Forget “Senator-elect.” Scott Brown is still calling Elizabeth Warren “professor.”
The Harvard law professor and progressive icon, who defeated the Massachusetts Republican for his Senate seat in a hotly-contested race in November, told the Boston Globe that she met with Brown in his Senate office last month.
“I thought it went well,” said Warren. “I asked him a lot about the Senate, about what he did, about what advice he had, what surprised him most.”
The Democrat did not reveal much in the way of detail, the Globe reported, but said “with a chuckle” that Brown continued to address her as “professor”—title he frequently used on the campaign trail and in debates, in an apparent attempt to paint Warren as an elitist, liberal academic whose Ivy League background meant she couldn’t relate to working families.
Starting next year, Warren will be stepping down from her tenured job at Harvard to assume her new role on Capitol Hill.
Warren—who rose to national prominence during the fight for financial reform—would not endorse any particular plan to avoid tax hikes and spending cuts at year’s end.
“I don’t know how to answer the question,” she told the newspaper. “Let’s see what they got.” But she did reiterate that she’s against renewing the Bush-era tax cuts on the top 2% of wealthiest Americans and is in favor of axing some oil and agriculture subsidies. Warren, who recaptured the seat held for nearly 46 years by Ted Kennedy, also said her soon-to-be fellow Massachusetts senator, John Kerry, would be an “extraordinary secretary of State or Defense.” But did not say whether or not Obama should pick him or other rumored candidate U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice for the secretary of state post. If Kerry does get the job, it could give Brown another opportunity to get his Senate seat back in a special election.Recommended
