Elizabeth Warren and her allies racked up victories all year. | Getty Warren sets stage to wield more influence in 2016 2015 showcased Warren's knack for gaining effective, lasting influence by seizing moments of confrontation with powerful government officials and institutions.

Elizabeth Warren captivated the political world for a good portion of 2015 with will-she-or-won’t-she suspense over a potential presidential run.

By June, even her most ardent supporters conceded she was out, and much of the spotlight trained on the freshman Massachusetts senator shifted as the White House race heated up without her.


But with her influence on the rise, Warren and her allies racked up victories all year, winning fights over executive branch nominees, fending off regulatory rollbacks for banks and prodding financial regulators to take a harder line with the firms they oversee.

Warren led the charge largely without rallying other senators to vote with her, laying the groundwork for her demands from the next administration.

Warren had only a few legislative wins. But 2015 showcased Warren's knack for gaining effective, lasting influence by seizing moments of confrontation with powerful government officials and institutions wary of taking on the progressive movement that's rallied behind her.

"Everybody knows that if there’s a policeman standing on a corner there’s less crime, because criminals behave themselves when they're under the watch of a policeman," said Dennis Kelleher, president of Wall Street reform advocacy group Better Markets. "You don't need to pass a bill."

In late 2014, Warren put important parts of her long-haul strategy in motion when she helped set the stage for two big battles that would play out in the waning days of President Barack Obama's term and beyond: administration nominees and deregulatory riders in must-pass bills.

A key development came early this year, when investment banker Antonio Weiss withdrew himself from consideration for a top spot at the Treasury Department.

Obama nominated Weiss in November 2014 to be undersecretary for domestic finance, a post with some responsibility over financial regulation.

Warren quickly came out against Weiss's nomination, which would have required Senate votes to advance. No. 2 Senate Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois and even community bankers lined up against Weiss, too.

Warren said it was "time for the Obama administration to loosen the hold that Wall Street banks have over economic policymaking." Making matters worse, Weiss’s role advising Burger King's acquisition of Canadian doughnut chain Tim Hortons made him a target amid the debate over international tax deals known as inversions. His nomination also coincided with liberal rage, stirred up by Warren, over a rollback of banking regulations that was included in a year-end appropriations bill.

Weiss joined the administration anyway as a counselor to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. But Warren's role in the fight helped put a bigger spotlight on the credentials of economic policy nominees going forward and the broader opposition against corporate influence seeping into policy through top jobs in Washington.

In June, Warren put down another marker for future financial regulator picks when she sent a scathing 13-page letter to Obama's SEC Chair Mary Jo White, a former federal prosecutor and corporate lawyer, who Warren said was "extremely disappointing" as the head of the agency.

In July, Warren amplified the issue of presidential hires as an issue in the 2016 election when she called on presidential candidates to back a bill by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) that would ban incoming government appointees from receiving bonuses from their Wall Street employers.

Hillary Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley backed Baldwin's bill, which is aimed at slowing the "revolving door" between the financial services industry and the government.

Then in September, Brookings Institution economist Robert Litan resigned from an unpaid position at the think tank after Warren accused him of failing to properly disclose industry funding for a study on the regulation of financial advisers.

In October, Obama nominated George Washington University professor Lisa Fairfax to take an open seat for Democrats at the SEC — a move that financial reform advocates say was significant following the fight over Weiss.

If the next president is a Democrat, Warren and her allies will keep close tabs on whether the incoming administration adheres to their watchdog principles as it picks top officials. Warren is expected to back Clinton at some point in 2016 — which could be an awkward gesture because many of Warren's supporters are more aligned with the bank-bashing Sanders.

Warren’s call for White House contenders to endorse the revolving door restrictions “is incredibly hard to ignore when you’re running as a populist champion of Main Street,” said Lisa Gilbert, director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch.

“I don’t think any of these candidates want to be seen on the other side of the debate,” Gilbert said.

In addition to putting a marker down on nominees, Warren went into 2015 fresh off a campaign aimed at keeping deregulatory riders out of must-pass bills.

