--- title: Elizabeth Warren Wanted: Liberal Activists Train In Her Shadow description: Liberal activists trained for four days in Washington DC to follow in Sen. Elizabeth Warren's footsteps. canonical: https://time.com/3981631/elizabeth-warren-progressive-democrat/ author: Sam Frizell article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-08-03T03:25:40.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-19T07:41:47.006Z article:section: Politics og:title: Elizabeth Warren Wanted: Liberal Activists Train In Her Shadow og:description: Liberal activists trained for four days in Washington DC to follow in Sen. Elizabeth Warren's footsteps. og:url: https://time.com/3981631/elizabeth-warren-progressive-democrat/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf5e46b3fbeeeabd1/69885d845f570f0e56b1cb80/gettyimages-480967278.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4000 og:image:height: 2250 og:image:alt: Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen Delivers Semiannual Report On The Economy To The Senate Banking Committee og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Elizabeth Warren Wanted: Liberal Activists Train In Her Shadow twitter:description: Liberal activists trained for four days in Washington DC to follow in Sen. Elizabeth Warren's footsteps. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf5e46b3fbeeeabd1/69885d845f570f0e56b1cb80/gettyimages-480967278.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Left’s Quest to Create Hundreds of Elizabeth Warrens > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME D.C. Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition D.C. Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. Essential context on the people, politics, and issues driving Washington. D.C. Brief goes beyond the Washington headlines to explain the politics, personalities and power dynamics shaping what happens next. Senior correspondent Philip Elliott brings sharp context to the issues driving the capital, connecting the decisions made in Washington to the institutions, industries and people they affect. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ## Video: Hillary Clinton's Top 10 Political Moments [Watch (HLS stream): Hillary Clinton's Top 10 Political Moments](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/L3I0gpwt.m3u8) (1:49)  _Published 2015-04-09. Watch the top 10 moments from Hillary Clinton's career in politics._ by [Sam Frizell](https://time.com/author/sam-frizell/) ## Sam Frizell Aug 3, 2015 3:25 AM UTC  Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, listens to Janet Yellen, chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, during her semiannual report on the economy to the Senate Banking Committee in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, July 16, 2015. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, listens to Janet Yellen, chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, during her semiannual report on the economy to the Senate Banking Committee in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, July 16, 2015. Bloomberg—Bloomberg via Getty Images by [Sam Frizell](https://time.com/author/sam-frizell/) ## Sam Frizell Aug 3, 2015 3:25 AM UTC “Elizabeth—she’s here?” The thumbs up came from the back of the meeting room, and two hundred future Sen. Elizabeth Warrens stood up and waited for their prototype to enter. Spindly and with a bouncy step, the Massachusetts senator strode rapidly into the room and was waylaid by a friendly sea of imperfect facsimiles calling for selfies. “What a way to start the morning!” Warren said at last, breathless at the podium. Warren was stopping by a conference on Thursday just a 10-minute walk away from the Capitol building in Washington DC, where the goal was unabashedly to bolster the Warren brand of the Democratic party. In the belly of the swank Washington Court Hotel—also the host of a recent events for steel wire producers and the beef industry—progressive candidates for municipal and state office across the country had gathered for a four-day affair to create a surge of Democratic candidates in municipal and state elections, and build a movement of rookie Warrens. The conference, organized by the advocacy group Progressive Change Campaign Committee, was intended to train candidates and activists from states far flung as Wisconsin and Louisiana to run for office and eventually shape national policy. TIME was one of the only publications granted access to the meeting. Much of the focus was on the nuts and bolts of effective campaigning and fundraising. Questions flew: Do candidates need to fundraise within their own district? How much time should candidates spend on fundraising calls? How do you best target voters during get-out-the-vote efforts? Should candidates’ events have red wine, or are cookies enough? The PCCC offered candidates who attended back-end internet tools replete with website templates, and readymade email blasters and event managers. And Warren was the star attraction. “You are the progressive bench, and we need a bench,” Warren told them. Dozens of attendees wore identical blue shirts that said, _I’m from the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic party_. “Elizabeth Warren is the North Star,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the PCCC. And the enthusiasm for Warren has spilled over all across the left: “I want to clone Elizabeth Warren into every candidate,” said Tefere Gebre the executive vice president of the AFL-CIO, in an interview with TIME two weeks ago. In the Washington hotel, building an army of Warrens to challenge establishment-backed Democrats was exactly the point. “Yes, this is about building campaigns and winning office, but this is also about building a movement,” Warren said during her keynote on Thursday. “You are the living spark of the progressive movement.” It was a sentiment made clear by the conference organizers. “How do we elect 300 more Elizabeth Warrens?” said Stephanie Taylor, the co-founder of the PCCC who dreamt up the conference. “This training is part of it: finding them and giving them the tools to run great campaigns.” Movement-building with Warren in the lead is in part about catching up to conservatives. Republicans can boast of presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, Rush Limbaugh and a formidable coalition of right-wing legislators threatening to unseat their house speaker. Meanwhile the left has a few big-city mayors, a struggling cable network (MSNBC), handful of legislators (Sherrod Brown, Keith Ellison) and a upstart presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, who counts Eugene V. Debs and the nation of Denmark among his biggest influences. And Warren, the progressive nonpareil, has refused