US Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the country’s feistiest Democrat, goes where the once cool Barack Obama cannot, parachuting into Senate races around the country to try to shore up the party’s currently shaky November prospects.

The freshman senator has morphed into the go-to woman for campaign cha-ching. While speculation is rife that Warren has designs on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (and a forthcoming book isn’t likely to damp down those suspicions), she is content for the moment to embrace her role as kingmaker.

According to Mother Jones, Warren, who has raised $1.2 million to date for more than 20 Senate contenders, could be the spark to get Dems to the polls for the traditionally low turnout  midterm elections. And, the magazine’s Erika Eichelberger guesses that crisscrossing the country fundraising for Democrats won’t hurt Warren’s future political designs, whatever they may be.

   

Will the unapologetic progressive make any difference for the likes of Oregon’s Jeff Merkley, Illinois’s Dick Durbin, or New Hampshire’s Jeanne Shaheen? Uber-oddsmaker Nate Silver projects that Merkley and Durbin will keep their seats.  But Shaheen, who is likely to be up against Bay State transplant Scott Brown, is a different story.

Shaheen is no Martha Coakley, who got blindsided by Brown four years ago, but she won’t have a easy time of it with outside groups flooding the state with cash. More than $1 million has been spent to date on television ads by both pro- and anti-Shaheen groups. She has plenty of money coming into her coffers from out of state and has even teamed up with Georgia Senate hopeful Michelle Nunn (daughter of the state’s former senator, Sam Nunn) to raise funds.

But a smart, long-time pol like Shaheen knows that her Granite State cred is only going to get her so far. Warren has already proved that she can bring in the bucks for Shaheen. Plus, the Massachusetts senator brings added zest to the fight.

“I think Scott Brown is going to have his hands full,” she told the Boston Globe recently. There’s little doubt that she wasn’t just talking about Shaheen. Warren and others will enjoy the fight  to knock off Brown for a second time.

But, with Brown’s official announcement scheduled for Thursday, there are already some cumulonimbus clouds on the horizon. Brown is not embracing the noble but cashless “People’s Pledge” as he did in the Bay State. And a Republican Governors Association poll shows Brown with a 5-point lead over Shaheen.

To knock off Scott Brown a second time, Elizabeth Warren must help Jeanne Shaheen match him dollar for dollar. The real test for Warren the kingmaker is not in far off Illinois or Oregon, but just over the border.

–GABRIELLE GURLEY  

BEACON HILL

Just one week after House Speaker Robert DeLeo introduced the legislation, the Massachusetts House passes a domestic abuse bill on a 142-0 vote, the Associated Press reports.

An expansion of Boston‘s convention center could tie hotel tax revenue from across the state to the convention facility’s bonds.

MUNICIPAL MATTERS

The Lowell City Council formally hires ex-rep. Kevin Murphy as its city manager at a salary of $175,000 a year, the Sun reports.

Boston is launching free Wi-Fi in Grove Hall, the first of 20 commercial districts across the city where the city plans to install free wireless access to the Internet.

A bid in Andover to hire a social worker to deal with heroin addiction in the community is shot down, the Eagle-Tribune reports.

Relations between Brockton Mayor William Carpenter and the City Council may be warming after the council approved transferring funds to the mayor’s office to help prevent layoffs from Carpenter’s staff.

Marblehead officials are going to try for a second time to win town passage of the Community Preservation Act, the Salem News reports.

President Obama’s aunt dies at 61 in Boston.

Greater Boston looks at the beefed-up security for the Boston Marathon and asks if it is an overreaction to last year’s bombing.

CASINOS

In a very colorful interview with CommonWealth, Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn puts his cards on the table. Meanwhile, Mitchell Etess, the CEO of Mohegan Sun, likens Wynn to Tiger Woods, a legend who has been overtaken by his competitors.

House Speaker Robert DeLeo pushes back against Boston Mayor Marty Walsh‘s bid to secure host community status in both proposed Boston-area casinos.

NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON

The Atlantic argues that the systematic refusal to fill empty spots on the federal bench has “created a continuing vacuum of federal authority that is a kind of secession, because federal law without judges to impose it in a timely way is no federal law at all.”

A battle over Medicaid expansion in Virginia threatens to shut down the entire state government.

