Elizabeth Warren

This woman is outraged at being featured in Scott Brown’s ad that is trying to appeal to women.

Here’s the latest critical misstep by Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) in his re-election campaign.

In a new ad that is supposed to appeal to women, Brown is seen smiling and talking to a woman on the street. Watch it:

Here’s the problem. That woman, Carol Gorman, doesn’t support Brown. In fact, she’s outraged that he featured her in the ad even though she made clear she doesn’t support him. “He tried to exploit my presence. He knew what my position was. And yet he chose to put that on TV, to put me on TV as a supporter,” Gorman said.

Watch Gorman’s interview with a local news station:

This is only the latest campaign snafu by Brown. Earlier this week, he offensively suggested that family members of asbestos victims in Elizabeth Warren’s campaign commercials were actors.

Hold Brown accountable. Click here to sign up to make calls for his bold progressive opponent Elizabeth Warren.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is America’s most powerful corporate front group. It is bankrolled by powerful corporations here in the United States and by foreign entities like the Bahrain Petroleum Company, which is owned by the dictatorship of that oil-rich country.

It just dropped a mailer inAi??Massachusetts claiming that the “Warren Agenda Threatens Families and Businesses.” The mailer also features a claimAi??Ai??from Matt Bennett, an official at the Third Way think tank, that calls Warren’s message “catastrophically antibusiness”:

Voters should not be fooled by this deceptive mailer. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce does not reveal its donors, but we know that it is funded by big banks like Citigroup and and New York Private Bank & Trust that want to see Warren taken down. Its true fear is not that Warren is against American businesses, but that she wants to hold powerful corporations — like bailed out Wall Street banks — accountable to the American public.

The quote from Bennett identifies him as working for a “centrist Democratic group,” but the reality is that his organization Third Way, like the Chamber of Commerce, serves as a conduit for corporate America. Third Way’s Board of Trustees is largely composed of hedge fund managers and bankers, and like the Chamber, it does not openly disclose its donors.

The way to stop organized money represented by corporate front groups like the Chamber and Third Way is with organized people. Click here to sign up to make calls for Warren and help her win her race.

Today, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) sunk to a new low when he suggested at a campaign stop that the family members of asbestos victims who were in a campaign commercial for Elizabeth Warren were actually paid actors:

During a question and answer session, one firefighter commented that both campaigns are publishing advertisements featuring family members of victims of asbestos-related illness. He asked Brown how Warren gets the victims’ family members to go on her commercial.

“A lot of them are paid,” Brown said. “We hear that maybe they pay actors. Listen, you can get surrogates and go out and say your thing. We have regular people in our commercials. No one is paid. They are regular folks that reach out to us and say she is full of it.”

This untrue and offensive accusation triggered a sharp rebuke from one of the women in the ads, widow Ginny Jackson, whose husband died ofAi??mesothelioma after working at a shipyard that contained asbestos. Watch Jackson tell her story in Warren’s campaign ad:

“What Scott Brown said today is so offensive to me and my family after what we went through,” Jackson said. “He’s sunk to a new low.”

Hold Brown accountable. Click here to sign up to make calls for his bold progressive opponent Elizabeth Warren.

UPDATE: Brown has apologized:Ai??”It was wrong for me to have jumped to those conclusions and I apologize to those I offended.”

Help defend Warren against the Super PAC attacking her. Sign up to make calls for her.

Last week, we told you about America 360, a mysterious Super PAC that is being staffed by a former employee of Sen. Scott Brown’s (R-MA) campaign. America 360 is taking aim at Elizabeth Warren, and so far had not disclosed its major donors.

Now, numbers have just been released that show the PAC’s major donors. We now know that the America 360 Super PAC is being funded almost entirely by a Koch company, and that it’s targeting Elizabeth Warren, an opponent of oil subsidies that help enrich the Kochs.

