The unlikely story of how Elizabeth Warren became a presidential candidate: 'I didn’t set out to be a politician'

Sen. Elizabeth Warren ended the Year of the Woman with an epic announcement: She is launching an exploratory committee to run for president, becoming the first Democrat to step up for 2020.

In a video released on New Year’s Eve, the Massachusetts politician said she wants to fight the “echo chamber of fear and hate designed to distract and divide us” and reinforced that “if we fight together, if we organize together, if we persist together, we can win.”

Warren, who in 2013 became the first female senator elected in Massachusetts, has been an outspoken progressive advocate for American families and, of course, women.

“The economics around the family are core women’s issues,” Warren previously told Makers. “That’s because it falls so often to women to try to hold it together when things fall apart … The economics of the family, when I’m out there fighting for it, I know I’m fighting for my sisters.”

Her passion comes from firsthand experience. After becoming the first person in her family to graduate from college in 1970, the Oklahoma native married and had a young daughter, Amelia. As a young mother, Warren pursued a law degree from Rutgers Law School because “I wanted [my daughter] to grow up in a world where every opportunity was open — and I meant every opportunity.”

But Amelia almost stopped that dream from happening. Warren’s hunt for affordable daycare for her daughter while she was in school “nearly stopped me dead in my tracks,” she admits. “She was going to be 2 on the first day of law school. And I finally found a place I could afford, but the deal was they would only take ‘dependably potty-trained children.’ So what stood between me and a chance to go to law school was dependably potty training a not quite 2-year-old child.”

“All I can say is that I am here today, courtesy of three bags of M&Ms,” Warren reveals with a laugh.

She went on to become a Harvard law professor for almost 20 years, where she didn’t candy-coat similar struggles facing working families in America.

“My research was about what was happening to the economics of America’s families. And what it really showed is that families are really punched one time after another after another,” Warren told Makers. “There a lot of policies in Washington that have a direct impact on that and I mean a tough impact. So for me, I was looking for any place I could make a difference around that set of issues.”

Eventually, Warren decided “I’ve got to go down to Washington and fight this fight on a much bigger stage.”

The only problem was that Massachusetts had never elected a female senator. That changed in 2013, when Warren won her seat and became the first woman to represent Massachusetts in the Senate.

Now, like Hillary Clinton before her, Warren has her sights set on becoming the first woman to sit in the White House as president.

“I sure didn’t set out to be a politician,” Warren says. “I grew up in a world where the girls who got lucky, the ones who did well in school and stayed disciplined and stay focused, they had two things they could do: They could be nurses or they could be teachers.”

Thanks to Warren, girls can now dream a bit bigger.

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