When John Deaton meets Sen. Elizabeth Warren this week in a pair of debates, he’ll have to answer a question for many voters:
John who?
A WBUR/CommonWealth Beacon poll last month found that almost half (47%) of Massachusetts voters had never even heard of Deaton. It’s among the reasons the GOP nominee faces long odds in the race against Warren, an incumbent blue-state Democrat with a national profile.
The debates this week — Tuesday evening in Boston and Thursday evening in Springfield — will be a chance for him to make a dent in that 47%.
Deaton’s challenge was apparent recently at a sparsely attended campaign event in Roxbury, where almost nobody showed up. Elizabeth Hinds-Ferrick of Boston, a member of the state Republican Committee, was among the few who did.
“He has my support,” said Hinds-Ferrick, adding that she likes what Deaton has to say, his background and “tenacity.” But she acknowledged how difficult it is for Republicans to win statewide in Massachusetts.
“We can’t give up hope,” she said.
Deaton knows he faces long odds in his quest to oust Warren from the Senate. In an interview at his home in Bolton, he said even his own daughters pointed out the uphill climb, telling him, “Dad, we love you… but we think you’re going to lose.”
Deaton, 57, has spent much of his life overcoming obstacles, from growing up in poverty to surviving cancer and battling addiction. He embraces his underdog status, describing himself as “a kid who wasn’t supposed to graduate from high school” yet is now a major party’s nominee for U.S. Senate.
“If that’s not the American dream, I don’t know what is,” he said.
His campaign leans heavily on his biography. Deaton was raised by a single mother, who depended on welfare and food stamps, and struggled to put food on the table for her five children. His family lived in the Detroit enclave of Highland Park, which Deaton describes as “one of the worst neighborhoods in America,” so dangerous, he says, that police gave up patrolling it.
He tells much of his story in his memoir, Food Stamp Warrior, in which he recounts that he was once raped as a youth; that he sold pot in exchange for food stamps; that a kid at school pushed a gun into his mouth. And that he might have shot someone when he was 17. As he recalls it, he arrived on the scene just after a close friend was hit in a fatal drive-by shooting. As he held the dying man in his arms, the shooters backed up their car — “to finish the job,” according to Deaton. So, he grabbed his friend’s gun and “unloaded the clip,” firing into the car.
“I saw someone go down,” he said. But to this day, he doesn’t know if his shots hit their mark. “They could have ducked,” he said.
“At the time, I was so hurt that they took my friend’s life that I probably wished I hit someone with that bullet,” he told WBUR. “As I sit here as a 57-year-old man, I hope I didn’t.”
He survived Highland Park and became the first in his family to graduate high school. He earned a law degree from Boston’s New England College of Law, and joined the Marines, where he worked as a judge advocate. Then he became a successful trial lawyer, representing victims of asbestos poisoning. This past winter, he moved from Rhode Island to Massachusetts and announced his campaign for the Senate.
The move has prompted accusations that he’s a “carpetbagger,” a wealthy newcomer who set up house in the state so he could join the Senate race. But Deaton says he has history in Massachusetts, including his college years when he lived in Roxbury, and that he had always planned to move back once his kids graduated from college.
“It’s where my heart is,” he said.
Deaton has drawn support in business quarters, including from the Massachusetts High Technology Council. Former Gov. William Weld has endorsed him, and even his ex-wife, Maria Deaton, is on board with his run, appearing in a YouTube video for the campaign and telling WBUR that Deaton’s work as a trial attorney has always been about helping people.
“I think he really wants to give back,” she said. “He’s not doing this to enrich himself,” pointing out that Deaton put a lot of his own money into the campaign.
Deaton said he’s challenging Warren because while she talks about inequality, her policies are “fundamentally flawed at helping poor people.”
He supports raising the minimum wage and expanding the earned income tax credit, but embraces GOP talking points in his fiscal critiques, saying “Nothing hurts working families more than inflationary spending and growing government debt.”
Warren has her own story about growing up poor — “on the ragged edge of the middle class,” as she puts it. According to her campaign, Warren has successfully advocated for numerous policies to help working Americans, including capping prescription drug costs, canceling student debt and raising taxes on billionaire corporations.
And speaking recently to WBUR, Warren said a Deaton victory would hand Republicans control of a closely divided Senate, giving them the power to cut essential programs that help vulnerable Americans, including social security and Medicare, while passing “a nation-wide abortion ban.”
For his part, Deaton accuses Warren of distorting his record, arguing that he is a staunch defender of abortion rights, and if elected, would back a federal law codifying abortion rights. It’s one of the ways he’s trying to thread the political needle in deep blue Massachusetts. Deaton portrays himself as a fiscal conservative who is moderate on social issues, much like former Gov. Charlie Baker, the last Massachusetts Republican to win statewide. Deaton also says he does not support Donald Trump.
He said his biggest difference with Warren is about how much the federal government can do: “She thinks it’s the answer to all the problems,” he said. “I think it’s part of the problem.”
He and Warren also are at odds over cryptocurrency, which Deaton argues can “democratize” banking. Warren has been a leading force in Washington calling for regulation and points out that backers of the crypto industry have donated millions of dollars to help Deaton’s campaign.
“Now the question is, can crypto buy this seat?” Warren told WBUR.
Deaton has in fact advocated for the crypto industry, even suing the Securities and Exchange Commission on behalf of Ripple, the largest holder of XRP coins. And he acknowledged getting a boost from a pro-crypto PAC, but said he had nothing to do with setting it up. He said Warren cannot credibly label someone with his background as a “stooge for billionaires.”
Still, he faces a steep climb. With polls showing Warren with a comfortable lead, Deaton is also running against history — it’s been 100 years since a Republican defeated an incumbent U.S. senator in Massachusetts.
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