Despite no weakening in Elizabeth Warren's position that she will not run for president in 2016, efforts continue to "draft" the Massachusetts senator into a campaign to challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democrat nomination.
Last weekend, pro-Warren supporters gathered in more than 200 locations across the country, including one in Washington, D.C., to map out plans for the next few months,
reported ABC News.
"Most of the people there were attending a Warren event for the first time, which is a testament to how quickly this organic movement is spreading," one meeting organizer, Luísa Abbott Galvão, told ABC News in an email message.
The gatherings included former Clinton campaign staffers and members of such liberal organizations as Ready for Warren, MoveOn.org and Democracy for America, which is chaired by Jim Dean, the brother of former Democrat presidential candidate Howard Dean.
Democracy for America is one of the liberal groups actively forming a "campaign apparatus" in New Hampshire, the home of the first presidential primary.
The group announced Wednesday it had hired Kurt Ehrenberg, a former political director for the New Hampshire AFL-CIO, and Democrat congressional campaign veterans Jake Belanger, Diego Hernandez, and Jennica Simms to direct operations out of a new campaign office in Manchester, New Hampshire,
reports The Wall Street Journal.
"I'm excited to join activists all across the Granite State to ensure we live up to our proud tradition of defying expectations, upsetting conventional wisdom, and picking presidents by working to bring Sen. Elizabeth Warren and her populist progressive vision for our country into 2016's first-in-the-nation primary," said Ehrenberg in a prepared statement.
Warren is also getting a wealth of support from a range of entertainment and film stars, many of whom were in attendance at last month's kick-off event for "Artists for Warren," which featured a menu of charred broccoli with roasted eggplant and a meatless "Superiority Burger,"
according to Vanity Fair.
The group has drafted a letter urging Warren to run, which has already gained the endorsement of liberals like Susan Sarandon, Edward Norton and Mark Ruffalo, the magazine reports.
"There is a constituency on the Democratic left that has never forgiven the Clintons for welfare reform," Rutgers political-science professor Ross Baker told Vanity Fair, adding that the artists are "the party's ideological base and can get fired up quickly.
"Were Warren to change her mind, it would be political catnip for the left."
Part of the strength of the draft Warren movement stems from the unease and discomfort about some of the policies implemented under Bill Clinton, and about the Clintons' ties to Wall Street.
"We know where she [Hillary] is on women's issues, we know what she has said on immigration, the environment. I think the challenge will be where she is when it comes to Wall Street.
"She and her husband are close to them through CGI [The Clinton Global Initiative]. Can she be tough on them? Can she close tax loopholes?" Voto Latino president Maria Teresa Kumar
told NBC News.
There are a few public exceptions to the pro-Warren crowd.
Former Obama campaign operative Jim Messina and the "super" PAC Priorities USA Action recently announced that it had established a formal alliance with Clinton and that it would begin to fundraise on behalf of the former secretary of state,
according to The New York Times.
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