Kirsten Gillibrand (Photo: Wikimedia)

CHARLOTTE, NC -- New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand apparently really enjoyed the speech Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren delivered at the Democratic National Convention last night. Shortly after Ms. Warren left the stage, Ms. Gillibrand sent an email to her supporters encouraging them to give money to Ms. Warren.

"I can’t stop thinking about Elizabeth Warren’s speech," Ms. Gillibrand wrote. "You could hear it in her voice and see it in her eyes: Elizabeth will never give up on the middle class. She’ll be relentless in making sure everyone gets a fair shot."

Ms. Gillibrand is also at the convention where she has sparked increased speculation she may be planning to enter the presidential race four years from now. In her email, Ms. Gillibrand noted Ms. Warren is currently behind her Republican opponent, Scott Brown, in both fundraising and polls.

"She’s the fighter I want alongside me in Washington," Ms. Gillibrand said of Ms. Warren. "But right now, the polls show her tied and her opponent has a $2 million cash advantage."

Ms. Gillibrand described Ms. Warren as a "middle-class champion" and said her campaign is vital to the Democrats' hopes of retaining their slim, four seat majority in the Senate. She urged would-be donors to open their wallets "now" so Ms. Warren "can come out of the convention with a wave of momentum that will carry her to victory in November."

Read Ms. Gillibrand's full email below.

"I can’t stop thinking about Elizabeth Warren’s speech.

You could hear it in her voice and see it in her eyes: Elizabeth will never give up on the middle class. She’ll be relentless in making sure everyone gets a fair shot.

For those reasons and more, she’s the fighter I want alongside me in Washington. But right now, the polls show her tied and her opponent has a $2 million cash advantage.

To hold our majority in the Senate, we need to elect Elizabeth. That’s why I’m asking you now to join me in making a direct contribution to her campaign. It has to be now so she can come out of the convention with a wave of momentum that will carry her to victory in November.

Rush $5 or more to help elect Elizabeth Warren to the U.S. Senate. She’s the middle-class champion we need in Washington.

Thanks,

Kirsten "

Elizabeth Warren (Photo: Getty)

Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren is embroiled in a controversy over her alleged Native American ancestry that has Beantown's conservative tabloid, the Boston Herald, digging for her great great great grandmother's records.

Last week, the Herald revealed Ms. Warren "enrolled herself as a minority in law school directories" citing Native American heritage. At a press conference yesterday, Ms. Warren said she's "proud "of her heritage identified herself as Native American to score lunch invites not to advance her career.

“I listed myself in the directory in the hopes that it might mean that I would be invited to a luncheon, a group something that might happen with people who are like I am. Nothing like that ever happened, that was clearly not the use for it and so I stopped checking it off,” Ms. Warren said.

Ms. Warren, a law professor, listed herself as Native American in the American Association of Law Schools directory from 1986 until 1995. According to the Herald, Harvard Law School also "touted Warren as a minority" when she was hired there.

"I am very proud of my heritage. I am very proud of the stories that my grandparents told me," Ms. Warren said. "Being Native American is part of who our family is,” Ms. Warren said.

“However, the Herald is dubious of Ms. Warren's claim to Native American ancestry:

"Genealogists at the New England Historic Genealogical Society were unable to back up earlier accounts that her great great great grandmother is Cherokee. While Warren’s great great great grandmother, named O.C. Sarah Smith, is listed on a electronic transcript of a 1894 marriage application as Cherokee, the genealogists are unable to find the actual record or a photographic copy of it."

Ms. Warren is currently in the midst of a close race against freshman Republican Senator Scott Brown, who currently has a slight lead in the polls. With the Democrats holding on to a slim majority in the Senate, Ms. Warren's race has been one of the costliest and most closely watched in the country.

In a press conference yesterday, Ms. Warren denied allegations she used minority status for careers advancement.

"I've been hired in different jobs because I work hard, because I'm a good teacher. They recruited me based on my abilities," Ms. Warren said. "The only one as I understand it who’s raising any question about whether or not I was qualified for my job is Scott Brown."

Watch video of Ms. Warren addressive the Native American issue below.

President Obama and Elizabeth Warren in her new ad.

Elizabeth Warren is bringing out the big guns in her race against Scott Brown. A new ad for the Massachusetts Senate hopeful features President Barack Obama touting her as a champion of the middle class.

"She's a janitor's daughter who has become one of the country's fiercest advocates to the middle class," President Obama said in the ad. 

Ms. Warren is fighting a close race against freshman Republican Scott Brown. Her new ad focuses on her work advising the White House on the establishment of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau watchdog agency.

"She came up with an idea for a new, independent agency that would have one simple, overriding mission--standing up for consumers and middle class families," President Obama said.

