Elizabeth Warren gets rock-star reception at liberal donors confabBy KENNETH P. VOGEL
11/14/14
Elizabeth Warren insists she has no interest in running for president in 2016, but the rich liberals to whom she spoke Thursday afternoon seemed unwilling to take ‘no’ for an answer.
The Massachusetts senator got a rock stars’ welcome during a closed-door speech to major donors, one of whom interrupted her by yelling “Run, Liz, Run!”
Warren drew multiple standing ovations during her talk, held in a banquet room at Washington’s Mandarin Oriental hotel during the annual winter meeting of the Democracy Alliance, a club of major liberal donors.
Throughout the day, donors repeatedly broached the question of whether Warren would run to Paul Egerman, a Democracy Alliance board member who was the national finance chairman of her Senate race and introduced Warren for her speech Thursday. He patiently but firmly told each that she would not seek the Democratic presidential nomination.
That didn’t stop a donor from asking Warren herself with the first question during a question-and-answer session following her speech, according to a Democracy Alliance source who was in the room. She also answered definitively in the negative, said the source.
Yet the continued interest in a Warren 2016 campaign from the ranks of the Democracy Alliance could, at the least, hint at trouble for Hillary Clinton, the presumed Democratic front-runner, when it comes to winning over liberal donors and activists.
The Democracy Alliance has had an outsized influence in Democratic politics. It works to leverage its donors’ massive bank accounts to steer the party to the left on causes dear to liberals — including fighting to reduce economic inequality and the role of money in politics. Warren has emerged as a standard-bearer for those fights, and her address on Thursday dealt with economic inequality.
Another attendee asked Warren after the speech why Senate Democrats didn’t aggressively push the liberal economic policies she champions.
“The fight is to frame the issues for the next few elections,” she said, according to the source in the room. “We have moved the Democrats over the last four years.”
Earlier Thursday, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid tapped Warren for a leadership position that will utilize her appeal by making her an official liaison to the liberal base. Reid is set to talk to donors Friday morning on the sidelines of the Mandarin Oriental conference at a session hosted by a group called iVote, which raises cash to try to elect Democratic secretaries of state. Reid’s office did not respond to a request for comment on his participation in the event.
The Democracy Alliance has suggested it is considering opening up some of its activities and funding recommendations to the media, but all of the sessions on Thursday were closed to the press.
Democracy Alliance staff and private security retained by the club stood sentry outside the basement banquet room where Warren spoke, preventing reporters from getting too close. And she avoided the media gathered for the conference by utilizing a side door to enter and exit the room.
POLITICO caught up with her as she made her way to a car waiting outside. But she ignored a question about whether her appearance — a closed-door speech to major donors who write huge checks, sometimes anonymously, to influence the political process — conflicted with her public denunciations of the role of conservative big money in politics.
“Excuse me,” an aide said, blocking access to Warren as she slid into the front passenger seat.
Democracy Alliance partners, as the group calls its members, pay annual dues of $30,000 and are required to contribute a total of at least $200,000 a year to recommended groups. Since its inception in 2005, the club’s partners have combined to give more than $500 million to recommended groups, and they played a pivotal early role in boosting Barack Obama during his 2008 Democratic presidential primary bid against Clinton.
In addition to Warren, Vice President Joe Biden, who is considering challenging Clinton in the 2016 presidential primary, is set to appear Friday night at a Democracy Alliance gala at the Newseum with donors.
Clinton was not invited to any part of the Mandarin meeting, which some of her supporters interpreted as a snub. Democracy Alliance staff and board members rejected that characterization, asserting the meeting was about the future of the progressive movement generally, and not the 2016 presidential race specifically.
“I don’t think who speaks here and who does not speak here is illustrative of anything,” said David desJardins, an engineer who was one of the first 20 people hired by Google, and also was an early Obama backer. He said Clinton would be welcome to speak to the group anytime and called a POLITICO article highlighting the fact that she wasn’t invited this time “dumb.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/elizabeth-warren-liberal-donors-112888.html#ixzz3J4FRvhbr
