Sen. Elizabeth Warren enters the fray at a time when the 2020 Democratic roster is expected to be the most diverse in the party’s history. | AP Photo/Andrew Harnik 2020 Elections Warren forms presidential exploratory committee ahead of likely 2020 bid 'America’s middle class is under attack,' she declared in a video announcement

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is officially in the hunt for the White House.

The Massachusetts Democrat and former Harvard Law professor filed papers Monday creating an exploratory presidential committee, becoming the first major potential 2020 contender to do so in what’s anticipated to be a sprawling Democratic field.


At the same time, her campaign blasted out an email to supporters that included a high-quality, biographical video that delved into her hardscrabble roots in Oklahoma, her crusades as a consumer advocate and her battles as a Donald Trump antagonist.

“America’s middle class is under attack,” Warren declares in the video announcement. “How did we get here? Billionaires and big corporations decided they wanted more of the pie, and they enlisted politicians to cut ’em a fatter slice.”

Warren, whose 2017 Senate floor clash with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spawned the “nevertheless, she persisted” rallying cry, is expected to quickly follow up with a travel schedule that will take her to early presidential states, including Iowa and New Hampshire. That travel schedule will be subject to any Senate action on the ongoing government shutdown.

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The 69-year-old was just reelected to a second term in the Senate and is to be sworn in this week. She has already assembled a staff of more than 70 people , and the $12.5 million in her campaign account puts her on solid footing ahead of a likely campaign.

Launching the exploratory committee gives Warren a legal mechanism to ramp up fundraising and officially lock down key operatives in early states whom her team has courted for weeks. If she fully takes the plunge, the senator is expected to make a more robust presidential campaign announcement at a later date.

In her email to supporters, Warren portrayed herself as a fighter for the middle class standing up to “a bunch of billionaires and giant corporations” writing their own rules in Washington: “That’s not how government is supposed to work. You know it. I know it. And we know it is time to fight back.” Her video, which intercuts footage of the senator speaking directly to the camera with footage from her life and campaigns, delivered a similar message of economic injustice as she traced her history as a consumer advocate who was behind the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

On Monday, Warren emerged from her home along with her husband, Bruce and their dog, to talk to reporters. Warren said since her morning announcement, she had already received campaign contributions from all 50 states.

She was asked whether she would change anything about her DNA rollout and if she were too polarizing for a national audience. Each time she steered back to a message about the economy.

“I’m in this fight all the way,” she said. “Right now Washington works great for the wealthy and the well connected. It’s just not working for anyone else.”

The political world has readied for a glut of potential presidential contenders to begin announcing in early 2019, with eyes on top-tier candidates like Warren and Sens. Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand. Even a change to Warren’s Twitter handle on Saturday — from @elizabethforma to @ewarren — didn’t go unnoticed, prompting 2020 buzz online.

With her move on Monday, Warren got a jump on like-minded Senate colleagues, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), with whom she’s expected to compete most closely for the progressive-minded supporters he attracted in his 2016 run. Like Sanders, Warren holds a massive email list and formidable ability to raise small-donor money online. She enters with arguably the most advanced campaign infrastructure of a crowded roster of potential candidates.

Still, she also enters the fray at a time when the Democratic roster is expected to be the most diverse in the party’s history, including Senate colleagues equally adept at mesmerizing crowds. In 2016, Warren refused the call of a “Ready for Warren” draft effort that tried to lure her into the Democratic primary. Now, she finds herself in a different moment, battling a caricature of a Massachusetts liberal amid unrelenting blowback from her decision last fall to release DNA results and answer questions about her Native American heritage.

Even her largest home-state newspaper, The Boston Globe, declared recently she was too divisive, had missed her moment and should therefore sit out 2020.

In a November POLITICO/Morning Consult poll , 5 percent of those surveyed said Warren was their first choice to be the Democratic nominee in 2020. Former Vice President Joe Biden, Sanders and outgoing Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke led the prospective field.

Warren’s creation of an exploratory committee comes after months of careful deliberations and meticulous planning. For more than a year, the senator took a series of steps signaling her White House aspirations. She released 10 years of tax returns, introduced a major anti-corruption legislative package, published policy papers and delivered major speeches, including on foreign policy and race.

In September, Warren told the media she would become more accessible in the Senate hallways, after years of avoiding impromptu gaggles with the national media.

“When I first came here, I had never run for office before and never been a public official. I thought it was important for me to put my head down and learn how to do this job,” Warren said at the time . “But with Donald Trump attacking the free press, I started thinking again about my responsibilities to be more accessible to the press here in Washington.”

Last month, Warren staffers were scouting presidential headquarters locations in the Boston area. The senator herself placed dozens of calls to elected officials, candidates, labor leaders and others in early presidential states.

Warren entered the Senate in 2013 amid fanfare, including immediate speculation about a future presidential run. Already a liberal icon, she became the state’s first female senator and raised nearly $40 million, a sum that at the time ranked her among the most prodigious Senate fundraisers in history.

She had a major a breakout moment in 2017, when McConnell reprimanded her as she read a letter from civil rights icon Coretta Scott King.

“She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted,” McConnell said then. It became an instant meme for the left, symbolizing Democrats’ resistance to the Trump administration. Warren later launched a merchandising campaign off of the “she persisted” mantra, and more recently, geographically specific “Persist” groups backing Warren have sprung up on Facebook.

Warren catapulted to the national stage with her 2003 book The Two-Income Trap , which immediately branded her as an expert in pocketbook economics.

Eli Okun contributed to this story.