Debt Expert Elizabeth Warren's Campaign Is In Debt

Senator Elect Elizabeth Warren sent an email to supporters making a bashful admission that her campaign is in debt, despite raising $42 million in one of the most expensive Senate races in U.S. history:

I know this was the most expensive Senate race in the country. And I know that we’ve sent you a bazillion emails asking for money over the past year. I’m sure you expected them to all end once the votes were counted — and yes, that’s what I thought too. Right now, I’d rather be writing about filibuster reform and banking regulation.

Warren attributes at least part of the unexpected campaign spending to the huge numbers of voters they had to drive to the polls and the legions of volunteers for whom they bought coffee and pizza. (Why yes, that is an epic humble brag! Well spotted.) The Globe’s Michael Levenson reports that she’s $400,000 in debt (a fairly small amount compared to her total fundraising haul) and points out that while it’s not unusual for a campaign to end with some debt, it’s slightly more notable coming from a woman who “raised such staggering sums in her race against Senator Scott Brown and has spent her career studying the roots of debt in American families and businesses.” Indeed.