Elizabeth Warren's Journey From 'Pro-Business' Academic To Consumer Advocate

When Elizabeth Warren arrived in Austin to teach law school at the University of Texas in the 1980s, colleagues say she was nothing close to the unapologetic progressive firebrand voters see today.

"She was quite consistently pro-business," said Calvin Johnson, who taught law school with Warren at the University of Texas. "And I'm sure she would not like to be called 'anti-consumer,'" he added. But, in his view, the future Massachusetts senator was "absolutely anti-consumer" on some positions at the time.

Johnson, who commuted to work with Warren and her husband Bruce Mann for about six months in 1981, recalls one particularly wonky issue they would debate on their car rides: public utility accounting.

"I was very strongly of the opinion that (the accounting methods were) giving excessive profits to the public utilities and, in fact, truly abusing the rate payers," said Johnson, who has long considered himself a liberal Democrat. "She came out very strongly