Battenfeld: Elizabeth Warren’s letter-writing reelection campaign avoiding voters

Where is Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s vaunted reelection campaign?

It’s her one chance to meet Massachusetts residents every six years and she’s mostly avoiding actual voters.

The Democratic incumbent’s last town hall – which are mostly scripted affairs packed with supporters – appears to have been in April in Roxbury. She did attend a Biden campaign event in June – in Minneapolis. She also appeared at a press conference to tout funding for a new Cape Cod bridge.

Warren’s campaign this year seems to be limited to sending reams of strongly-worded letters to the usual suspects, like big corporations, Elon Musk and ICE, that accomplish nothing.

She is avoiding undecided voters at all costs. She’s not traveling to diners or coffee shops to meet regular people. Is she out in the neighborhoods in Lawrence?

Is she re-introducing herself to voters?

It’s a campaign by press release. The most important job in her Senate office may be the letter-writing division.

“Tesla’s Board of Directors appears to be failing to meet its fiduciary duties to Tesla’s shareholders by neglecting to address company CEO Elon Musk’s apparent conflicts of interest,” Warren wrote in a 10-page letter to Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm last week.

Musk’s support of Donald Trump has nothing to do with Warren’s sudden scrutiny of the Tesla CEO of course.

Warren has gone after Musk before, asking the SEC to investigate him after he sold billions of dollars of Tesla shares to finance a buyout of Twitter.

And Musk has also targeted Warren, calling her “Senator Karen.” So now apparently she’s trying to pay him back, though it’s unclear whether her letter writing campaign had any impact.

Warren this week turned her attention to a new target, big veterinary company JAB Holding Co., a German private equity firm that owns numerous vet practices.

“In recent years, private equity firms – including JAB Holding Company – have spent billions on buying up veterinary practices and then profiteering while reducing quality of care, increasing prices for pet owners, and making working conditions even harder for veterinarians,” Warren and Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal wrote in scathing letter to JAB.

Warren’s MO is always the same – find a partner to write a sternly-worded letter to one of her targets and then distribute it to the press.

Just this week, Warren and her Massachusetts colleague Ed Markey wrote a strongly worded letter to the Department of Homeland Security and ICE urging them to “resolve the persistent, horrific conditions” at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility.

Plymouth County is the last remaining jail that detains suspects for ICE.

The rest were eliminated by the Biden administration.

Warren has no Democratic opponent in the September primary but does have a Republican foe to deal with, John Deaton, although it remains to be seen how serious. An anti-Warren super PAC also recently spent $850,000 on behalf of Deaton’s campaign.

But just because she doesn’t have a primary opponent doesn’t mean she should be crowned with no scrutiny.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Previous post ‘He’s putting himself in some serious company’: Red Sox coaches, teammates rave about Devers’ bat
Next post Tee Thursday: You’ll pine for The International