Republican John Deaton, a lawyer and cryptocurrency advocate, jumped into the U.S. Senate race on Tuesday, announcing a challenge against two-term incumbent Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Deaton’s campaign launch makes good on an idea he floated on social media in December, when he wrote, “Is there time for me to buy a home in Massachusetts, actually move there, and run for Senate against this Government overreach hack in 2024?”
Deaton, the managing partner of a Providence, R.I., law firm that represents people with mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases, recently moved from Rhode Island to Swansea, Massachusetts. He’s an active voice on crypto issues, through channels including his website, CryptoLaw.
Foreshadowing one potential theme of the election, his 2023 post about challenging Warren came in a response to comments she made about regulating cryptocurrency and the ways she sees the technology as a threat. Deaton said at the time he was “not suggesting” he’d win a but would “love to confront her.”
Within hours of Deaton’s campaign launch, Warren used his Rhode Island ties to raise money.
“Apparently, the MAGA Republican machine couldn’t find a single Republican in Massachusetts to run against me,” she posted on X.
Unseating Warren, who has a national profile and nearly $4 million in campaign cash on hand, will be a tall task for a first-time candidate.
Deaton’s campaign launch video released Tuesday highlights his background, chronicling his path from childhood poverty to become the first person in his family to graduate high school and then join the Marines and start his own law practice, battling addiction and testicular cancer along the way. He covers similar ground in the memoir he published last year, “Food Stamp Warrior.”
The video also sketches out some policy interests, with Deaton saying he wants to “take on the drug and insurance companies for better, more accessible health care,” work to solve the migrant crisis, fight inflation and pursue better opportunities for children.
“I am running for Senate to continue my life’s mission to shake things up for the people who need it most,” Deaton says in the video.
He knocks Warren as someone who “promised to be a champion for those in need” but “gives lectures and plays politics and gets nothing done for Massachusetts.”
Warren’s Senate office published a report Tuesday tallying the federal dollars that have flowed to Massachusetts since she took office more than a decade ago, identifying more than $50 billion steered to hundreds of projects.
Warren, a Cambridge Democrat, has held her seat since defeating Scott Brown, the Republican incumbent, in a 2012 contest, and handily beat her last GOP opponent, Geoff Diehl, with 60% of the vote six years later. The last time she was on the ballot in Massachusetts was the 2020 presidential primary, when she came in third behind both Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders and ended her campaign days later.
An October 2023 poll from the UMass Amherst and WCVB found 55% of respondents approved of the job Warren is doing, with 33% disapproving.