MNA Takes Unprecedented Step in Voting to Support Elizabeth Warren's Pending Candidacy for U.S. Senate

Cites her dedication to the nation's middle class & her Main Street values as key to endorsement

CANTON, Mass., Aug. 23, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Just days after Elizabeth Warren announced the establishment of an exploratory committee for her potential U.S. Senate run in Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA), the state's largest union and professional association for registered nurses, unanimously endorsed her pending candidacy at its most recent Board of Directors meeting. The leadership at the MNA's national affiliate, the National Nurses United (NNU), has also unanimously voted to support Warren.

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The MNA is the first labor union to endorse Warren, and its 23,000 nurse members combined with 147,000 additional NNU members from across the country helps provide the potential Senate candidate with strong motivation to enter the race.

"Even though she is not yet an official candidate, the MNA Board has taken the unprecedented step of voting to support her," said Donna Kelly-Williams, RN and president of the MNA. "Her dedication to the nation's middle class, which she has demonstrated through her work as a faithful consumer advocate both locally and nationally, reflects one of the MNA's key goals: Restoring a basic standard of living for working people by creating financial remedies that hold Wall Street accountable while protecting those who live and work on Main Street USA."

The MNA, in conjunction with the NNU, has started a national campaign called "The Main Street Contract." The campaign is dedicated to many of the same issues that Warren has focused on resolving through her work as a Harvard professor and bankruptcy attorney, as well as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the Obama administration, including:

• Providing jobs at living wages for everyone
• Creating a secure retirement system that allows everyone to live out their lives with dignity
• Establishing a just taxation system where corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share

"For too long now we have seen the results of Wall Street controlling the economy," said Karen Higgins, RN and co-president of the NNU. "It is time for the 'Main Street' values of financial equality and fairness to take precedence, and Elizabeth Warren is the person to lead us in that direction. She will go to Washington D.C. not to serve the interests of Wall Street, but to serve the interests of working people in Massachusetts and across America."

Warren has spent years fighting for working-class families and highlighting the need for financial reform and meaningful consumer protection. Following the financial crisis of 2008, she became the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, which was created to oversee the U.S. banking bailout. Warren was also a long-time advocate for the creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and helped establish it following the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary. 

Added Kelly-Williams, "We support Elizabeth because we want to help heal America, and we know that she will work with us in our fight to rebuild and restore Main Street."

Founded in 1903, the Massachusetts Nurses Association is the largest professional health care organization and the largest union of registered nurses in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Its 23,000 members advance the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the Legislature and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public. The MNA is also a founding member of National Nurses United, the largest national nurses union in the United States with more than 170,000 members from coast to coast.

SOURCE Massachusetts Nurses Association