ELECTIONS

It’s been nearly 60 years since a statewide officeholder looking to move up has won a governor’s race in Massachusetts. With two candidates who fit that bill in this year’s race (Martha Coakley and Steve Grossman), CommonWealth‘s spring issue explores what voters may be saying.

How does a Republican win office in Massachusetts? The party’s two most promising candidates have markedly different answers. Charlie Baker‘s gubernatorial campaign looks to crossover issues, while Richard Tisei runs for Congress by pitching himself as a reformer of a deeply unpopular Republican House.

The Globe says all the Democrats running for governor are tacking left. The paper adds that one of the five hopefuls, Joe Avellone, is playing more to the middle but seems to suggest that doesn’t count because he’s trailing the field.

BUSINESS/ECONOMY

The share of mothers who do not work outside the home rose to 29 percent in 2012, the reversal of a long-term decline that has been going on for 30 years, the Pew Research Center reports.

A BJ’s warehouse store may be coming to a long forlorn parcel in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood.

EDUCATION

CommonWealth asks: Can Bay State schools afford online standardized testing?

A Quincy couple is suing the city and the state to recoup costs they incurred to stay in a hotel and drive back and forth to Northampton while their daughter, who is deaf, attended a private school that provided special education services.

Utah is making $5.4 million by selling access to questions on its Common Core test to Florida, the Salt Lake Tribune reports.

Officials at a New Bedford charter school previously said they wanted the names of all eighth-grade students in the city to enter them in an “opt-out” admissions lottery — with all students automatically entered in the drawing rather than employing the conventional charter lottery process that only includes those who express interest in a seat and apply. But the school ultimately never asked for a list of the names after negotiations with Mayor Jon Mitchell broke down.

HEALTH CARE

A federal judge questioned the ability of Gov. Deval Patrick to ban the controversial prescription narcotic Zohydro, but Patrick said he has the legal footing to issue such a ban because of the dangers of the powerful painkiller.

The head of the Massachusetts Medical Society says doctors are doing their part to address the heroin crisis.

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is pioneering the use of Google Glass in health care by equipping all its emergency room physicians with the device, which doctors say can save valuable time by providing access to crucial information in life threatening emergencies.

The New York Times dives deep into Medicare reimbursement data.

TRANSPORTATION

Just when it seemed he couldn’t top his feat from last fall of lecturing the Boston’s black community for not turning out to back a black candidate for mayor despite not having bothered himself to vote for decades, Rev. Eugene Rivers is back in the news, and not in a positive light. Adrian Walker has the jaw-dropping account of a recent meeting Rivers had in which he handed an “invoice” for $105,000 to a representative of Keolis, the company awarded the contract to run the state commuter rail system. The bill, which could more accurately seems like an itemized list of shakedown demands, spells out various services provided by Rivers and a group he is part of that is aiming to promote diversity in Keolis’s hiring and contracting.

ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT

State officials say the onus is on the owner of a contaminated site near Fall River‘s industrial park to prove it is not responsible for the cleanup, though the city could be on the hook because it operated a landfill there for nearly 50 years before closing it in 1981.

The Coastal Zone Management Agency awards a $50,000 grant to Gloucester to increase awareness of climate impacts and identify potential vulnerabilities, the Gloucester Times reports.

New Bedford officials say a bill on Beacon Hill that opens the door for utilities to purchase hydropower from Canada to meet renewable energy requirements could endanger the offshore wind industry the city is banking on to revitalize the waterfront.

The US Energy Information Administration says gas prices should hold steady this summer, rising no higher than prices at the same time last year.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

A Rockland man charged with setting a fire that destroyed a Weymouth building that housed an adult video store and other businesses and an apartment told police he did it because God doesn’t like porn, according to the police report.

Jared Remy allegedly hurled homophobic slurs while attacking a fellow inmate at the Middlesex County Jail last week, the Globe reports. Remy, awaiting trial on murder charges, will be arraigned on assault charges in connection with the incident later this month.

MEDIA

Michael Wolff is skeptical about the future of the New York Times and online advertising and thinks Big Data journalism is a bubble that will soon burst.

A massive bug affecting much of the web’s encryption technology is putting personal information stores with many web sites at risk, Time reports.