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She's Baaaack: Elizabeth Warren Returns for a Crack at the U.S. Senate

By Alain Sherter

Updated on: September 13, 2011 / 6:00 PM EDT / MoneyWatch

Remember Elizabeth Warren? She's the financial industry gadfly and Harvard professor who helped get the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau off the ground. When Republican lawmakers made it clear they would block her appointment to head the new agency, she faded gracefully from view... only to reappear today by announcing that she's running for the Senate in Massachusetts.

Said Warren, who on Wednesday plans to formally declare her intention to challenge Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., in a statement:

The pressures on middle-class families are worse than ever, but it is the big corporations that get their way in Washington. I want to change that. I will work my heart out to earn the trust of the people of Massachusetts.

Warren can win, too. Although a recent survey showed her trailing Brown, his support came in at less than 44 percent, low for an incumbent, and she had yet to enter the race. And of course Massachusetts remains among the most liberal states in the country, where a strong defender of consumer rights like Warren will play well. Certainly Brown seems worried. He was recently trumpeting his own credentials on financial reform, recently touting his efforts to pass Dodd-Frank.

As for finding a director to head the CFPB, Republicans continue to bar the appointment of Richard Cordray, who Obama nominated in July to head the bureau. Not because the lawmakers have any specific objections to the former Ohio attorney general, who heads the agency's enforcement division. No, they just don't like the idea of a dedicated government agency protecting Americans from financial abuse. As Sen. Richard Shelby told Cordray earlier this month during the nominee's confirmation hearing:

I'm sure that you have a good background. You've got a fine family, too. . . But you're caught between a big, substantive debate here, as you well know.

It's not you, it's us. But why even bother evaluating people's professional qualifications to lead key government agencies -- agencies established under the law -- when you can just perpetually stonewall?

For Warren, not getting the top slot at the CFPB may turn out to be a great career move. Her stellar work conceiving and setting up the agency turned her from a largely anonymous academic and policy wonk into a celebrity, propelling her Senate run. And while she would've had a limited term running the bureau, if she wins she could end up a thorn in the financial industry's side for years to come.

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