Voters Shrug at Revelations of Ethnic Claim in Senate Race

Ms. Warren should have  to answer for her past sins and transgressions. 

From The New York Times:

The controversy surrounding Elizabeth Warren’s ethnic heritage and whether she misrepresented herself as a minority in the past may have engulfed her Senate campaign and the news media, but in parts of western Massachusetts, voters seem either mystified by it or unconcerned.       

A new poll out Wednesday in the closely watched Senate race indicated that Ms. Warren’s ancestry — the subject of intense media scrutiny and mockery for nearly a month — has so far not made much difference to voters. The poll, conducted by Suffolk University/7 News in Boston, showed the contest nearly even between Ms. Warren and Senator Scott P. Brown, the Republican who in 2010 snatched the seat long held by Edward M. Kennedy Jr.

Taking back “Teddy’s seat” in deep-blue Massachusetts is a top priority for Democrats, and the race has become the most expensive Senate campaign in the country. Ms. Warren, who had never run for office before, joined the race last year with great fanfare, having developed a national following as a crusading consumer advocate and a darling of the press, with the ability to raise serious money from the party’s liberal base.

But she was caught off guard on April 27 when The Boston Herald reported that Harvard Law School, where Ms. Warren teaches, had once spotlighted her as an American Indian — though she appears thoroughly Caucasian — when the school was under criticism for hiring too many white men. The story has ballooned since then, with opponents saying Ms. Warren has damaged her credibility; supporters say her ancestry is a nonissue.

Other polls have showed the race neck and neck, but Suffolk’s is the first to be conducted since the ancestry story has been marinating. It showed Ms. Warren with 47 percent of the vote compared with Mr. Brown’s 48 percent. It was conducted May 20 through May 22 with 600 likely voters, and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points. In February, a poll by the same group showed Mr. Brown ahead by 49 percent to 40 percent.

The Brown campaign saw the poll as a modest victory. “We’re pleased with the results, given the fact that Scott Brown has been outspent on television 3 to 1 in the months of April and May,” said Colin Reed, a spokesman for Mr. Brown. (Mr. Brown has been advertising regularly on radio.) 

      

The Warren camp has tried to ride out the ancestry controversy by ignoring it, but even commenters in liberal outlets like The New Yorker and MSNBC’s Ed Schultz have urged Ms. Warren to answer questions about her background and motives more fully and forthrightly.       

“The campaign has bought some time,” said Mr. Paleologos of the Suffolk poll. “But that’s not to say the issue won’t bubble up again. Loose ends don’t work well in politics.”