After Caucuses, Dems Say Warren Will Fare Well Among Working Class

As Dorchester caucus-goers filed into the library of the Christo Rey High School in Savin Hill last week, volunteers from the remaining Democratic U.S. Senate campaigns urged them to support their candidate.

Marisa DeFranco, an immigration attorney running for U.S. Senate, was the only candidate trying to sway caucus-goers in person.

“I ask everyone to keep an open mind. This is a long process,” she said. “I am staying in the race.”

But most of the Democrats caucusing here, and in other working-class neighborhoods across the city, are supporting Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren, not DeFranco, to take on Republican Senator Scott Brown this fall.

Of the 14 delegates plus alternates who will represent Dorchester, the majority said they will endorse Warren at the Democratic Convention this June.

To make it onto the ballot in next September’s primary, candidates will need the endorsement of 15 percent of delegates, who are chosen at caucuses across the state this month.

“I think Marisa [DeFranco] sounds like she would be a good candidate in another race,” said Betsy Miessner, a first time delegate, after the caucus had concluded.

Miessner, wearing a “Warren for Senate” sticker on her jacket, first heard about the Harvard Law School professor years ago when she wrote columns on personal finance for the website TalkingPointsMemo.com. Miessner began following Warren’s column for advice on how to deal with student loans that she had accrued, and has been a supporter ever since.

“She really gets what’s going on with people’s lives,” Miessner says. “She knows what the middle class’s issues are.”

Marion Haddad, a 12-time delegate and former staffer for the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy ’54- ’56, said that she was excited by Warren’s strong background in consumer protection.

When asked if Warren fit the mold her former boss and the famed political family created, Haddad fell silent for a moment. “No,” she said, “but she’s close.”

Though it seems that Warren has secured the vote of many working-class Democrats for the primary, her potential in these key demographics during the general election is still unclear. To do what former candidate and Attorney General Martha M. Coakley failed to do in the last senatorial election, Warren will have to overcome Brown’s popularity and a disillusionment with Democrats that has taken root among this demographic.

“People have made up their mind on Scott Brown,” Democratic analyst Michael Goldman said. “A lot of people still have to decide if his opponent is someone they want to replace him with.”

BLUE-COLLAR BATTLEGROUNDS

Democratic leaders from Boston’s working-class wards have said that Warren will fare well in the general election among voters from their districts.

“I think what’s appealing about her to people in Dorchester is her work. I think a lot of people connect to her work in Washington, and also her upbringing. She grew up in a working family and tried to make something of herself,” said State Representative Martin J. Walsh, who represents Dorchester.

Charlestown Democrat Jack Kelly, who organized his neighborhood’s caucus, said that Warren will likely take Charlestown because the presidential election will drive many Democrats to the polls. He added that all but one of the delegates at his caucus will endorse Warren.

The nature of the support Warren has found in the historically blue-collar Democratic neighborhoods concurs with what political experts and analysts have said for months: the race with Brown, like the one two years ago, will be won on the basis of who can best connect with middle and working-class voters.

“Ultimately, in the end, she has to go in that room in Dorchester and convince the people in the room that even though she’s a Harvard professor who’s worked in Washington and made a bunch of money, she understands them, that she cares about them and will fight for them,” Goldman said.

In the 2010 special election, Brown was able to translate his relatability into votes. In South Boston, Charlestown, and parts of Dorchester, Brown drew a significant number of votes from social conservatives and so-called Reagan Democrats—groups that have drifted toward the Republican Party during the past few decades.

This demographic feels as if it has been “completely pushed out of the conversation,” Kelly said. “They don’t like Republicans, but I think they feel like they represent their emotional interests.”

Brown upset Coakley in wards 6 and 7—the heart of Southie—and lost by a slim margin in the historically Democratic Charlestown.

“He does connect to people. I can’t take that away from him,” Walsh said. “But he didn’t grow up in Dorchester. He was on Cosmopolitan as a model. You can identify with the denim jacket but not with Cosmopolitan Magazine.”

“He basically said ‘I’m more like you than she is,’” Goldman said. “‘I get it; she doesn’t.’”

Goldman added that though it will not be easy for Warren to beat out Brown in these crucial wards, her populist message and modest background has resonated well with this segment of the electorate during the first five months of her campaign.

“She is really the first time in a long time you have every element of the Democratic party believing they have something they want to see in a candidate,” said Goldman. “So if you’re educated, if you’re a woman, if you’re a guy who’s living in a three decker, you like her. There’s very little they can attack her on because her career has been based on taking her skill set, turning around, and helping those behind her in the food chain.”

—Staff writer Nicholas P. Fandos can be reached at nicholasfandos@college.harvard.edu.