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Warren Wooing Democrats at Boston House Parties

Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren is preparing for her likely bid to unseat Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) by attending house parties in the Boston area, Roll Call has learned.

Warren, who worked until recently at building up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, attended house parties and events all over the Boston area on Monday and Tuesday. On Monday she was at an event in her hometown of Cambridge and at a house party in Dorchester, a neighborhood of Boston. On Tuesday she attended an event in Brookline in the morning and a lunchtime event in suburban Arlington. She is scheduled to attend an event in Lexington on Tuesday night.

A Democratic source with knowledge of Warren’s plans said she began reaching out to grass-roots Bay State activists last week with phone calls teeing up the events.

“She’s going to be heading out in the next few days all over the state in people’s living rooms and talking about the concerns that they have … and their thoughts on a possible candidacy,” the source said.

Joyce Linehan, an arts and culture publicist and volunteer Democratic activist, hosted about 60 of her friends and neighbors at her Dorchester home on Monday night. Linehan told Roll Call that the group was wowed by Warren.

“I’ve been in a lot of rooms with a lot of politicians early on in a lot of campaigns,” Linehan said in a phone interview. “And the kind of spark that I saw last night doesn’t happen all the time.”

“She’s a real common-sense progressive, which is something that we need,” added Linehan, who has been calling on Warren to run against Brown for months.

Brown campaign finance director John Cook blasted an email to supporters Tuesday that could be a preview of how Republicans will attempt to frame Warren, criticizing the consumer advocate and asking for campaign contributions.

“The Democratic political establishment is going to pull out all the stops next year, doing whatever it takes to win back a seat that they think belongs to them by right but which we know actually belongs to the people,” Cook wrote. “They are so obsessed with winning this seat back that Washington elitists are trying to push aside local Democrat candidates in favor of a liberal Harvard professor from Oklahoma.”

Warren grew up in Oklahoma but has lived in the Bay State for 17 years. If she enters the Senate race, she will face at least seven other candidates vying for the Democratic nomination.

Roll Call Politics rates this race a Tossup.

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