In December 2014, Warren seized on a spending bill that included a provision that would roll back a controversial banking rule from the 2010 Dodd-Frank law. By the time Warren began taking to the airways and the Senate floor to warn about what she called the "Citigroup shutdown," the bill was all but a done deal. She couldn't force Congress to re-do the bill with the clock ticking before a government shutdown. But the fight wasn’t just about stopping the legislation.

Instead, she made clear to congressional leaders and the White House that they shouldn't let the banking industry's allies slip another rollback into must-pass legislation the next time around.

So this year, Democratic leaders on the Hill and in the administration prevailed in opposing such riders in the most recent spending bill. Financial reform advocates who worked to keep deregulatory financial policy out of the bill credit Democratic leadership — not just Warren — with using their leverage in negotiations with Republicans.

"When all the money, might, connections and power of Wall Street are brought to bear on Congress, it takes everyone to defeat them," Kelleher said. "And that’s what happened this time."

Warren kept public pressure on fellow Democrats in the Senate and the House throughout the year in her crusade to defend Dodd-Frank, which overhauled regulations in the wake of the 2007-2009 global financial crisis.

In a November floor speech about attaching riders to transportation and spending bills, Warren called out Democrats who say they "want to get something done around here for a change."

She was taking aim at moderate Senate Democrats who were quietly talking with Senate Banking Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) about a potential compromise on easing a number of regulations for community lenders and regional banks. Shelby was trying to include his vision of a wide-ranging regulatory overhaul in the latest year-end spending bill.

"If there's anyone in this chamber, Republican or Democrat, who thinks they can slip goodies for Wall Street into these bills without a fight, they are very wrong," Warren said in her November speech.

Shelby and the moderate Democrats, who were also feeling heat from outside groups allied with Warren, were unable to reach an agreement.

"Sen. Warren's political gravitas and populist appeal make her the liberal litmus test for every single financial services issue in Washington," Compass Point Research & Trading policy analyst Isaac Boltansky said. "Although she doesn’t have many direct legislative victories, she has used her position to both shape and sway the debate."

To be sure, Warren had some success in moving legislation through the Senate. An education bill that Obama signed in December included provisions, backed strongly by Warren and others, pushing states to focus on poor and minority students in education. In September, the Senate passed a bill she introduced with Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) to make settlements between companies and federal agencies more transparent.

The latter bill fit a pattern of her teaming up with Republicans when introducing legislation.

Another Warren bill, which never got a vote on the Senate floor or even in committee, influenced how the Federal Reserve revised its rules this year for making emergency loans to financial institutions. Warren wrote the bill with Sen. David Vitter (R-La.).

On Thursday, The Huffington Post reported that Warren achieved another " quiet victory" after the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines restricted big student loan firm Navient from accessing cheap funds.

"She's just strategic in terms of what she does and when, what's public and what isn't, and finding interesting Republican allies at moments that are necessary to lift up the issue so she can win," Gilbert said.

Warren’s reach didn’t extend to trade policy. She was vocal in her opposition to a trade deal between the United States and other countries that share the Pacific because she argued it was a backdoor for corporations to weaken regulations. She publicly blasted a bill that would have helped ease the deal's approval in Congress.

Her effort didn't succeed, at least this year, after Obama personally called her out as "wrong" and the bill to "fast track" the trade deal was passed by the House and Senate. Clinton said she didn't support the deal based on the information available.

As the year came to a close, Warren made clear she was gearing up for more battle in 2016.

In a fundraising email to supporters Monday, Warren said the big fights in the coming year would include standing up to Wall Street, fighting for Planned Parenthood and women's rights and letting people refinance student loans.

"I’ll be honest: 2015 didn’t start out so hot for Democrats," she said, citing Republicans' Senate takeover. "But 2016 is almost here. A time for new promises and new beginnings. A chance to take back control of the Senate and get back to fighting for working families. I’m ready for 2016 — and I hope you are, too."