest she has come was making a less-than-ironclad denial in an interview in People magazine last year. But in an interview published in Fortune magazine Tuesday, she said she would not run.
The senator has instead warmed to her role as a leading liberal voice in Congress. She led the Democratic opposition to the White House-backed omnibus spending bill late last year, objecting to a provision that loosened banking regulations under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.
A White House bid inevitably would lead Warren into a tough primary fight against Hillary Clinton, the current front-runner. Both have sought to downplay any potential friction between them and campaigned together on behalf of other Democrats in last year’s election.
Nevertheless, prominent liberal groups have called for alternatives to Clinton enter the race, fearing that otherwise she would drift too far toward the center in an effort to win the general election.
A November Quinnipiac poll found that Clinton was the top choice of just of 57 percent of Democrats, indicating that more than two-fifths of the party were still looking for a candidate.
