Mass. Dems' Pow-wow Clears Field for Warren

Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has won her party's nomination to face Republican Scott Brown in the general election, MassLive.com reports:

SPRINGFIELD- To resounding cheers and applause, Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren walked away from the state party's convention in Springfield as the official Democratic candidate to take on Republican U.S. Sen. Scott Brown in November.

"We've been endorsing candidates this way for 30 years and we've never had a candidate get 86 percent of the delegates votes," said party Chair John Walsh of the 15 percent threshold needed to appear on the party's primary ballot.

With Warren shattering the record and preventing Marisa DeFranco from getting the 15 percent support she needed, the immigration attorney's candidacy now effectively ends.

Warren won the nomination with 95 percent of delegate support, a record for the state party.

Warren has been dogged by controversy surrounding her claims to Cherokee heritage, claims that she has continued to make despite a lack of proof. A law professor at Harvard, Warren was previously listed as a minority employee and has cited her aunt's claim to "high cheekbones" and family lore as proof of her Native American ancestry.