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Western Massachusetts Dems React To Warren's 2020 Hopes

Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren talks with reporters outside her home in Cambridge after announcing that she is setting up an exploratory committee for a run for the presidency.
Robin Lubbock
/
WBUR
Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren talks with reporters outside her home in Cambridge after announcing that she is setting up an exploratory committee for a run for the presidency in 2020.

Will she or won't she? U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren has inched closer to answering that question.

Warren announced Monday that she is starting a committee to explore a presidential run in 2020. By establishing the committee, she can raise funds and hire staff before deciding whether to seek the Democratic nomination.

Greenfield resident John Bednarski, who contributed to Bernie Sanders’ campaign for president, and who supported Warren when she ran for the Senate, said he likes Warren's progressive approach.

“We should be talking about issues, not about flashy statements,” Bednarski said. “And the person [who] can do that the best would be the kind of person that I would support.”

Easthampton Mayor Nicole LaChapelle, who is a member of the Massachusetts Democratic Committee, said Warren's positions on financial accountability for banks and reducing student debt come from the senator's conversations with voters.

“Her announcement [Monday], so early, sets the perfect tenor for a presidential campaign season that is issue-driven,” LaChapelle said. “And those issues will be very well connected to those who are living and walking on Main Street.”

In a letter to supporters, Warren made no definitive statements about the future, except that she would announce a plan early in 2019.

Nancy Eve Cohen is a former NEPM senior reporter whose investigative reporting has been recognized with an Edward R. Murrow Regional Award for Hard News, along with awards for features and spot news from the Public Media Journalists Association (PMJA), American Women in Radio & Television and the Society of Professional Journalists.

She has reported on repatriation to Native nations, criminal justice for survivors of child sexual abuse, linguistic and digital barriers to employment, fatal police shootings and efforts to address climate change and protect the environment. She has done extensive reporting on the EPA's Superfund cleanup of the Housatonic River.

Previously, she served as an editor at NPR in Washington D.C., as well as the managing editor of the Northeast Environmental Hub, a collaboration of public radio stations in New York and New England.

Before working in radio, she produced environmental public television documentaries. As part of a camera crew, she also recorded sound for network television news with assignments in Russia, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba and in Sarajevo during the war in Bosnia.
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