Groups urging Sen. Elizabeth Warren to run for president in 2016 are kicking off their New Hampshire organizing efforts with a rally on Saturday in Manchester.
MoveOn.org and Democracy for America, two liberal groups urging the progressive senator to run, are dispatching grassroots organizers to the first-in-the-nation primary state this week with the goal of encouraging local volunteers, politicians and activists to help convince Warren she needs to run for president.
“Our folks on the ground are going to reach out to the really strong activist community that exists in New Hampshire,” said Neil Sroka, Democracy for America’s spokesman. “We want to show Elizabeth Warren that if she decided to get into the race, there is a strong grassroots army ready to do everything a candidate needs to run a competitive race in the Granite State.”
Saturday will make the start of these efforts.
Leaders from Democracy for America, MoveOn.org and other progressive come together for their first meeting in New Hampshire, with the goal of charting next steps in convincing Warren to run. Those steps are likely to include opening offices across the state and dispatching more organizers in the coming months.
The “Run Warren Run” efforts, which launched late last year, have so far picked up over 200,000 supporters across the country. While they aren’t alone — groups like super PAC Ready for Warren have been organizing around a possible Warren run since early last year — the coalition of MoveOn and DFA has been some of the most organized work around the senator.
That said, the efforts have so far not moved the Massachusetts senator to make a run at the presidency and, in some respects, Warren has moved further away from a run.
In an interview published by Fortune Magazine on Tuesday, Warren was asked by former FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair whether if she will run for president.
“No,” the Massachusetts senator flatly said.
That is new, given the senator has repeatedly knocked down presidential speculation by simply saying, “I am not running for president.” The denial is in present tense, meaning Warren wasn’t running for president at this moment. When some reporters pressed her on this, Warren would just repeat, “I am not running for president.”
If she does decide to run, though, she wouldn’t be the first politician to change their mind on a presidential bid.
Warren outlined her liberal economic agenda earlier this month in a campaign-style speech that electrified liberal and labor organizers in the audience.
“For more than 30 years, too many politicians in Washington have made deliberate choices that favored those with money and power,” she told the AFL-CIO audience. “And the consequence is that instead of an economy that works well for everyone, America now has an economy that works well for about 10 percent of the people.”
Speeches like that, Sroka said, have made the liberal organizers more upbeat about their plans. Their view is that if more people saw Warren speak, they would be convinced to support her.
“We have watched very, very closely,” the organizer said of Warren’s speeches. “What you saw there was a senator and frankly a potential presidential candidate speaking out for million of Americans who are struggling to get by and laying out a popular progressive economic message for the country.”
He concluded, “That is the kind of speech a presidential candidate might make.”