Maryland Rep. Raskin endorses Warren ahead of Iowa caucus

Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) hailed Sen. Elizabeth Warren as an effective progressive leader in his official endorsement Wednesday of the Massachusetts Democrat in the presidential race. 

Raskin said in a video announcement over Twitter that he would be “proud to campaign” for any Democrat in the crowded field, but added his top choice is “emphatically” Warren as he highlighted her fight to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

“Elizabeth Warren has the chance to recapture the moral center of America and make it the political center of our party,” he said. 

Raskin touted Warren’s work to create the CFPB after the 2008 mortgage crisis. He said that some politicians were “content to pass a trillion dollar bailout” of big banks, and others protested without offering a practical way forward. 

But Warren, he said, “demanded sweeping accountability and institutional reform in the financial sector and then advanced an idea to protect American consumers, workers, retirees and the besieged middle-class of our country.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren has always stood with the American people, and she has always stood with me. I am proud to stand with her now in her surging and historic campaign for President. Go @ewarren! pic.twitter.com/8Mv3ITijmG

— Jamie Raskin (@jamie_raskin) January 22, 2020

“Elizabeth Warren wasn’t even in Congress yet, and yet she organized the Senate and she organized the House to pass the most important financial policy reform in our country since the New Deal,” Raskin said. 

“Most people who’ve spent their entire careers in Congress have never done anything comparable to that,” he added. 

He said it showed the “courage” and “political skill” the next president will need to clean up the current administration, which he called a “money-making operation for Donald Trump.”

“Elizabeth Warren has the passion and the expertise to lead Congress to sweep away all this structural, financial and political corruption and redeem the promise of American democracy,” Raskin said. 

His official endorsement came less than two weeks out from Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses. 

A Des Moines Register/CNN Poll, widely considered the most authoritative poll in Iowa, released earlier this month found Sanders leading the field at 20 percent. He was closely trailed by Warren at 17 percent, based on the poll.