The Massachusetts race is one of the most closely watched and tightly contested races this year. It has also proven to be the costliest Senate contest of this election cycle with more than $30 million in donations going to both candidates. Ms. Warren's campaign has beneffitted from a large number of contributions from outside Massachusetts.

Watch Ms. Warren's new ad below.

Elizabeth Warren (Photo: Getty)

Massachusetts Republicans criticized Democratic Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren for having a New York fundraiser hosted by calypso singer Harry Belafonte. Mr. Belafonte drew the ire of conservatives in Ms. Warren's home state because of his long history as an activist, which included vigorous, sometimes controversial, opposition to the Bush administration that has earned him villain status among some conservatives.

“Harry Belafonte’s anti-American views are extreme and repugnant. He has praised Castro and Chavez, blamed the United States for the terrorist attacks that took place on 9/11 and denounced America as a villain in world affairs,” MassGOP Executive Director Nate Little," told the Boston Herald.

Bette Midler is co-hosting the fundraiser, which will take place in New York tomorrow. Ms. Warren is currently locked in a tight race with Republican freshman Scott Brown and has relied on Empire State fundraisers to keep her campaign coffers flush.

Ms. Warren's campaign responded to the Herald's questions about the Belafonte/Midler fundraiser with a statement criticizing Mr. Brown for taking donations from the financial industry.

"Scott Brown ought to be explaining to the people of Massachusetts how he’s earned all his Wall Street money--it’s a record that’s got Forbes magazine calling him one of Wall Street’s favorite senators.”

But this year, local Democrats say, a new figure has emerged on the scene, someone who has sparked interest and enthusiasm in the city not seen since Barack Obama’s presidential run, or perhaps even Hillary Clinton’s first Senate run, a slight woman from the Oklahoma Plains, by way of Harvard Yard, named Elizabeth Warren.

Her fund-raising appearances here seem part revival meeting, part think-tank policy session. At an appearance at the Rockefeller Center-area law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf, Ms. Warren surprised the overflow crowd of 50 or so by going around the room and asking each person who they were and what brought them there, lending the proceedings the air of summer camp reunion, a feeling only enhanced when a dozen or so of the people in attendance said that they were in fact students of Ms. Warren’s from her two decades on the faculty of Harvard Law School.

“That was personally to me, very, I don’t want to say moving—that is a little bit of an exaggeration—but it was telling,” said Marc Weiss, the president of Digital Innovations Group, a nonprofit think thank that supports innovation on the web and a regular contributor to Democratic candidates. “Former students standing up and saying how she had impacted the decisions they made about what kind of law they practice. How many college professors can you say that about?”

Part of the appeal of Ms. Warren, her donors say, is the manner in which she has become a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts. One of the nation’s leading consumer advocates and experts on bankruptcy law, Ms. Warren was hand-picked by Barack Obama to lead the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency that she helped found (and which she certainly provided the intellectual underpinnings for) only then to have her nomination to lead the bureau blocked by Republicans at the behest of the financial industry.

“This is like Hillary Clinton. It has that flavor to it,” said one contributor who dropped the $2,500 maximum but asked not to be named for fear of angering his employer. “She is a lightning rod for the right for trying to stick up to the big bully of Wall Street, and she took it on the chops as a result. And so she decides to take a pass at [a Senate campaign]. She is like David going up against Goliath, and so far she is wielding her slingshot pretty well.”

The Goliath in this case is Scott Brown, who galled Democrats around the country by winning a special election for the Senate seat formerly held by the late Ted Kennedy. That result gave the tea party its first real scalp, and nearly derailed Mr. Obama’s efforts to reform health care.

Mr. Brown has been no stranger to New York, either. He has been here as often as Ms. Warren, and even has a New York City finance committee. Wall Streeters have rallied to his side, not so much, they say, because of Mr. Brown but more in an effort to stymie Ms. Warren.

“It is a town-gown kind of election, where Elizabeth Warren represents the gown at Harvard—elite school, elite thoughts—and here is the way the world should be organized, and the country should be organized and we know how to do it. You the people don’t know how to do it, we will impose our will on you,” said Ed Cox, the chairman of the New York State Republican Party and a contributor to Mr. Brown’s campaign. “That is her snotty, elitist attitude, while you got this guy Scott Brown, who’s everyman, who is talking for the town, if you will.”

The race between the two of them has garnered so much attention on both sides of the aisle that a number of donors suggested it was as if it were a battle to become the third senator from New York. Many donors The Observer spoke with confessed that they had maxed out to Ms. Warren or Mr. Brown, but hadn’t given to Chuck Schumer or Kirsten Gillibrand or to any of the Republicans who have challenged them (for fear of getting quick phone calls from their fund-raisers, they asked that their names not be used).

“I like Chuck and Kirsten, but let’s face it, they don’t need my money,” said one, echoing an oft-heard sentiment.

