Democrat Warren to announce Senate candidacy targeting Scott Brown

By Frank Phillps, Globe Staff

After weeks of testing the political waters, Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law School professor and Wall Street critic, will officially announce her run for the US Senate tomorrow morning against Republican incumbent Scott Brown.

A senior campaign adviser has confirmed to the Globe that Warren will launch her candidacy by greeting voters across the state, beginning with a morning visit to a Boston MBTA station. She will then head to New Bedford, Framingham, Worcester, and Springfield, making similar appearances shaking hands and greeting voters.

Warren will not make any formal statements or speeches, but her aides will put a video on her campaign website featuring the candidate talking about the major themes she will strike as a candidate.

“The pressures on middle class families are worse than ever, but it is the big corporations that get their way in Washington,” Warren says in the video, according to a partial script given to the Globe. “I want to change that. I will work my heart out to earn the trust of the people of Massachusetts.”

Warren’s entrance into the race has drawn keen interest from state and national Democratic leaders who feel that she could generate the necessary excitement - and funds - to give Brown a serious challenge.

He stunned the party establishment in January 2010 when he won the special election to replace a party icon, the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy. He is seeking his first full, six-year term next year.

Six Democrats, including Newton Mayor Setti Warren, City Year co-founder Alan Khazei, and Somerville active Bob Massie, have previously announced plans to seek their party’s nomination.

Those party leaders and insiders have long worried that none of the current half dozen or so candidates has the resources or gravitas to match Brown, who continues to be a popular figure more than a year and half after his stunning victory in the 2010 special election for the seat.

National Democrats see Brown’s seat as critical if they hope to retain control the Senate after 2012 elections.

Warren, who has spent the last several years in Washington, has built a national following for her relentless attacks on the country’s financial institutions which she says have carried out predatory and anti-consumer practices.

She often uses her own personal history to make her point that Washington has over the last three decades damaged ordinary Americans with policies that increasingly favor the rich at the expense of the middle class.

Warren, the 62-year old daughter of a janitor and store clerk, grew up in Oklahoma. She attended public schools and universities, eventually becoming a bankruptcy expert at Harvard.

Warren was the force behind the creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Vehement opposition killed her chances of winning a Senate confirmation and forced President Obama to choose someone else to head the agency this summer. In August, Warren returned to Massachusetts and began to explore a potential campaign against Brown.

Frank Phillips can be reached at phillips@globe.com.