Here’s the scoop from Adam Smith of Public Campaign:

AAi??new reportAi??filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) shows that a pro-Scott Brown super PAC is funded almost entirely by Oxbow Carbon, the company controlled by William Koch, the lesser-known brother of Charles and David Koch. The group, America 360,Ai??recently spentAi??$200,000 on mailers in the Massachusetts Senate race to benefit Sen. Brown.

Mr. Koch donated $500,000 to the group in September through his Oxbow Carbon LLC. Former top Goldman Sachs executive Muneer Satter and Boston real estate developer Paul Robert Marcus each donated $25,000.

Note that one of the other major donors to the Super PAC is the Goldman Sachs executive Muneer Satter. Warren isn’t just a foe of oil subsidies — she’s probably the top opponent of Big Banks running for a Senate seat in November. That’s why nearly half of her opponent Scott Brown’s campaign funds are coming from the financial industry.

Don’t let Super PACs win this race for Brown. Click here to sign up to make calls for Elizabeth Warren and other bold progressive candidates.

The grassroots are excited about Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy. Fundraising numbers out today show that she raised a stunning $12 million in the third quarter, which amounts to $4 million more than incumbent Senator Scott Brown’s (R-MA) haul.

While the press is focusing on the fact that Warren has raised more money, it’s also important to understand theAi??kindAi??of money that both candidates are raising. As we told you last week, half of Brown’s top twenty donors are from the banking and financial industry. Meanwhile, Warren’s top givers are theAi??the grassroots donors of EMILYai??i??s List, employees of Harvard University, and members of Moveon.org.

We here at the Progressive Change Campaign Committee have raised over $1 million for Warren’s candidacy. That’s from over 50,000 grassroots donors, and the average donation is $16. Help keep it going.

Help Warren in her grassroots-driven campaign. Click here to sign up to make a few phone calls for her candidacy.

Elizabeth Warren’s blockbuster debate performance this week successfully exposed Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) as a shill for Wall Street and as someone who perpetually sides with Republican extremists like Grover Norquist — who once said he wouldn’t even be open to raising taxes during a war or huge natural disaster.

A new poll out by Public Policy Polling shows that Brown’s approval rating is plummeting while more and more voters are viewing him as a typical partisan Republican rather than an independent voice:

Warren leads Scott Brown 50-44. The big change over the last month is that Brown’s image is finally starting to take a hit. His approval rating is now a +7 spread at 49/42, down a net 14 points from mid-September when he was at 55/34. There’s an increasing sense that he’s been more a partisan voice for the national Republican Party (45%) than an independent voice for Massachusetts (44%). That’s a 10 point shift from our last poll when voters thought 49/40 that he’d been more of an independent voice.

Click here to sign up to make calls to help bold progressive Elizabeth Warren win.

In less than a month, Massachusetts residents will get a chance to vote on who will be their next U.S. Senator. In an act of desperation, incumbent Senator Scott Brown (R) is desperately trying to portray himself as a friend of the middle class and his opponent Elizabeth Warren as a friend of Big Business — due to some minor consulting work she did with Dow Chemical in the 1990’s.

But if there’s one thing that’s true in American politics, it’s this: you are who funds you. Senators bankrolled by Big Oil give the industries subsidies. Lawmakers backed by health insurers helped kill the public option. And if there’s one thing that’s clear in the race between Warren and Brown, it’s that Corporate America has sided with the latter.

As of October 2012, Elizabeth Warren’s top donors are the grassroots donors of EMILY’s List, employees of Harvard University, and grassroots members of Moveon.org. Scott Brown’s top donors are the financial giant Fidelity Investments, EMC Corporation, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance, and Goldman Sachs.

More than half of Scott Brown’s top ten donors are big banks, hedge funds, or other big financial institutions. Meanwhile, there is not a single bank or financial institution among the top twenty donors to Elizabeth Warren. It’s clear who’s on Corporate America’s side — or at least whose side Corporate America is on.