And then, of course, there is the matter of Ms. Warren herself. For New York Democrats, Ms. Warren—who once distilled the fight over the CFPB thusly: “My first choice is a strong consumer agency. My second choice is no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor”—is able to articulate, or at least symbolize, what so many of them have felt but what so few of their elected leaders have been able to say.

“When I heard that I wanted to stand up and cheer,” said Tobias Frere-Jones, the famed typeface designer. “She sounds like someone who is not going to apologize for being smart, and for knowing her stuff when Republicans start making stuff up about her.”

A YouTube clip of her pushing back against GOP arguments over “class warfare” is approaching cute-cat-video view numbers. “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody,” she inveighs in the footage.

“I would put her in a small group of national progressive leaders who I think have really captured the imagination of a lot of progressive activists both in New York and nationally,” explained Jonathan Rosen, the head of progressive consulting firm Berlin Rosen, which was the driving force behind the election of New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman and New York City public advocate Bill de Blasio. “I am not a part of the quote-unquote fund-raiser money network of New York, but I think a lot of people who have heard her speak and have seen her work over the years think she is exactly the kind of candidate we need to build the Democratic Party nationally.” He gave the maximum, as did his wife.

Darren Rigger, a Democratic fund-raiser, attended Ms. Warren’s debut NYC appearance, at the well-appointed home of top Democratic donors Dennis and Karen Mehiel.

“I do this for a living,” he said. “I don’t actually make contributions to candidates and I don’t go to fund-raisers if I don’t have to. And I cut her a personal check and went. It was like going to see a celebrity.”

The leaders of the effort behind Ms. Warren are two well-known figures on the high-dollar Democratic donor circuit: Anne Hess and Sarah Kovner.

Ms. Kovner cohosted Ms. Warren’s first event in New York, and so many people wanted to go that she organized subsequent ones, and has found that she hasn’t needed to solicit people to come.

“Candidates come here all the time, but she is sui generis. She has just excited people’s imaginations. No, not their imaginations—their thinking,” she said. “A senator is a senator no matter where they come from—a senator from Hawaii is just as important as one from here in terms of the vote, but certain people are going to be able to carry a message. People feel like she’s got a message they want to hear.”

The base of financial support for Ms. Warren consists of many of the same people who early got behind Ms. Clinton’s Senate candidacy and then helped her raise massive sums for her presidential bid.

“It’s a little bit the Hillary Clinton follow-up,” said Gale Brewer, a New York City Council woman who has given $1,000 to Ms. Warren. “Everyone said, ‘Oh, she is a carpetbagger, her hair is funny, she wears pants suits,’ and we gave her money and we organized events and we loved her.”

But Ms. Warren has tapped into networks beyond Hillary-land into realms that don’t often donate to Senate candidates, much less Senate candidates from elsewhere. A number of her supporters here trace their roots back to Massachusetts. There is a cadre of bankruptcy attorneys, and number of former Harvard law students, and now she is beginning to make in-roads into the city’s tech scene.

Many of the names on Ms. Warren’s latest report are familiar ones to New York Democrats—Agnes Gund, Leo Hindery, Franklin Roosevelt III, Eric Schneiderman’s mother and late father, the Soros clan. Others are less so, including the artist Robert Longo, marketing guru Seth Godin and TV personality Catherine Crier.

Recently, web entrepreneurs Sheila Marcelo and Kevin Ryan, the founder of Gilt Groupe, were enlisted to host a dinner for her in New York.

“My sense is that there are a group of people who would love to have more women in the Senate, a group who would just want more Democrats, and there is a group that feels like she, in particular, is quite liberal and quite good and quite principled. So she is attracting a lot of interest,” Mr. Ryan said.

Ms. Warren may be all of that, but that might be enough for voters, even in deep-blue Massachusetts. Unlike Ms. Gillibrand or Mr. Schumer, Ms. Warren may very well lose (polls show her and Mr. Brown essentially tied) and if she does, it could jeopardize Democratic efforts to hold onto the Senate. Which of course only leads donors here to double down further on their own giving and in trying to get their friends to do the same.

“That would be devastating,” Ms. Brewer said.

The city’s donors are doing their best to prevent such a possibility.

At the Mehiel’s fund-raiser, Ms. Brewer grabbed Ms. Warren afterward to tell her simply, “You are going to win.”

Ms. Warren smiled and shot back, “Only with your help.”

dfreedlander@observer.com

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry (Photo: Getty)

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry spoke at the New York Law School today and The Politicker asked his thoughts on whether the former governor of his state, Mitt Romney, has moved to the right now that he's seeking the Republican nomination. Mr. Kerry said it's clear Mr. Romney has substantially changed his approach.

"Well," Senator Kerry said with a laugh, "It's like 180 degrees night and day difference. It's just a different Mitt Romney. It's Mitt Romney versus Mitt Romney."

