Wall Street Has Provided Huge Sum of Money to Sen. Scott Brown (R, Ma) to Defeat Elizabeth Warren – But Ms. Warren Is Close to Matching Him

The Fact That Banks Are Scared to Death of Ms. Warren Is Reason Enough to Support Her

The brief history of the Senate seat relinquished by Sen. Edward Kennedy upon his death is that Democrats took retaining the seat for granted, nominated an incompetent candidate who ran a terrible campaign all of which resulted in a Conservative in moderate’s clothing, Scott Brown winning the rest of Sen. Kennedy’s term.  Mr. Brown is a solid Conservative, but some times when his vote doesn’t matter he will vote against the Republican proposals just to try and show independence.

Running against Mr. Brown is Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren.  She gained fame as the author of legislation to protect consumers against predatory practices of the banking industry, and thus the banking industry will do everything, and we do mean everything to defeat her.  Mostly everything means providing the Brown campaign with unlimited funding, so as of the end of March he had an astounding $15 million in the bank.

But Ms. Warren has the appeal of someone actually running to protect the general population, and so her campaign fund raising has also been strong.

Even though Warren has been in the campaign for less than seven months, she has already raised $15.8 million and has about $11 million cash on hand.

That’s still less than Brown, who raised $3.4 million in the first quarter and had $15 million in the bank as of March 31, but given how quickly Warren is raising money, she should close that gap by Election Day.

“The incredible enthusiasm we have seen from people across the Commonwealth who are contributing to this campaign shows the strong grassroots momentum behind Elizabeth’s fight for middle class families,” said Warren campaign manager Mindy Myers. “Scott Brown still has $4 million more in the bank than we do, but this is the kind of support we need to be able to take on the big banks and corporations that are lining up against Elizabeth.”

So like the recall races in Wisconsin coming this June, this race will also be test of whether or not big corporate money can overwhelm a candidate who absent that largess would probably win the race. 

Massachusetts is a much more moderate state than most pundits acknowledge, and this race is going to be a very close affair.  But the good news, at least monetarily wise it is going to be a fair fight.  Issue wise, all the advantages belong to Ms. Warren.  Voter wise, well we will see in November.