Unsurprisingly, Brown went to bat on behalf of the Big Banks. He helped weaken the Volcker Rule and voted against killing “naked credit default swaps,” a dangerous financial instrument. A week after he helped pass a watered-down financial reform bill, Morgan Stanley’s Political Action Committee gave him a $5,000 check.

So next time you see propaganda from the Brown campaign remember the lesson we …

PCCC plans to make hundreds of thousands of calls for Elizabeth Warren’s Massachusetts Senate race. Another top priority is Alan Grayson’s House race in Florida. Call Out The Vote will also help Sen. Sherrod Brown’s re-election effort in Ohio and Tammy Baldwin’s Senate campaign in Wisconsin. On the House side, calls will go out for Rob Zerban, who is trying unseat Paul Ryan, Annie Kuster’s campaign in New Hampshire, and several other progressive candidates.

One of the most prominent progressive groups in the country is launching a major voter outreach effort on behalf of 20 congressional campaigns, calling it the “crown jewel” of its election functions. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee hopes to place one million phone calls to targeted voters through the effort, named “Call Out The Vote.”

As poll after poll shows bold progressive Elizabeth Warren leading Scott Brown (R) in the Massachusetts Senate race, he is growing increasingly desperate to distract voters from his pro-corporate record.

He’s attacking Warren for having a small consulting role to Dow Chemical back in 1995. He claims this shows that she’s not on the side of ordinary people.

But if Dow Chemical is so toxic (no pun intended) then why is Brown happy to engage in fundraising with the corporation?

Brown has taken $6,000 from the company’s Political Action Committee (PAC) in the current election cycle. He took $1,000 when he was running in 2010. Warren hasn’t gotten a dime from the company’s PAC.

Corporations don’t just like to give away free money. Dow is likely rewarding Brown for his 2011 vote to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases, an issue Dow intensely lobbied on the same year. In fact, he got a $1,000 check from the PAC the month after the vote.

They say those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. It seems like Brown just threw a boulder.

Help Warren win her race, click here to chip in a few dollars to her campaign.

A just-released Western New England University poll finds that bold progressive Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren leads Sen. Scott Brown (R) among likely voters:

Warren leads Brown 50 percent to 45 percent among likely voters in a Western New England University pollAi??conducted for the Springfield Republican newspaper and Masslive.com.Ai??The Democratai??i??s lead is mostly unchanged from an early September poll showing her leading Brown 50 percent to 44 percent. Other recent polls have mostly shown Warren with a single-digit lead over Brown.

Warren maintaining her lead is likely at least partially explained by the fact that voters are beginning to wake up to Brown’s extreme pro-corporate positions. As one example, in his most recent debate with Warren, Brown admitted that his “model” Supreme Court Justice is the far-right figure Antonin Scalia — who has all but embraced the corporate dominance of American democracy as a matter of “free speech.”

The right is growing increasingly desperate, and that’s why super lobbyist Grover Norquist just dropped $162,000 into the race to help Brown. Help Warren win her race, click here to chip in a few dollars to her campaign.

Disclosures released today from the Federal Election Commission show that Grover Norquists’s Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) just droppedAi??$162,418.26 on direct mail pieces to attack bold progressive Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. Here’s a screengrab from the disclosure:

When Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) pledges not to raise taxes on the wealthy, ATR is the reason why. It is a powerful lobby that is funded largely by corporations and billionaires.

When the right corporations pay off Norquist, he’ll even violate his own supposed free market conservative principles.Ai??Earlier this year, I confronted him about why ATR opposes letting Americans buy cheaper drugs from Canada — a free market idea. When I mentioned that his organization has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from Big Pharma, he struggled to maintain his composure. Then, when my colleague and I asked him why he lobbied for Fannie Mae in the past even though he attacks it now, he quit the interview altogether.

Norquist is a powerful lobbyist and his organization is seeking to sink Warren because she’s dedicated to holding corporate America accountable. Help defend Warren from Norquists’s attack, click here to chip in a few dollars to her campaign.

