CHALLENGERS TYPICALLY face a tough time running against incumbents because they must not only make the case for ousting the sitting elected official, but they also have to convince voters that they’re the person to replace said incumbent.
That’s the assignment facing John Deaton, the GOP candidate taking on Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic stalwart who has represented Massachusetts in the US Senate since 2013.
But Deaton, who grew up poor in Michigan before joining the Marines and becoming a lawyer who eventually turned his focus to defending cryptocurrency, has the additional task of running while keeping his distance from his party’s leader. Donald Trump twice lost Massachusetts by a roughly 2-to-1 margin but retains a hold on local party officials.
Deaton’s pitch to voters, in fact, includes disloyalty to the party, with his refusal to vote for Trump this November as a prime example. The Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, isn’t getting his vote, either. “I’m going to write in a name of someone who probably embodies unity, not division, somebody who understands we have to bring each other together,” he said on The Codcast.
When pressed to offer a name, Deaton said, “I haven’t thought that hard on it, but the first person’s name that comes to mind for me would be someone like Charlie Baker.”
Baker, who left the governor’s office in 2023 and now runs the NCAA, opted against a campaign for a third term that would have involved a primary battle with a diehard Trump supporter.
But Deaton – who has been a registered Democrat, an independent, and a Republican – describes himself in the same mold as Baker: “someone who is socially moderate to liberal person, who is fiscally conservative.” (Deaton also calls the late Ted Kennedy a model for the “voice he gave Massachusetts,” and said he is 15 pages into Lion of the Senate, the 2015 account of Kennedy’s skillful congressional maneuverings written by two former aides.)
Deaton noted that he got 65 percent in a GOP primary earlier this month, besting a field that included a Trump supporter who insisted on wearing a red Make America Great Again hat during a televised debate.
Asked why he didn’t consider running as an independent, as Baker had weighed, Deaton said, “We live in a two-party system. I wish we had a three-party system that was viable. But I’m trying to run a race against a 12-year incumbent Democrat senator, who has not just the incumbency but has lots of money and she’s a national person.”
Warren has been attacking Deaton in fundraising emails since he jumped into the race earlier this year, with the most recent missive calling him a “Republican crypto lawyer that was recruited from Rhode Island and has a Super PAC funneling millions of dollars in this race.”
She is also reprising an argument that helped her win against Scott Brown, the incumbent she unseated in 2012 and the last Republican sent to Congress by Massachusetts voters. In another fundraising email earlier this year, her campaign pointed to the thin margin in the upper chamber and said, “We can’t underestimate the threat of Republicans controlling the Senate, passing a national abortion ban,” among other proposals.
“That’s actually the number one reason to vote for me,” Deaton said. “Because I’m not loyal to a party, I’m not loyal to an agenda, I’m not loyal to a person. I’m loyal to Massachusetts and my country that I love.”
Deaton adds that he’s firmly pro-choice and he’ll side with the Democrats on the issue. “If my party tries to put forth a federal ban,” he said he will “die fighting” it and cross the aisle to join Democrats in opposing it. “I won’t hesitate to do it.”
Deaton also insisted that Warren is vulnerable, pointing in part to her loss to Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in Massachusetts when she ran for president in 2020.
“I think she started off with good intentions” when she entered the Senate in 2012, Deaton said, adding that she is now a career politician, like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Republican leader Mitch McConnell, “who just point the finger at each other, blame each other, engage in divisiveness, pit American versus American.”
He’s making a bet that message will resonate with Massachusetts voters who have sent only two Republicans to the US Senate since the 1970s (Ed Brooke and Scott Brown). “Have we just become so tribalistic that if you don’t appeal to that one tribe’s complete philosophy, therefore you’re the bad guy?” he said. “I think most people aren’t like that.”
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