Mr. Romney's Massachusetts health plan, commonly dubbed "Romneycare" by conservatives, has frequently been used as an example of his liberal past by those who say it served as the model for President Barack Obama's health care reform plan. Mr. Kerry said Mr. Romney's plan is "completely similar to the president's.

"In terms of the fundamental notion of universal coverage, mandatory coverage, a penalty if you don't have the coverage, they're completely similar in that respect."

Mr. Kerry is currently accompanied by a Republican, Scott Brown, in the Massachusetts Senate delegation. Mr. Brown is up for re-election this year and we asked Mr. Kerry whether he thinks Elizabeth Warren, Mr. Brown's Democratic opponent, will win. He was loathe to make a prediction about the race.

"I can't prognosticate. I mean, obviously, I want a Democrat and I'm supportive of a Dem, but the voters of Massachusetts are going to make up their minds," Mr. Kerry said. "I'm not going to get into likelihoods or not. I think she's a terrific candidate."

Elizabeth Warren (Getty)

Liberal Massachusetts Senate candidate and media sensation Elizabeth Warren is having a fancy Upper East Side fundraiser with controversial billionaire investor George Soros and Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. 

The fundraiser was first reported by Ben Smith of Politico.

Ms. Warren has earned headlines and anger from the right for her focus on income inequality that her detractors call "class warfare." Her fundraiser this evening features a minimum suggested donation of $1,000 and a committee of sponsors that includes Mr. Schneiderman and Mr. Soros. Ms. Warren's fundraiser will take place at the home of Karen Mehiel, wife of  Westchester businessman and former scandal prone candidate for lieutenant governor, Dennis Mehiel. The Mehiel home regularly hosts Democrats seeking Big Apple donor dollars.

Mr. Soros has earned a status as an economic bogeyman among conservative  critics for his support of a wide variety of progressive causes. Recently, a questionable Reuters article and the radio host Rush Limbaugh attempted to suggest there is a nefarious connection between Mr. Soros and Occupy Wall Street.

Ms. Warren has worked on President Obama's executive staff and as a professor at Harvard Law. She's running against Scott Brown, who came to the Senate via the 2010 special election to replace the late Senator Ted Kennedy. Mr. Brown's victory was considered a major coup for the Republicans since, prior to his win, the G.O.P. hadn't won a Senate seat in Massachusetts since 1972.

Ms. Warren. (Getty Images)

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand sounds like she would be happy to have Elizabeth Warren -- who officially formed an exploratory committee today -- as a colleague in the upper chamber.

"Elizabeth Warren is an extraordinary example of someone who has gotten off the sidelines to protect America's middle class working families," Gillibrand told me through a spokesman. "She would be an outstanding and much needed voice in the U.S. Senate."

In the weeks before she was officially passed over as the head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in the face of Republican opposition in the Senate, Warren was spotted meeting with Chuck Schumer -- who helped engineer big Senate victories in 2006 and 2008 -- leading to speculation that Warren might be interested in challenging Scott Brown in Massachusetts.

Schumer was mum when asked about their conversations last month, but today Warren made it official, forming the committee and launching a bare bones website where people can give money or sign up for her mailing list. She's currently traveling the state on a "listening tour."

Gillibrand has been working to recruit more women in public life, launching an effort called "Off The Sidelines" through her re-election committee (note the reference in her Warren quote), and serving as an early and outspoken supporter of Kathy Hochul in a western New York House race a few weeks ago.

As it stands, Gillibrand is one of only 17 women in the Senate. Brown defeated a woman in his last Senate race, when he shocked the political establishment and beat Martha Coakley to win Ted Kennedy's old seat.

Liberals had called on President Obama to fight for Warren's appointment, but with a bloc of Republican senators refusing to yield, Schumer said the White House was doing the only thing it could.

"Well, the White House dropped consideration of Elizabeth Warren because the Republicans in the Senate said they will not let her pass. Period," Schumer said. "Even were the President to try a recess appointment, they wouldn't allow the Senate to recess. So the President was just facing reality when he said that he couldn't nominate her because she never would have been approved. Forty-four senators I believe signed the letter; 44 Republican senators that wouldn't allow her to come."

The Senate stalemate has given rise to speculation that Warren, unable to beat the upper chamber, might try to join it. Warren is a professor at Harvard Law and is said to be interested in running against Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown. Brown claimed the seat of the late Ted Kennedy in an upset victory two years ago, but will have to stand for a full term next fall.

Schumer, who guided the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to big victories in 2006 and 2008, was recently seen dining with Warren in Washington.

Asked today whether Warren would make a good candidate, and whether he had discussed the possibility with her, the senator was unusually reticent.

"I have had conversations with Elizabeth Warren on a whole variety of subjects but I'm going to keep those to myself," he said.