"Elizabeth Warren, Kingmaker?"

Elizabeth Warren, Kingmaker?

By Erika Eichelberger at Mother Jones

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/04/elizabeth-warren-pccc-senate-democrats

"SNIP.......................



Democrats' chances of keeping control of the Senate in 2014 don't look great. FiveThirtyEight polling guru Nate Silver recently predicted that "Republicans are now slight favorites to win at least six seats and capture the chamber," and the Washington Post's Monkey Cage blog gives the GOP an 80 percent chance of taking the Senate in 2014. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) isn't up for election this year. But the liberal darling is throwing her name—and her fundraising mojo—behind an effort to preserve the Dems' majority.

Warren has already raised $1.2 million this election season for 22 Senate candidates, including Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), according to Warren's political operation. That's a lot of dough. "Most members of Congress are not capable of raising that much for their colleagues…She's a rock star," says Viveca Novak, the editorial director of the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks the influence of money on politics. And in late March, the Massachusetts senator expanded her 2014 efforts even further, joining up with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), a liberal PAC, to endorse two lucky Senate candidates: Rick Weiland, who is running to replace outgoing Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota, and Rep. Bruce Braley, who is vying to take the place of retiring Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa).

Landing a Warren endorsement is great news for candidates without a lot of name recognition at the national level, says John Halpin, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress. Weiland, the South Dakota candidate, says Warren's endorsement has been "extremely helpful" so far, adding that after Warren and the PCCC sent out their fundraising pitch, "there was quite a spike [in donations] in the first couple of days." (The Weiland campaign does not yet have final fundraising numbers for the initial Warren-PCCC push.)

Officials with the Braley campaign say the same thing. The campaign couldn't give out fundraising details, but an Iowa Democrat familiar with Braley's campaign says, "Let me put it this way. There's a reason why the [Warren] endorsement was rolled out before the March 31 fundraising deadline."




.......................SNIP"