(Photo credit: Flickr user DonkeyHotey)

During tonight’sAi??MassachusettsAi??Senate debate, moderator David Gregory asked the candidates who their “model” Supreme Court Justice is. Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) replied by saying that his model was far-right justice Antonin Scalia.

The crowd began booing, which prompted Brown to start naming off other justices he also favored, most of them conservatives. Watch it:

It’s incredibly telling that Scalia is the first one to come to Brown’s mind. Here’s a primer on Scalia’s views:

He Loves Money In Politics: Scalia was the deciding voteAi??in the Citizens United case to open new floodgates of corporate money in our elections. In a television appearance discussing the case, he compared billionaire spending in our elections to free speech. Brown helped kill the DISCLOSE Act, which would’ve exposed some of the corporations and billionaires buying our elections.
He Has Extreme Views On Immigration: Scalia was a huge backer of Arizona’s draconian anti-immigration law, and even cited Southern slavery laws in his court defense of Arizona’s measure. Perhaps Brown was taking after Scalia when he voted to kill the DREAM Act.
He Is Stridently Against Ai??Womens Rights: Scalia voted with the court’s conservative justices in the Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. case to limit discrimination suits over equal pay. He is also tirelessly opposed to abortion rights. Keep in mind that Brown voted against women and with lobbyistsAi??by voting against the anti-discrimination Paycheck Fairness Act.
He’s An Apologist For Torture:Ai??During a 2008 radio interview, Scalia said it’s “absurd” to say the government can’t hit prisoners “in the face.”
He’s Anti-Gay: Scalia was the dissenting opinion in Lawrence v. Texas,Ai??which invalidated America’s last sodomy laws (focusing on Texas). Remember that Brown has refused to endorse …

Tonight, Senator Scott Brown faced off with bold progressive candidate Elizabeth Warren in a live television debate. At one point, he claimed that he voted to keep student interest rates low, and then went on a tirade against Warren’s salary as a college professor.

But what he didn’t mention was his own role in trying to prevent student loan reform. Brown voted against the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, which for the first time ever took Big Bank middlemen out of the federal student lending process, which is expected to save taxpayers and students billions of dollars in the coming years. Banks just happen to be his biggest donors.

Brown was obviously trying to distract voters from his own anti-student voting record with his personal attacks on Warren.

Tonight, bold progressive candidate Elizabeth Warren is in a live television debate on Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA).

During a moment just now, Scott Brown defended voting against President Obama’s jobs bill that would’ve created up to 1.9 million jobs nationwide. Ai??Warren first challenged him for voting against these jobs bills, and then he quickly responded.

Looking at the camera, Brown said, “The [jobs bill] that she refers to with all due respect would have raised your taxes $450 billion.” Watch it:

Brown pretended that the Obama jobs bill raised taxes on the very audience and constituents who were watching the debate. But the bill only raised taxes in its original form on Americans whose household income topped $250,000. Senate Democrats later proposed raising taxes only on millionaires.Ai??These tax hikes on the rich were included to pay for the bill. In essence, the bill asked the richest Americans to pay a little bit more to hire thousands of teachers, firefighters, and other important workers and to rebuild America.

Maybe Brown thinks only the super-rich are watching the debate, or those are the only people he wants to speak to. It’s entirely possible he didn’t want to tax the rich a tiny amount to pay for jobs for millions of Americans. Any other explanation would be that he simply wanted to mislead the audience.

Two just-released polls find that progressive champion Elizabeth Warren is now leading incumbent Senator Scott Brown (R) in the Massachusetts Senate race.

First, here’s a poll from theAi??Western New England University Polling Institute:

Of the 444 likely voters interviewed for the survey, 50 percent said they would support Warren if the election was held today, 44 percent said Brown, and six percent said they were undecided. Among the larger sample of 545 registered voters, Warren led Brown by 12 points, 53 percent to 41 percent, with six percent undecided. The margin of sampling error for the sample of likely voters is plus or minus 4.6 percentage points, and the margin of error for the sample of all registered voters is plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.

