BOSTON—Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Friday she will run for a second term in 2018, signaling again that she plans to be one of her party’s fiercest critics of Donald Trump and the Republican-led Congress.
Warren made the announcement—which had been expected—in a message to supporters.
“This isn’t the fight we were expecting to fight,” Warren wrote. “But this is the fight that’s in front of us. And the people of Massachusetts didn’t send me to Washington to roll over and play dead while Donald Trump and his team of billionaires, bigots and Wall Street bankers crush the working people of our Commonwealth and this country.”
Warren, a former Harvard Law School professor, won the Senate seat in 2012 by beating incumbent Republican Sen. Scott Brown in her first political contest.
Potential GOP opponents in 2018 include former Boston Red Sox pitching star Curt Schilling, a strong Trump backer.
Warren said she expected both the upcoming fights in the Senate over the next two years and her re-election campaign to be “uglier and nastier than anything we’ve ever imagined,” adding she would take nothing for granted.
Massachusetts Republican Party chairwoman Kirsten Hughes suggested Warren was starting her campaign early because she had a lot of work to do.
“Her record has exposed her as a hyperpartisan bully more interested in scoring political points than delivering actual results, and Massachusetts has little to gain by sending her back to Washington,” Hughes said.
Warren was among Democrats vetted by Hillary Clinton for the party’s vice presidential nomination, which went to Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine. Warren has also figured in very early speculation about the 2020 presidential race.
In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Warren did not rule out a future White House run but added that it wasn’t something she was thinking about at the moment.
