Jennifer Jacobs

jejacobs@dmreg.com

This is the perfect time for U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren to run for president, and Iowans can succeed in coaxing her into the race, national Democratic activists said Wednesday.

"This moment is just built for a Warren message," Ilya Sheyman, executive director of MoveOn.org's political action committee, told The Des Moines Register in an interview.

The progressive group kicked off a "Run Warren Run" effort in Des Moines on Wednesday evening. About 80 people showed up at Java Joe's CoffeeHouse to eat free cookies and listen to rousing speeches meant to draw activists into helping with MoveOn.org's $1 million effort to prepare for a Warren campaign, should the Massachusetts senator decide to run.

Warren is favorite of some liberals, who would like to see her challenge former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the presumptive front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 2016. Warren has said numerous times, sometimes quite emphatically, that she isn't running. That doesn't deter her most passionate supporters, who point out that it took a draft effort to get her to run for the Senate.

"She can win the caucuses, and she can win the primary, and she can go on to win the general election," Sheyman said during the kick-off meeting.

One of the defining issues of the 2016 Iowa caucuses will be confronting income inequality, Sheyman told the Register, and there's no one better to lead that fight than Warren, a Wall Street watchdog who fights for working-class Americans.

"There's a sense that in this moment, when the middle-class and working families are falling further and further behind, Sen. Warren's unique voice and unique track record is needed," Sheyman said.

Iowa Senate President Pam Jochum, D-Dubuque, told the audience that she thinks Warren is brilliant and courageous and she hopes she gets into the race. Later, she told the Register that doesn't mean she'd back Warren over Clinton. "Not yet," said Jochum, who was the only elected official spotted at the event.

"If she jumps in, I think we're a better nation for it, and a better party," Jochum said. She added that she thinks Clinton is "a remarkably brilliant woman as well," and that she hopes Clinton and others run, too.

This is the first draft-a-candidate effort in MoveOn.org's 16-year history. The advocacy group was founded in 1998 to stand up to the GOP attempt to impeach President Bill Clinton and has since delved into anti-war activities and campaigning for various Democrats.

MoveOn polled its 8 million members — including the 55,000 in Iowa — to ask whether they should encourage Warren to run, and on Tuesday, 81 percent said yes.

"They felt like a vigorous contested caucus and primary process was good for all the candidates, good for the party and a way to surface progressive ideas and make sure they got a real airing," Sheyman said.

Organizers created a website, RunWarrenRun.org, and a video introducing her — then came to Iowa. "Iowa is where it all begins and where conventional wisdom can turn on its head overnight and where ordinary activists get a voice and any candidate can get a fair hearing," Sheyman said.

In just six days, MoveOn has found Democrats in 95 of the 99 counties who say they want to volunteer for this draft campaign, he said.

Next up: Hire a state director, field staff and regional field organizers who will build "a volunteer army," Sheyman said. They will open offices in Iowa, and conduct focus groups and polling to test whether Warren's biography, political message and Warren herself as a messenger are appealing. They'll ramp up in New Hampshire as well, he said.

"What's unique about Senator Warren is there's just so much passion and hunger out there that for us the key is to channel that in a way that's visible to her," Sheyman told the Register.

Warren has set the agenda for the Democratic Party over the past two years, Sheyman said. "She was one of the first to talk about student debt," he said. "She's talking about Social Security, she's talking about giveaways to Wall Street. She certainly scrambles the math and gives Democrats a chance to pursue a whole broader coalition of folks who feel like there's somebody fighting for them."

Asked why Clinton can't be that voice for the working poor, Sheyman said people "want someone who's been out there with a track record, fighting on these issues and succeeding and winning.

"Everyone knows exactly why she's there, who she's fighting for — low- and middle-class families, and they're confident that should she make it to the White House, she would keep fighting for them."

Another liberal group, Democracy for America, announced in Iowa on Wednesday that it will put an initial $250,000 into the Run Warren Run effort.