NEW: Warren in Debt After Record Campaign Spending

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Wednesday, December 05, 2012

GoLocalWorcester Politics Team

Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren is in the red, even after raising record amounts for her campaign to unseat Republican Senator Scott Brown, and now she is turning to her supporters to help cover the bill.

Warren raised over $42 million, but those funds seem to have run dry in the final days leading up to the election, she revealed in an email to supporters on Wednesday. The Harvard Law professor said that her campaign had planned for a big get out the vote push in its final budget. However, the turnout by volunteers during those final days far outpaced the campaign's projections.

"This extraordinary effort was wonderful and it's how we won," said Warren in the email, "but it created some planning challenges."

The Senator-elect did not reveal how much the campaign overspent by, only that it had accumulated "a little bit of debt."

"Everyone, we need a little more money to pay off our final bills," Warren said. "Can you help one more time?"

In her email, Warren attributed some of the increased spending to pizza and coffee for the campaign's army of grassroots volunteers, including more than 20,000 on Election Day.

"I know this was the most expensive Senate race in the country. And I know that we've sent you a bazillion emails asking for money over the past year. I'm sure you expected them to all end once the votes were counted -- and yes, that's what I thought too. Right now, I'd rather be writing about filibuster reform and banking regulation," Warren said.

"But we still have a little more to do to wrap things up."