Second, here’s the results from a new Public Policy Polling survey:

Things have been going Elizabeth Warren’s way in the Massachusetts Senate race over the last month. She’s gained 7 points and now leads Scott Brown 48-46 after trailing him by a 49-44 margin on our last poll.

Warren’s lead is likely a result from her excellent convention speech and voters’ increasingly realizing that Brown has been a shill for Wall Street during his time in the Senate.

Hours before Elizabeth Warren speaks in prime at the Democratic convention, a leading progressive group backing the Democrat’s Senate nominee in Massachusetts will announce they’ve raised $1 million for her bid to defeat Republican Sen. Scott Brown. In addition, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) also tells CNN that they’ve received more than 50,000 grassroots donations that will be directed to Warren’s campaign, with the average donation being $16.

Tonight, progressive icon andAi??MassachusettsAi??Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren will be speaking at the Democratic National Convention. All around the country, PCCC members will be hosting watch parties to view and discuss Warren’s address. (Click here to find a watch party event near you.)

For those of you who will be online during the speech, it will be livestreamed on YouTube at approximately 9:45 PM Eastern Time. You can use the embedded player below to watch:

Use the comment section alone to share your thoughts on the speech and discuss Warren’s message with other PCCC members.

UPDATE: Here’s Warren’s full speech

Donate to Elizabeth Warren.

Pledge to call for Elizabeth Warren in October.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) announced on Wednesday that it has raised $1 million through grassroots donations for the Massachusetts Senate campaign of consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren. The announcement by PCCC comes as Warren, a favorite of progressive Democrats, is set to speak at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte Wednesday. The group said that the $1 million raised came from 50,000 donors with an average donation of $16.

In the wake of JPMorgan’s $2 billion trading loss, U.S. Senate Democratic candidate for Massachusetts, Harvard Law professor and former White House adviser Elizabeth Warren is calling for a new Glass-Steagall law to separate investment and commercial banking. Warren, a Democrat who is challenging Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., in a nationally watched race, says JPMorgan’s bungled derivatives trading demonstrate a need for a new Glass-Steagall Act. She sent out an email with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee — a group that has raised more than $700,000 for her candidacy — to push for stronger financial regulations.

Elizabeth Warren raised $5.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, a campaign aide confirmed to The Hill. It’s the best quarter of fundraising by any Senate candidate this cycle, and beats Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) in the fourth quarter by $2.5 million. Warren said she has $6 million cash on hand.
Over $600,000 of Warren’s campaign cash — including almost $200,000 of her fourth-quarter haul — came from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, the group said on Wednesday. The liberal PAC was one of Warren’s earliest supporters and launched a movement to “draft” Warren into the race in 2011.

After President Obama decided not to fight to make Elizabeth Warren the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency she had conceived and gotten off the ground, most of official Washington assumed she would return to Harvard and teach law. But the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and National Nurses United had another idea: they wanted Warren to run for the Senate from Massachusetts. The PCCC push, and an early endorsement from the nurses, created an old-fashioned draft campaign. And it worked.

Draft Warren organizers in Northampton hosted a house party for Elizabeth Warren and over 200 Warren supporters. Organizers said her appearance at the home of Margaret Lucey and William Noel on Bridge Road drew a crowd who spilled out onto the lawn in front of the home.

With help from national fund-raising groups, Elizabeth Warren has already raised $3.15 million for her United States Senate campaign, catapulting ahead of her Democratic primary opponents. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has raised more than $400,000 on Ms. Warren’s behalf so far.

If there’s ever any doubt about the momentum former White House financial reform adviser Elizabeth Warren brings to the Massachusetts Senate race, just check in with the national fundraising effort led by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

The fundraising drive began a couple months before Warren got in the race, and on the first day of her official candidacy, the PCCC surpassed $200,000 raised.