to run for the White House. Anger over the Obama years is a key motivator for conservatives. The stimulant on the left is made of a milder sauce, namely, disappointment over the Obama years, and many progressive ideals have faltered in Congress and on their way to the White House. Republicans have taken notice of Warrens influence over Democrats. While the activists met in Washington, her name came up on the Republican campaign trail in Cedar Falls, Iowa. “The fact is the Democratic Party has a problem,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said. “Their problem is that Elizabeth Warren is taking over that party.” “They’re all running to be just like Elizabeth Warren,” he added, saying that Hillary Clinton has borrowed from Warren’s playbook on the campaign trail. Though Warren was only present for the first hour of the four-day training session, her name came up again and again. When she ran for Senate in 2012, Warren liked to make fundraising calls from her kitchen at home while boiling a pot of tea and wearing a headset, an alumna of Warren’s fundraising team, Sarah Badawi, told trainees. Joel Silberman, a speech trainer, said in a session that when he consulted Warren before a Massachusetts state convention speech, he told Warren a trick to cure nerves: count the number of steps to the podium. Taylor and Green of the PCCC once sat on Warren’s front porch and shared lemonade and iced tea to convince her to first run for Senate, Warren noted during her address. The former director of research for Warren’s senatorial campaign, Peter Jones led a class on opposition research. (A quick Google search on Warren’s defeated opponent for Senate, Scott Brown, shows him shirtless in photos hawking diet pills, a fact that Warren recently noted in a speech.) Most of those hoping to follow Warren’s lead at the conference don’t look anything like her or share her Ivy League background. There was the black state senator who represents Ferguson, an Indian-American candidate for Congress from a Detroit suburb, and as many pairs of sneakers as suits. Union organizers, mothers, climate activists, feminists and campaign staffers were in Washington from Vermont and Georgia. “You are a part of a global re-owning of a populist, progressive vision of America,” said Zephyr Teachout, chief executive of the Mayday PAC which aims to get money out of politics. Many at the conference argued local victories could sway their states, and ultimately, Congress. Over a lunch of ravioli and tagliatelli with lemon sauce and iced tea, two attendees from Rhode Island debated the merits of the conference. “The more states have something like paid leave, and it’s successful, the more likely we’ll be able to get Congress to move it forward,” Shandi Hanna, an activist at the Women’s Fund of Rhode Island. “We need to infiltrate the system and change it.” “You look around this room people—the people I’ve met makes me realize the country is moving in a good direction,” said Margaux Morisseau, a candidate for Rhode Island state Senate. So far, the left has been unable to create the kind of movement that caught fire on the right after President Obama’s election. But in some ways, things have changed in recent years. Cities and states like California and Rhode Island are requiring businesses to provide paid family leave; activists in New York, Los Angeles and Seattle have with mixed success pushed for a $15-minium wage; Bernie Sanders has attracted crowds of 10,000 and more in purple and red states like Wisconsin and Arizona. To progressives, those are signs of shifting winds. “People will start to realize there’s a change happening from underneath. They’ll either have to evolve or die,” said Chris Larson, a state senator in Wisconsin. Some date the recent wave in progressive activism back to Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign. A left-backed candidate, Dean’s loss in the primary spawned Democracy for America, a progressive PAC. The past five years has seen a slow increase in organizational support for progressive Democrats. DFA, MoveOn.org, Progressive Majority also aim to train progressive candidates for office. It’s Warren’s message that has helped motivate them in recent years, and attendees repeatedly mentioned Warren’s name during the conference. “We can whine about this, we can whimper about this, or we can fight back,” Warren said Thursday. “I’m fighting back!” The goal, of course, is victory against Republicans, and against old-line Democrats in primary contests. If they win, it will come the way of conquerors of old: by conversion, or a rout. “It’s our movement,” said CM! Winters Palacio, a Chicago librarian (with punctuation in her first name) who is running for City Council and says she is facing pushback from the moderate Democratic mayor, Rahm Emmanuel. “We will eat the elephant one bite at a time.” ## Transcript You know, I'm not sittin' here some little woman standing here by my man like Tammy Wynette. I'm sittin' here because I love him, and I respect him. Now is our chance to beat the historical odds, and give the American people the health security they need. If there is one message that echoes forth from this. Let it be that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights once and for all. The great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right- wing conspiracy that has been conspiring. Against my husband since the day he announced for president. I would be happy to, when you give me the signed letters. Well, right here. Right here. When you give me. Right here. Sign it right now. We'll shake. We'll shake on this, Ray. No, no, I want your signature, cause I think that everybody wants to see you signing something that you said you were for. You know, I have so many opportunities from this country. I just don't wanna see us fall backwards. Although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it's got about 18 million cracks in it. The battle to stop Al Qaeda and its affiliates. Does not end with one death. What difference, at this point, does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator. I took the unprecedented step of asking that the state department make all my work- related emails, [ MUSIC ] Public for everyone to see. [ NOISE ] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3981631/elizabeth-warren-progressive-democrat/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3981631/elizabeth-warren-progressive-democrat/"},"headline":"The Left’s Quest to Create Hundreds of Elizabeth Warrens","datePublished":"2015-08-03T03:25:40.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-19T07:41:47.006Z","description":"Liberal activists trained for four days in Washington DC to follow in Sen. 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