Warren Campaign Blames Pizza for Debt in Post-Election Fundraising Email

The Elizabeth Warren campaign sent out an email to contributors on Tuesday announcing that it’s broke after spending all the $42 million it raised in its successful effort to unseat Republican Senator Scott Brown. 

In her email, Senator-elect Warren placed the blame on her campaign’s failure to properly budget for the massive amounts of coffee and pizza consumed by her get-out-the-vote volunteers. She also added that her campaign had underestimated the number of vans needed on election day:

When my campaign team planned our final budget, we knew our Get Out the Vote push was going to be BIG.

But it was far bigger than anyone ever expected…

For example, we knew we would have to buy a LOT of coffee and pizza all across the Commonwealth for our volunteers. After all, we’ve been proud beyond words to have one of the scrappiest, toughest grassroots armies ever assembled in Massachusetts or even the country — and a grassroots army moves on coffee and pizza…

But one of the results of our embarrassment of riches was, well I’ll come out and say it — we ended up with a little bit of debt… we need a little more money to pay off our final bills. Can you help one more time?

The Boston Globe reported Wednesday that the Warren campaign’s current deficit is well into six figures:

In an e-mail to supporters, the senator-elect from Massachusetts revealed that her campaign is in debt and asked for donations to help her out of the hole. Though she did not disclose the sum in her e-mail, a campaign official said Warren owes $400,000.

Warren, a professor at Harvard Law School, has published extensively on the issue of personal bankruptcy and favors more government spending along with policies that will redistribute wealth.