Democrat Elizabeth Warren, 63, has been declared the winner of the U.S. Senate seat from Massachusetts in her race against Scott Brown. Warren, a Harvard Law professor and a bankruptcy law expert, perhaps is best known as the creator of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Democrats and progressives desperately wanted Warren to head the agency she created, but banks and Republicans refused to allow it.
Elizabeth Warren will be the first woman Senator from Massachusetts, and is a strong ally, supporting all major LGBT civil rights legislation.
Senator Scott Brown won his Senate seat in a 2010 special election, after the death of long-time Senator Ted Kennedy, the “lion” of the Senate, and brother to both John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy.
Senator Brown early in his tenure came out fighting women, and even waged a faux war against MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow, an outspoken progressive and Massachusetts resident. Brown created a fundraising campaign claiming, falsely, that Maddow was planning on running against him 2012. Brown, who reportedly refused to respond to requests from his constituent, Maddow, forced her to run a full page ad denying her intent to run against him.
Brown’s attacks on Warren were almost ludicrous, and included a strange assertion that “as you can see,” Warren is not actually part Cherokee Indian, as she has said her parents told her.