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Beyond Hillary Clinton: Eight Democrats who might run if she doesn’t

If Hillary Clinton runs, few other Democrats will. But if she doesn't, there's a big potential field out there. 

6. Elizabeth Warren

Elise Amendola/AP
Democrat Elizabeth Warren speaks Feb. 27, 2013, during a news conference at her campaign headquarters in Somerville, Mass., when she was running for a US Senate seat held by Republican Scott Brown. She is now the senior senator from Massachusetts.

  • By Linda Feldmann Staff writer

A darling of the left, Professor Warren was the subject of presidential talk long before she beat Sen. Scott Brown (R) of Massachusetts in 2012.

Now that she is Senator Warren, the drumbeat is getting louder. A January 2014 Quinnipiac poll shows her trailing only New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) in a gauge of how warmly voters feel toward major American politicians.

Warren shot to public prominence when she conceptualized and promoted the idea for the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which protects consumers from unfair lending practices. In the process, she became a liberal lightning rod, and thus unconfirmable in the Senate as the bureau’s first head – so Obama made her a special adviser to help set up the bureau. She served in that post from September 2010 to August 2011, when she returned to her faculty job at Harvard Law School.

Warren brought to her Senate campaign a long record as an expert on bankruptcy law – and a populist passion for defending the lower and middle classes. She grew up in Oklahoma City, the daughter of a janitor.

During her Senate campaign, she raised a whopping $42 million - much of it from outside Massachusetts. Websites promoting Warren for president have sprung up on the web, but Warren insists she won’t run. 

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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