page_title: 2012 United States Senate election in Massachusetts
section_title: Campaign
hierarchical_section_title: 2012 United States Senate election in Massachusetts / General election / Campaign
caption_attribution_description: English: Joseph P. Kennedy III, Elizabeth Warren, and Barney Frank at the 2012 Boston Pride Parade
context_page_description: In the United States Senate election held in Massachusetts on November 6, 2012, Democrat Elizabeth Warren defeated incumbent Republican Senator Scott Brown. This election was held concurrently with the U.S. presidential election and elections to the U.S. Senate in other states, as well as elections to the House of Representatives and various state and local elections.
  Brown ran for re-election to a first full term. He had been elected in a special election in 2010 following the death of incumbent Democratic senator Ted Kennedy. Brown was unopposed in the Republican primary. For the Democrats, an initial wide field of prospective candidates narrowed after the entry of Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren, the architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Warren clinched near-unanimous party support, with all but one of the other Democratic candidates withdrawing following her entrance. After winning her party's nomination, eliminating any need for a primary, she faced Brown in the general election.
context_section_description: Brown ran as a moderate, stressing his ability to cross party lines and highlighting his votes for the Dodd-Frank financial reform law and to repeal "don't ask, don't tell". Warren campaigned on a platform championing the middle class, and supporting Wall Street regulation. Warren criticized Brown for continually voting with Republican leadership, and argued that he was not the bipartisan moderate he claimed to be. A staple of Brown's attack tactics against Warren was his consistent reference to her as "Professor Warren", in attempt to portray her as an elitist academic. Brown faced blowback after the second debate, during which he claimed conservative Antonin Scalia was a "model" Supreme Court Justice, prompting boos from the debate audience.
  Warren spoke at the 2012 Democratic National Convention immediately before Bill Clinton on the penultimate night of the convention. Warren contrasted President Obama's economic plan with Mitt Romney's in the 2012 election and rebuked the Republican Party's economic policy stating: "Their vision is clear: 'I've got mine, and the rest of you are on your own.'" Warren positioned herself as a champion of a beleaguered middle class that, as she said, "has been chipped, squeezed and hammered." Brown attended the 2012 Republican National Convention, but was not a speaker there. According to Brown, he had rejected an offer to play a larger role, and limited his attendance to a single day because of scheduling demands.
  Following Todd Akin's controversial "legitimate rape" comments, Brown was the first sitting senator to demand he drop out of the Missouri U.S. Senate race. He also called on his party to "recognize in its platform that you can be pro-choice and still be a good Republican." Brown's campaign had been endorsed by many Massachusetts Democrats, many of whom were prominently featured in his campaign ads.
  In September 2011, a video of Warren explaining her approach to economic policy gained popularity on the internet. In the video, Warren rebuts the charge that asking the rich to pay more taxes is "class warfare", pointing out that no one grew rich in America without depending on infrastructure paid for by the rest of society, stating:
  There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.  ... You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.
  On July 13, 2012, President Obama sparked a controversy when he echoed her thoughts in a campaign speech saying, "Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business—you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."
  On September 14, 2011, Warren declared her intention to run for the Democratic nomination for the 2012 election in Massachusetts for the United States Senate. The seat had been won by Republican Scott Brown in a 2010 special election after the death of Ted Kennedy.
  Warren won the Democratic nomination on June 2, 2012, at the state Democratic convention with a record 95.77% of the votes of delegates. She was endorsed by the Governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick. Warren and her opponent Scott Brown agreed to engage in four televised debates, including one with a consortium of media outlets in Springfield and one on WBZ-TV in Boston.
  Warren encountered significant opposition from business interests. In August 2012, Rob Engstrom, political director for the United States Chamber of Commerce, claimed that "no other candidate in 20
caption: Warren campaigning with retiring Congressman Barney Frank (right) and his eventual successor, Joe Kennedy III (left)
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