5 July 2019, Houston, Texas, USA
I want to tell you about the decision I made to run for office. Not for president, but the one I made it actually isn't that very long ago, back for the 2012 Senate race in Massachusetts. So here's how the world looks. I'd been in Washington setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
You know why some Republicans hate that agency so much? It's not only the money it costs the big banks, it's the fact that it proves we can make government work for the people.
Yep. So setting up the consumer agency. You remember pre-approved credit cards? I was a pre-rejected nominee. That is the Republicans told President Obama, "We will never confirm that woman to be the head of the agency." So be it. So I head back, I would have stayed, I really would have, but that's the deal. I'm a big girl. I'm a big girl, so I head back to Massachusetts and I'm going back to teaching. I love teaching. And people start calling me. There is a very popular Republican incumbent in Senate who's coming up for re-election.
Now, Massachusetts loves its moderate Republicans. This guy has a 65% approval rating. He has $10 million in the bank, which sounded like a lot of money at that time, and he had a pickup. So people would call me and they would say to me, "Elizabeth, you should run against him. You should get out and you should definitely run for this office. You're not going to win, but you should run." Now, I have to say, my first response is Democrats get better sales pitch. Damn.
And why was I not going to win? Well, because that guy a few years earlier, had just beaten a, dare I say it, woman. Oh dear. And just people said to me, friends said to me, "You know, Massachusetts is just not going to elect a woman Senator or governor, not now. Maybe next generation, but not your generation. That's just not going to happen." So you know how I heard that get the race, right? Do this. But here's what I decided. I decided I would be in this fight, and there would be two things I would do every single day.
The first one is I would make every day count, to get out and talk about what's broken and how we fix it. To get out and talk about child care, to talk about student loans, to talk about the housing crisis in this country, that people just can't afford decent housing. To talk about a broken criminal justice system. Every single day I would find a group of people somewhere, somehow, and I would move the needle a little by dint of just sheer determination.
The second thing I determined, said I would do, I said this to myself, I'm going to see a little girl every day, at least one. And when I do, I'm going to get down on my knees and I'm going to say, "Hello, my name is Elizabeth and I'm running for Senate, because that's what girls do."
And then we would do pinky promises to remember, and we took lots of pictures and lots of pinky promises. So here's the deal. I started out against that guy who simply could not be beaten. I started out down 17 points, I beat him by seven and a half.
And that's how I see this. You know, you're right. Maybe it takes a woman of a certain age to say, I know how to fight. I know how to win, and that's exactly what I'm going to do.