She posted to a left-leaning blog on Thursday, highlighting her biography and hitting Washington “special interests.” On Friday, she placed a call to Joyce Linehan, a key player in local Democratic politics who has volunteered for Gov. Deval Patrick and state Rep. Marty Walsh. By Monday evening, Elizabeth Warren was standing in Linehan’s living room, speaking with activists and neighborhood residents about a potential run for the U.S. Senate in 2012.

“What impressed me was her ability to articulate from her personal background to the work she has done as a consumer advocate, to the fact that she wants to put the middle class front and center,” said Stephanie Anderson, one of the 60 people who attended the Burt St. house party.

“People were immediately captivated by the idea of this really articulate advocate they had seen on a national level,” Anderson added. “I think there’s definitely an energy there she can tap into.”

The enthusiastic reaction to Warren’s talk of entering the race follows the occasional longing looks at a governor who has repeatedly said he’s not interested, and the exuberance underscores the weakness that many see in the current field of seven Democrats. The BlueMassGroup.com post she wrote on Thursday – titled “Coming Home” – has drawn over 170 comments from interested activists inside and outside the Bay State.

Warren, who has lived in Massachusetts for 17 years, is moving fast. An official decision on whether she’s running against U.S. Sen. Scott Brown (R-Wrentham) is expected after Labor Day, but already the comments about her from left and right sources are flooding e-mail inboxes.

“The Democratic political establishment is going to pull out all the stops next year, doing whatever it takes to win back a seat that they think belongs to them by right but which we know actually belongs to the people,” Brown’s campaign finance director, John Cook, wrote in a letter to supporters. “They are so obsessed with winning this seat back that Washington elitists are trying to push aside local Democrat candidates in favor of a liberal Harvard professor from Oklahoma.”

Back in June, Democratic strategist Doug Rubin sounded a complaint about Democratic Party officials in D.C., after reports of Warren’s meetings with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

In between weighing in on the debt ceiling debate in one Herald column and defending Mayor Thomas Menino for tilting at the First Amendment and t-shirts in Niketown storefronts in another, Rubin said, “Talk right now is not only cheap, it’s hurting our chances of winning this Senate seat in 2012. Democratic Party leaders in D.C. need to go all in, or get out of the way.”

Forgotten in the umbrage is the fact that Harry Reid and Patty Murray know how to win elections. Last November, an unpopular Reid dispatched a home-state challenge by Tea Party legislator and Murray won a fourth term.

But that is in the past. Rubin, who was once chief of staff to Gov. Patrick and shepherded him to a second term, and Kyle Sullivan, Patrick’s former press secretary, have signed up to advise Warren as she moves closer to a Senate run.

Questions remain, of course, about how Warren will fare in the field, outside of friendly house parties, and how her Harvard professorship will play among average voters who aren’t all that in to politics.

When asked about the concern, Stephanie Anderson, who has worked on City Councillor Tito Jackson’s campaign, noted, “In my opinion, there’s been a disturbing trend of anti-intellectualism that has taken over politics. Even the great right thinkers in the Bill Buckley mold have really just vanished. So I think voters on the right, left, and independents will really welcome a return to thoughtful, deliberate leadership.”

Mike Christopher, a local political activist who also attended the gathering, said he was impressed with Warren. “I thought it was great she came right into Dorchester,” he said. “I didn’t have to go far to see a potential big-time candidate.”

Rep. Walsh, who is to date unaligned in the race, said that Warren may not be the last one to jump into the field.

In the last Senate race, Walsh backed U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano in the Democratic primary and he shares with Scott Brown the distinction of being one of two people to have beaten Martha Coakley, the Democratic nominee for Senate in the 2010 special election to replace the late Edward Kennedy. Walsh defeated her in a 1997 special election for the state representative seat he now holds.

Walsh wasn’t able to make it Monday evening, but he likes what he’s heard about Warren. “She’s doing house parties and I think that’s grass roots politics,” he said. “At the end of the day, you win by grass roots politics.”

Campaign finance agency ends review of Ezedi campaign
The Office of Campaign and Political Finance has closed the books on its accusations that a former candidate for City Council At-Large did not file campaign reports in an accurate and timely way.

In a letter dated July 27, agency director Michael Sullivan wrote that Ego Ezedi’s campaign committee did not correctly file reports disclosing the name, address, occupation, and employer of contributors in 2009. The campaign also didn’t file an itemization of a reimbursement to the candidate, a pastor who has attempted runs for an at-large seat and against District 4 Councillor Charles Yancey.

Sullivan wrote that the committee failed to comply with campaign finance law because it did not file deposit reports for $2,166 in contributions; didn’t provide complete occupation and employer information for individuals contributing $200 or more in July or September of 2009; and did not file an itemization of the expenditure for which Ezedi was reimbursed.

“We have concluded, however, that this matter may be closed at this time because of the limited extent of the violation in comparison to the Committee’s overall activity,” Sullivan wrote. “This office also expects that the Committee will file a dissolution report, and that if you should seek elected office again in the future you will comply with the campaign finance law.”

Ezedi did not respond to a request for comment late Tuesday.

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