I just officially announced that I’m running for re-election in 2024. I never in a zillion years thought I'd be a U.S. Senator. But my life has had a lot of twists and turns, just like a lot of people's.
I grew up on the ragged edge of the middle class. After my daddy’s heart attack, my family came within an inch from losing our house, but my mother got a minimum wage job at Sears that saved our family.
I dropped out of college at 19 to get married, but got a second chance at a public college that cost $50 a semester and got to live my dream of becoming a public school teacher.
I’ve dedicated my career to studying why families go broke and fighting to rebuild the middle class. That’s how I met Katie Porter, when she was one of my law students studying consumer law. After Wall Street crashed our economy in 2008, I fought to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to protect people from getting scammed by big banks and corporations.
After Senate Republicans vowed to block my nomination to serve as the CFPB’s first director, I went back home to Massachusetts and ran against one of them — and I beat him. I ran to tax greedy corporations, to invest in jobs and our infrastructure, and to rein in student loan companies. And guess what? We got it all done.
I still remember the first day Katie and I met. My class was held early in the morning, meaning a lot of students had their heads down, trying to avoid being called on. But not Katie. She was determined and ready to go. When the first answer she gave wasn’t her strongest, she came to my office hours and said, “Please keep calling on me. I am going to learn to do this.”
Years later, in 2012, then-Attorney General of California Kamala Harris secured a settlement of $18 billion from our country’s biggest banks for their predatory lending practices that spurred the 2008 housing crisis. She asked if I knew anyone who could work as an “independent monitor” to make sure the Big Banks actually paid California families the money they were now owed. It was a massive undertaking, but I knew just the person for the job: my former student Katie Porter. She served as a watchdog over Wall Street banks and held their feet to the fire to ensure California families received the billions they were owed.
When she decided to run for Congress in 2018, I was very happy to support her. I knew that we needed more people like Katie in Washington — who understood the real experiences that working families faced, who had the courage to stand up to big corporations and special interests, and who would fight to make our government work for everyone, not just the rich and powerful. A Democrat hadn’t represented her district for decades, but she knew exactly how to personally connect with voters, build a strong movement, and win. She flipped that seat, and she’s been winning for working people ever since.
Katie and I are still continuing the fight to hold Big Banks accountable and protect consumers. We even proposed a bill together earlier this month that places stricter rules on the banking industry to prevent more bank collapses. I’ve been a fan of hers for years and years, and it would be a great honor to serve alongside Katie in the Senate to get more done for working people.
Thanks for being a part of this,
Elizabeth
