By Alexander Bolton, The Hill:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) says she’s not running for president. Her office says she’s focused on her Senate reelection bid. But she has the public schedule of a future presidential candidate.
Warren will speak Sunday to the NAACP in Detroit, and next month she will deliver the keynote address to an annual gala held by EMILY’s List, which aims to elect female candidates who support abortion rights.
Both groups represent important Democratic constituencies, and the NAACP speech will bring Warren to Michigan, a key swing state President Trump wrested from Democrats last year.
Warren, who is running for reelection in 2018, raised $5.2 million in the first quarter, more than any other member of the Senate.
She has also released a new book, “This Fight is our Fight,” which she touts as being about the battle to save the middle class. It’s the kind of book one would expect to see from a presidential candidate.
Warren is in the midst of a publicity tour for the book, which ended last week at number four on Amazon’s best-seller list.
She has held four town hall-type events in the past six weeks, and conducted lengthy interviews with talk show host Charlie Rose and New Yorker editor David Remnick.
In an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Wednesday, Warren said she was not running for president in 2020.
But political experts say Warren nonetheless appears to be building toward a potential run if she changes her mind.
“She senses the time is right. There’s a fired-up base and the base is very kindly disposed for her,” said Ross K. Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University, who recently served as a Senate fellow.
“It keeps her in the eye of the party base,” he said. “It’s a long way off until the late winter or spring of 2020. It’s good to get a good start on it. There are people who in the past who started early and created an almost unstoppable momentum.”
Warren, 67, hired Kristen Orthman last month to join her political operation. Orthman served as a senior advisor to former Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (Nev.), who has urged Warren to run for president.
A Democratic strategist who worked for one of the 2016 presidential campaigns said Warren appears to be testing her national political brand.
“It certainly seems like she’s testing the waters to see if she could put together the kind of enthusiasm that would allow one to run for president,” said the source, who requested anonymity in case he ends up working on another national campaign.
Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist who worked on Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential campaign, said he doesn’t know what Warren is planning. But he said someone hoping to run for the White House needs to start early.
Sanders road-tested his message nationally in 2014 when he traveled to California, New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina and Mississippi.
“If you’re going to run for president, the more visibility you get the better. Raising money is critically important,” Devine said.
To read the rest of the article visit The Hill.
