Elizabeth Warren Hits Up Hollywood to 'Recapture' Ted Kennedy's Senate Seat

Elizabeth Warren, Democratic Hollywood’s “it girl” in this election cycle, will be back in town Thursday, Mar. 1 for a fundraiser at the Santa Monica home of entertainment industry lawyer Skip Brittenham and his wife, actress and author Heather Thomas.

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Warren is campaigning to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts and -- as the fundraiser’s invitation says-- "recapture Ted Kennedy’s U.S. Senate seat” for the Democrats. Brown, who was elected as a Tea Party favorite, now is being heavily supported by donations from Wall Street, the defense industry and GOP political action committees. Warren, a Harvard law professor and one-time consumer protection advocate in the Obama Administration, has attracted Democratic backers from across the nation, particularly Hollywood, where her media-savvy speeches and Internet videos have made her very popular.

In the last three months of 2011, Warren raised $5.7 million in campaign contributions to Brown’s $3 million. Nearly 70 percent of her dollars came from outside Massachusetts, reflecting the importance Democrats have attached to the race. Brown, by contrast, has attracted 10 times the PAC money that Warren has--$1.6 million as opposed to just $142,000 for her. In part, that reflects the Republicans’ greater reliance on PAC’s and Super PAC’s in the coming general election.

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Some of the Hollywood people who already donated to her campaign include Barbra Streisand, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Hans Zimmer and Norman Lear.

Invitations to the Brittenham/Thomas event tell potential donors that Warren “has taken the election cycle by storm” and call her a “fierce consumer advocate, renowned law professor, bankruptcy expert and provocative candidate who has inspired the ire of (GOP political strategist) Karl Rove and motivated the (Democratic) grassroots nationally.”

Attendees at the Mar. 1 fundraiser are invited to a “co-chair” and “co-host” reception -- tickets $5,000 and $2,500 respectively -- to be followed by a general reception for which a $500 donation will suffice.