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Warren brings senate campaign to popular eatery

Date: 2/8/2012

Feb. 8, 2012

By Debbie Gardner

debbieg@thereminder.com

WEST SPRINGFIELD — Longmeadow residents Esther Lucia and Mary Dwyer didn’t expect to get served a side of politics when they stopped at the White Hut on Memorial Avenue last Tuesday.

But that’s just what happened when Democratic senatorial hopeful Elizabeth Warren made a lunchtime campaign stop at the popular local eatery. Glad-handing her way down the counter of customers, Warren made of point of making sure everybody knew her name and that she was running for the senate seat now occupied by first-term Republican Sen. Scott Brown.

“It was a surprise,” Lucia said. “I didn’t know who she was.”

Lucia’s reaction seemed typical of the lunchtime crowd — a mix of seniors and local laborers who for the most part seemed unfazed by Warren’s — and the local media’s – whirlwind appearance. Though polite, most were more concerned with getting their burgers and hot dogs than talking politics. Two guys engaged in a friendly burger-eating contest, readily admitted to this reporter they didn’t know whom she was, and “didn’t care.”

However one customer, Wanda Szaframski of Westfield, said she knew about Warren’s appearance and made the trip to the restaurant just to tell her that she had her vote.

Dwyer too, said she was impressed by the candidate’s surprise campaign stop.

“She’s got our vote,” she said. “We need more women [in Washington]. We don’t need so many men.”

After finishing her White Hut lunch — a burger smothered with fried onions and a side of fries — Warren told the press she was “pleased to be [in Western Massachusetts] to have a chance to reach out and find out what’s going on in the lives of people.”

Talking about her grassroots campaign, and the recent agreement she and Brown reached to refuse campaign contributions from super PACs and other outside groups, Warren reiterated that she was “willing to take responsibility for” her own campaign, and very much wanted to give Massachusetts voters “a chance to hear for themselves from the candidates” rather than be fed messages via political advertising.

“Scott Brown started this race with $10 million [in contributions] on the first day,” Warren pointed out. “Going into the race, I knew it was going to be an uphill climb.”

She said to date, 23 thousand Massachusetts residents have chosen to support her message with campaign contributions, averaging $64 per contribution.

“Home by home, apartment by apartment, people are saying they want to be a part of this race,” she said.

She touted her 2008 work in Washington D.C. following the start of the financial crisis, when she served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) as evidence of her commitment to be a champion of consumer rights if elected.

“I absolutely want to be clear, at the end of the day, a lot of people in Washington stand up for big corporations,” she said. “I stand up for working families.”

Asked about Brown’s bill making it illegal for senators and congressmen to profit from insider information on stocks — which passed the House on Feb. 3 – Warren said she was “delighted to see it going forward,” though she would have also liked to see it be a stronger bill.

Coming back to her Western Massachusets visit, Warren closed her press availability by talking about the importance of small businesses such as the White Hut, now operated by the family’s third generation, to the strength of the American economy.

Calling such locally-owned operations “the backbone of American business,” she noted “When small businesses can prosper, we’re doing something right. When they don’t, we need to change things.”

White Hut owner Roberta Ekmalian, who said she was as surprised by Warren's appearance as her customers, said it was “nice to see a politician come to town” and

take the time to visit a small business such as hers. She added that she keeps hoping the politicians will remember small business owners like herself when the get to Washington, D.C.



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