Here are a few things you may not know about Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
During the pandemic, she got into birds and asked her husband, Bruce Mann, to install bird feeders in their tiny backyard. Now she’s at war with the squirrels (and she’s winning, in her estimation, thanks to a special feeder called the Yankee Flipper).
When she’s in Washington, DC, the Democrat’s main form of exercise is climbing up and down the five flights of stairs in her condo building. She rolls out of bed and gets after it first thing in the morning.
When she wakes up in the middle of the night, she listens to audiobooks — always fiction — that she’s listened to before, so she’s not anxious about how the story will unfold. Right now her 3 am listen is a series set in Victorian England that involves magic.
She believes the greatest television show ever made is David Simon’s “The Wire.” “It’s deep into what’s broken in the world, but also what’s still good in the world,” she told me, “how you find broken parts and good parts everywhere.”
And her favorite book as a kid was “Little Women.” For a while she thought she was an Amy, before realizing, no, in fact, she was a Jo. (Of course she’s a Jo.)
I learned all this about the senator during a recent visit to her home in Cambridge. I’m not a political reporter; I was there to interview her and her 7-and-a-half-year-old golden retriever, Bailey. The premise? Bailey is dressing up as Stephen Colbert for Halloween this year, and I was invited to get a sneak peek of his costume.
This wasn’t my first Bailey sighting. During the first few months of the pandemic, I often saw Warren, with Mann and Bailey in tow, walking loops around Fresh Pond Reservoir. Back then, I wondered what she was thinking about as she logged all those steps.
We’re well acquainted with Warren the political wonk, Warren the persistent, progressive warrior — so when I was invited to interview the senator on the occasion of Bailey’s costume reveal, I was curious what I might learn about Warren the human.
After I rang the bell, Warren swung the door open to greet me, Bailey, wagging his tail, at her side. He was already costumed as “Colbert winning an Emmy,” tuxedo, glasses and all. He’s dressed up as many things over the years: a lion, the tooth fairy, Ken from the “Barbie” movie.
After a quick chat in the kitchen, we made our way to Warren’s back porch, which doubles as an office and green room (for media interviews) when she’s not in Washington. It’s enclosed by glass on three sides, and overlooks a tiny garden and patio. There’s a giant cat palm plant in one corner and a red antique rug on the gray slate floor. She told me she spends most of her time in a white wicker rocking chair she and Mann bought at an antique store in Western Massachusetts — though, true to Warren’s relentless energy, we stood for the entirety of our 40-minute conversation.
As we talk, Bailey sits by her side. I swear he’s smiling as he leans against her leg. In July, CBS announced it would end “The Late Night Show” after 33 years, putting Stephen Colbert, who’s hosted for more than a decade, out of a job come next May. Warren is worried big media companies want to curry favor with President Trump by acquiescing to his administration’s demands; that’s what inspired Bailey’s Colbert costume this year.
“If they can’t tell jokes, then the hard news folks can’t do the investigations and reporting that they need to do.”
Elizabeth Warren
“It’s easy to dismiss what happens to Jimmy Kimmel or what happens to Stephen Colbert,” she told me. “If they can’t tell jokes, then the hard news folks can’t do the investigations and reporting that they need to do.”
She also wants media companies, along with universities and law firms, to push back — not just knuckle under to Trump’s demands. “We can go back and forth about what policy should be in place, but by damn he’s supposed to follow the law, not use the federal government as an instrument for his own personal vendettas,” she said.
I knew corporate power and the rule of law would find their way into our conversation. Warren is regarded as a disciplined messenger for the issues she cares about. She’s friendly and warm — folksy, smiles a lot, looks you straight in the eye through her rimless glasses — but this is the woman, you may recall, who “had a plan for that.”
True to form, she managed to work Bailey’s key policy priority into the conversation: He’s against private equity taking over locally owned veterinary practices. “They create effective monopolies in regions and raise prices for everyone and cut services,” she explained.
Warren is a dog person, always has been. She even raised them at one point when she was in high school, and made money selling the puppies. “Between that and my babysitting money, I was ready to rock and roll!”
Even more so, dogs kept her company during a childhood that sometimes felt lonely. Warren was the youngest of four, and both her parents worked outside the home. Her childhood dog, a Pekingese named Missy, offered steady companionship; Missy made her heart beat a little slower.
“As a kid, when you’re a little afraid to be alone, a little worried about what’s happening in your family,” she said, “having a dog snuggling on you, shedding all over you, that’s a thing that keeps you going.”
Trover, Faith, Otis and Bailey — the four golden retrievers Warren and Mann have owned over the years — seem to have played similar roles. After Otis died in 2012, five days before Warren won her first election to the Senate, she told Mann she couldn’t bear the heartbreak of losing another dog. So, they took a break for a while. Eventually, Mann declared: We’re dog people, and we need a dog. He brought Bailey home in 2018, while Warren was on official Senate business in the Middle East. Her resistance to the new puppy lasted all of about 20 seconds.
Toward the end of our conversation — and because we’d talked about political humor — I asked Warren what makes her laugh. She told me about little moments in her day: The kids who walk by and fiddle with the little plastic pumpkins affixed to her front fence; seeing young trick-or-treaters fixate on which three pieces of candy to tuck into their bags; a recent text from her granddaughter.
I felt a wisp of melancholy in her answer. And that’s maybe because, if you’re Warren or a supporter of her policies, the challenges and dangers posed by the Trump administration don’t leave a whole lot of room for laughter.
“I am so worried right now about our country,” she told me, thinking, specifically, about the coming cuts to health care premiums and assistance for seniors and nursing homes. “Our health care system is already broken,” she said, “and if the Republicans go forward with cutting all the things they’ve now passed laws to do… I’m worried the whole thing is going to come crashing down.”
But she keeps on moving. Getting out for walks and climbing those stairs in her DC condo.
“It’s Bruce and Bailey and me at a hard clip, either around Fresh Pond, or around the neighborhood, but being able to get out and to talk, but also to remember there’s another whole world out there. It kind of helps you stay centered.”
I think Bailey is just happy to be by her side.
The audio version of this piece was produced by Cloe Axelson with editing from Tania Ralli. It was mixed by Michael Garth.
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