Iowa City Democrats holding ‘Ready for Warren’ house party Wednesday night

IOWA CITY - A draft movement that started as a 'crazy idea” will get serious Wednesday night when Democrats hoping Sen. Elizabeth Warren runs for president in 2016 gather in Iowa City to show their support.

Iowa City business owner Veronica Tessler admits that the 'Ready for Warren” campaign may not have been taken seriously when it began, 'but it's gained traction every week.”

'She's definitely not your standard politician,” Tessler said, but when she heard about the effort to draft the first-term Massachusetts Democrat 'I immediately got behind it.”

Given Warren's career as a lawyer fighting Wall Street bankers 'and others taking advantage of the system and efforts to level the playing field and give power back to the people, I think that's what's driving her growing popularity,” said Tessler, who backed Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic caucuses, but hasn't been politically active since then.

She will host a Ready for Warren house party at 8 p.m. Jan. 7 at 811 College St., Iowa City. A similar house party is planned in Des Moines. Supporters will write postcards to Warren urging her to run.

Tessler doesn't know how many to expect, but hopes the house party will help get people excited about the 2016 presidential race.

Warren supporters are planning a day of action Jan. 31, a year before the date of Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucuses.

'It's important that we have our best candidate,” she said. 'We don't want this to be the inevitable.”

If nothing else, the Warren effort will encourage more people to get involved 'and that will make the party stronger,” Tessler said.