Elizabeth Warren goes after Wall Street in wake of Native American flap
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It's been three weeks since the Boston Herald first reported of Elizabeth Warren's past claims of Native American heritage. And while Warren, and her campaign for Scott Brown's Senate seat in Massachusetts, would dearly like to move past the controversy and turn attention to her criticism of Wall Street, political observers from both parties say there's only one person to blame for the ongoing chatter: Warren herself.
The latest news fueling Massachusetts gossip mills comes Thursday from the Herald, which reports that Warren, a Democrat, contributed five recipes to a 1984 cookbook entitled "Pow Wow Chow," which was promoted as a collection of "special recipes passed down through the Five Tribes families."
Warren, who says her belief that she was 1/32 Cherokee came from "family lore," listed herself as a minority in a law school directory between 1986 and 1995. She was also touted by both Harvard Law School and the University of Pennsylvania -- where she taught -- as a minority and a "woman of color."
Warren, Harvard professor Charles Fried, and other supporters publicly rejected accusations that Warren used minority status to gain an advantage under affirmative action. But Warren's inability or unwillingness to produce either documentation of her heritage or university personnel records has kept questions circulating.
"There's only one topic of conversation in this state and there has been for three weeks now," Jim Barnett, the campaign manager for Brown, told Yahoo News. Both Brown's campaign and Cherokee tribe members have called on Warren to release her personnel files from Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. The records would ostensibly show whether she mentioned her heritage when applying for teaching positions.
Causing further heartburn for the Warren campaign, the New England Historical Genealogical Society on Tuesday reversed its claim that it possessed evidence of Warren's Cherokee heritage. Warren, who grew up in Oklahoma, says she has no documented proof of her heritage.
"I sympathize a little bit where they [Warren's staff] are because they are getting much of the blame for mismanaging this crisis, but their problem is that they have a candidate that's not telling the truth," Barnett told Yahoo News.
Warren's press secretary Alethea Harney declined to respond to requests for comment from Yahoo News.
While the Native American story continues to dominate coverage of the Massachusetts Senate race, Warren is trying to steer the conversation back to her presumed strength as a candidate: her willingness to take on Wall Street. Warren, a star consumer advocate who was Obama's first choice to head up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (though Republicans blocked her appointment), called on Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of J.P. Morgan, to resign from the New York Federal Reserve Board following the company's admission that it suffered a surprise $2 billion loss.
"We have to say as a country, no, the banks cannot regulate themselves," Warren said Tuesday on CBS.
Warren's campaign also released a new campaign ad Wednesday that tries to remind viewers why she was a highly coveted Democratic recruit for the Massachusetts Senate race.
"Big banks, institutions, Wall Street ... She's not afraid of anybody," a woman says in the ad.
