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FEATURE her career, the twice-married mother with a juris doctor from Rutgers University Law School distinguished herself mostly in academic journals on bankruptcy, floating between university teaching positions and advisor roles. She only came to real national prominence in 2008 when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) tapped her to chair the commission needed to oversee bailout funds for the nation's biggest banks. It was that job that allowed Warren to grill the likes of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, then-president of the New York Federal Reserve—and make few friends in the process. A 2011 story in Vanity Fair fielded an anonymous administration official who said that the Treasury secretary, under whom Warren would technically later serve, "hated her" and ultimately allowed her unpopularity to run its course on Capitol Hill. Warren, suddenly special assistant to the president in 2010, found herself and the fledgling CFPB subject to frequently testy hearings on Capitol Hill. Faced with unyielding Republican opposition, she didn't always toe the line with members of Congress, a courtesy that is required for anyone remotely serious about leading a federal agency. A televised spat with Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-North Carolina) in May last year memorably signaled a premature end to her early bid to lead the CFPB. (Perhaps as memorably, Warren fans reacted by littering the Republican lawmaker's Facebook page with thousands of angry comments.) But experts say that credits with convincing the Harvard professor to declare her candidacy. A $100,000 money- bomb from the same group in August reassured Warren's supporters—as well as her detractors—that she had the momentum she needed to mount a serious campaign. "Folks are really excited about electing and supporting someone who will fight for Washington's accountability," he tells us. According to Sroka, the PAC has raised more than $800,000 for candidate Warren since $1.7 million and giving her $13.5 million in cash on hand for the fall election. Eighty-one percent of grassroots contributors gave $50 or less. In a side-by-side comparison with the Brown campaign, The Boston Globe reported in July that Warren outraised her rival—even with his own considerable war chest— by roughly two-to-one over the fourth and first quarters. "Voters have made clear that they support her," Sroka adds. Money talks, but so do polls. In a straw poll conducted by vealed that it lost $3 billion (and counting) in a massive trading bet in June—a loss that showed up in the form of new calls to implement the Volcker Rule under Dodd-Frank—the consumer cop made sure to flash her badge. The Boston Globe reported When JPMorgan Chase re- that Warren accused Chase of "lobbying to cut the legs out from underneath" Dodd-Frank, framing herself as a "strong cop on the beat to make sure no one steals your purse on Main Street and no one steals your pension on Wall Street." Such tough, borderline folksy "Folks are really excited about electing and supporting someone who will fight for Washington's accountability." — Neil Sroka , Progressive Political Action Committee skirmishes like these inspired liberal activists to rally around the person whom some labeled—perhaps derisively—a "consumer cop." A few months after her quarrel with McHenry, Massachusetts-based Progressive Political Action Committee launched a Draft Warren website that spokesman Neil Sroka 30 | THE M REPORT she announced her run in September. He says that much of it came from some 47,000 indi- vidual contributors, who gave $17 on average—a throwback to the same crowd-sourcing bonanza that gave a certain Illinois sena- tor the grits to run a national campaign in 2008. The Warren campaign fields the same numbers. According to a recent statement, Warren for Senate raised more than $8.6 million over the second quarter, bringing up the rear for the first quarter by a difference of progressive groups in June, Democratic voters placed Warren at the top of their wish-lists for presidential contenders in 2016, ahead of even Hillary Clinton. Warren for Banks? T stellar publicity for the financial services industry feeds into pro- gressive narratives about reform and gives Warren the opportu- nity to capitalize on her resume. iming helps her, too. A recent stream of less-than- talk reinforces her reputation among bankers, who overwhelm- ingly receive the academe-turned- activist warily at best. Many conservative lawmakers viewed Warren as one in the same with the new regulatory regime during her tenure with the CFPB, and critics arguably still do: The Vanity Fair story quoted one anonymous administration official, who said the financial services community viewed her as "the Antichrist." The Brown campaign certainly with her regulatory credentials take aim at her middle-class la- pels, much as the Massachusetts Republican Party revealed in recent statements critical of Warren for the small fortune she reportedly made by flipping fore- closed properties in Oklahoma. Bay State GOP chairman Bob Maginn slammed the candidate for her "long, and apparently rewarding, history of real estate speculation," which he said sharply contrasts her "carefully constructed political image of a 'warrior' for the middle class." Their critiques may not be entirely without merit. The woman who woos the Occupy walks this line with voters. In recent statements, her rival likened "Professor Warren" (a not-so-thinly veiled attack on her Ivy League credentials) to a "jobs destroyer" eager to hike taxes in a rough economic climate. Those unable to find traction