Politics

Elizabeth Warren has no time for your Curt Schilling questions

The former Red Sox pitcher is purportedly considering a 2018 U.S. Senate run.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren spoke Monday at a rally for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton at St. Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire. Andrew Harnik / AP

Maybe wait until after the election to ask Elizabeth Warren about Curt Schilling.

The former Red Sox pitcher-turned-aspiring political pundit may or may not be plotting a campaign for Warren’s U.S. Senate seat. But, more than two years out from Election Day 2018, the Massachusetts senator doesn’t want to hear about it.

Not like that has stopped people from asking.

Three times outside a political event Monday in Lawrence, the Boston Herald‘s Peter Gelzinis tried to get Warren to provide a soundbite on Schilling’s potential challenge. But for as much as the Democrat loves to rail against Donald Trump, each of Gelzinis’s questions were to no avail.

When I first put the question of Curt Schilling’s possible challenge to Warren yesterday, the two of us were caught in a bilingual floodtide of humanity, rolling down Essex Street, toward the early voting center at the Lawrence City Hall.

All Warren did was look at me like I was speaking in a foreign tongue that wasn’t Spanish, laugh heartily, wave her hands and shake her head as the moving throng clamored for selfies.

Warren made it clear she had more immediate matter on the mind, telling the Lawrence crowd that the chance Trump could become president worries her “24 hours a day, seven days a week.” When Gelzinis again asked about Schilling, she replied “Are you kidding?”

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Neither was Gelzinis’s third try the charm, though it did bait Lawrence Mayor Dan Rivera into a particularly fiery quote.

I tried one last time: when she dispatches the “worry” that is Donald Trump, will she ponder the thought of Curt Schilling?

There was laughter once again, and someone in the crowd yelled, “Bring him on.”

Dan Rivera, the mayor of Lawrence, smiled. “Listen,” he said, “I am so thankful for what he did to get us through the World Series. And I will always love him for that. But if he tries to go against Liz Warren, I’m afraid that more than his socks will get bloody.”

Unlike the Lawrence mayor, Warren has been steadfastly disciplined in giving non-answers with regards to Schilling’s public political contemplations.

At another down-ballot campaign event in East Longmeadow this past Saturday, the senator was asked by a MassLive.com reporter for her take on Schilling, as well as the former baseball player’s remarks about Jewish support for Democrats.

Warren’s response was (fittingly) curt.

“Hm,” she said, with a shrug.

The barely verbal reply recalled Warren’s initial response to a similar question in August, shortly after Schilling, who was fired by ESPN in April, first began floating the idea of a 2018 Senate campaign.

Following an event at Roxbury Community College in Boston, Warren literally shrugged off a question about Schilling.

“I get out there every day and try to do my work on behalf of the people of Massachusetts,” she went on to say. “I’m also involved in this presidential campaign, trying to make sure that Donald Trump never gets anyplace near the White House. That’s what really matters to me.”

Asked if she was “worried” about the former pitcher mounting a campaign against her, Warren shook her head.

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“No,” she said.

https://twitter.com/ejleven/status/769133968021217285

Two recent, though very early, polls last month showed Warren up by double-digits against Schilling in a hypothetical 2018 matchup.

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