By Sam Kim, Latifah Obaid and Cole Schoneman
BU News Service
BOSTON — Some Boston voters outside the City Hall polling station on Tuesday described Senator Elizabeth Warren as a strong leader who could take on President Donald Trump, but others saw her as a conniving obstructionist.
“I think she is a pure evil woman,” said Richard Turner, 72. “Everything about her says she’s lying. From her body language to the words she says, she’s Hillary Clinton’s little sister. Don’t say her name in my presence.”
Most voters who stopped after fulfilling their civic duty, however, saw her as a well-qualified candidate to reclaim the Senate seat that she first took in January 2013 and speculated she could oust President Donald Trump as president in 2020.
At the end of the evening, Warren won the Senate seat with 60.9 percent of the vote versus Geoff Diehl’s 36 percent.
Alanna Kelly, 29, who works at a public affairs firm in support of nurses, said Tuesday that Warren will win based on name recognition alone.
“I think for sure she is going to win,” Kelly said. “I don’t know who would vote for Geoff Diehl, but I’m also extremely progressive.”
Lynda McGuirk, 50, a small business owner and author, said she is less confident in Warren’s ability to win this election.
“I think this election will be close, because I think she’s vulnerable,” said McGuirk. “The Native American scandal will hurt her in this election, which is why I think it’ll be so close.”
The incident McGuirk referred to involves Warren’s alleged Native American ancestry. Warren listed herself as Native American when applying for a teaching position at Harvard Law School in 1995, and the school touted her in the Harvard Crimson newspaper as “the first woman with a minority background to be tenured.”
Warren has since released her DNA test results from Stanford to the Boston Globe, which found evidence that she has a Native American in her family tree, although the link is distant. According to the DNA report, Warren is between 1/64th and 1/1,024th Native American.
Trump mocked Warren, calling her Pocahontas in campaign rallies and on Twitter.
Meanwhile, many suspect Warren will run against Trump in the 2020 Presidential election.
McGuirk said she sees Warren winning it all in 2020. She thinks Warren is the most prominent figure in the Democratic Party and has positioned herself as being the most anti-Trump.
