Republican John Deaton urges voters to look past his party at the polls

The Lexington Observer interviewed John Deaton, who is running against Sen. Ed Markey in the race for U.S. Senate. Reporters from the Cambridge Day, Brookline.News, Waltham Times, Your Arlington, and Belmont Voice were in attendance and contributed to this reporting. 

John Deaton, a Detroit native, moderate anti-Trump Republican, and former Marine, is running against incumbent Sen. Ed Markey for U.S. Senator.  

With Markey highly favored, Deaton has a steep climb ahead of him. The longtime senator has been in congress for 50 years and beat Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., in the Sept. 1 primary election this year with about 65 percent of votes. 

And, it’s historically difficult for a Republican to win an election in a state as deeply blue as Massachusetts. Scott Brown was the last Republican U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, serving from February 2010 to January 2013. Brown won a special election in January 2010 to fill Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat after he died from brain cancer. Sen. Elizabeth Warren won over Brown when he ran for re-election in 2012 with about 54 percent of votes. 

Deaton hopes voters can get past the stigma of the “Republican” label when voting this November. 

“The ‘R’ in front of my name is a very difficult thing for people to get past in Massachusetts,” he told the Observer in a conversation about his campaign. “What I would say to the voters is, ‘get past the label and look and see who has better solutions to the problems of everyday people in Massachusetts,’ and if they commit to that decision, I’ll win.”

Deaton said he is not a Trump supporter, never voted for Trump, and voted for former President Joe Biden in 2020 “because he promised to unite the country.”

“I got spit at, going to Republican town committees across the state, I got called, ‘Democrat in disguise, traitor’…becasue I wouldn’t say, ‘I support Trump’’…and why? Because he doesn’t have the moral compass to lead the nation,” Deaton said. 

Asked about his platform, Deaton said he will offer “solutions, not slogans” if elected. 

Deaton called “Medicare for All” a slogan, arguing it doesn’t have widespread support from Democrats, and likely won’t be adopted in Markey’s lifetime. 

Deaton’s approach to healthcare involves breaking up the big companies that have monopolized the pharmaceutical industry. 

“Gut that whole system, demand complete transparency on every drug price, what the actual cost is, what the markup is, ‘why is this drug $385 in America and $35 in the U.K. or in Canada,’ eliminate that, and be very punitive about it, and that will create increased competition,” he said, adding that if he could only work on one subject, it would be healthcare. 

“It’s the issue that is either going to save capitalism the way Roosevelt did back in the day after the Gilded Age or we’re going to experiment in many ways,” he argued. “Healthcare is one of the big reasons why young people are turning to socialists.”

Deaton also vowed to protect abortion rights, adding that he votes on issues, not with his party. 

“You’re trying to abridge a women’s right to have an abortion? I’m pro choice, I’m going to vote for the Democrats,” he said. “Don’t put no type of federal abortion ban on the table.”   

Deaton argued both parties won’t actually create solutions to issues like abortion because if they did, they wouldn’t have anything to campaign on. 

“Sen. Markey has been there 50 years. He’s had Jimmy Carter, he’s had Bill Clinton, he’s had Barack Obama, and he’s had Joe Biden. Twenty-four out of his 50 years, his party has been in control, over a decade they’ve had the House and the Senate. Why didn’t you do Roe vs. Wade? Why didn’t you codify it? I would, I’ll do a bill for that. Because they can’t campaign, they can’t raise money on it.” 

In terms of housing, Deaton advocates for the government to cut red tape and make it easier for developers to build more. He thinks over 5 million houses should be built in the U.S. in five years.

Asked how, Deaton said he would look at federal and state land, like the airforce base in Cape Cod, for development. 

He added that moving away from Massachusetts’ green energy mandates is key in tackling the housing crisis. 

“The Green New Deal, it’s a slogan,” Deaton said, adding that he believes climate change is real and has solar panels on his house. Deaton argued housing and energy go hand-in-hand because energy rates in Massachusetts are some of the highest in the country. 

To tackle energy costs, Deaton would expand solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, and nuclear power. He also supports expanding data centers. 

Deaton said another one of Markey’s slogans is, “abolish ICE.” 

“Shame on Tim Walz and shame on Ed Markey for saying ‘stop ICE’ because it is a felony to interfere with law enforcement,” he said.

Deaton does not support how ICE has been operating under Trump, however. 

“When I saw Alex Pretti lose his life, the first thing I thought of was, ‘there’s five ICE agents, how the hell does five ICE agents not be able to take a single man down and secure him without him losing his life?’” he said. 

“I don’t support what’s going on, I don’t support masked men snatching people off the streets…don’t help ICE take graduate students off the street because of an op-ed you didn’t like, I’ll never support that, but help ICE with the bad guys,” Deaton said. “I also think that Gov. Healey and Michelle Wu bear responsibility because under Barack Obama, we had Secured Communities,” he said, referring to Obama’s controversial immigration plan, which he thinks the U.S. should return to.

“I would have a true comprehensive immigration plan that expands legal immigration…end sanctuary city policies, working with the federal government, making very strict conditions on ICE…making sure we have very rigorous training, body cameras…I think that would solve a lot of the problems that we’re having right now.”

Deaton reiterated that his approach to being in the U.S. Senate would be different than Markey’s because he plans to work with Trump instead of villainizing him as Markey often does. Deaton wishes more leaders would act like Zohran Mamdani, who, despite being a Democratic Socialist, has worked amicably with Trump since being elected mayor of New York City in 2025. 

“I wish our federal delegation would take a lesson from Mamdani…he calls Trump a fascist, but he knows that he needs federal funding for New York City, so he’ll go and he’ll placate Trump,” Deaton said. “Instead, we have a federal delegation where the two U.S. Senate nominees in the Democratic primary were arguing over which one is going to fight Trump the hardest.”

Another issue Deaton would like to work with Washington on is securing funding for higher education and science research, which Trump tried to gut the summer after he was elected. 

“Ed Markey, every day now, it’s ‘impeach Trump and get rid of Trump,’ well he’s been impeached twice. How about your goal is, ‘I’m going to try to make sure we secure that funding for NIH,” Deaton said. “It requires an approach that’s not antagonistic.” 

If funding is secured and science research leads to new discoveries, Deaton imagines taxpayers should get a cut of the profit. 

“There would be a ‘national innovation dividend’ so that if a breakthrough in any science, or technology, Space X, any of that was achieved in part through taxpayer money, taxpayers would participate in the upside of that technology,” he said. 

In the past decade, Deaton has taken a liking to cryptocurrency, often being labeled a ‘crypto attorney.’ His campaign against Warren, who has pushed for stricter regulations on cryptocurrency, was financed by several big players in the crypto industry. Asked about crypto, Deaton said he has only done pro-bono work to protect token holders and has been a mesothelioma attorney for 30 years. 

If you look at Deaton’s past, running for the U.S. Senate may seem like an unlikely destination. 

In his memoir, “Food Stamp Warrior,” Deaton details his childhood in a rough Detroit enclave, Politico wrote when he challenged Sen. Warren for U.S. Senate in 2024. 

Deaton writes that he was raped, had a gun pressed into his mouth on the first day of high school, and sold pot in exchange for food stamps for his family.

He also may have shot someone but doesn’t know for sure. In Deaton’s telling, his close friend was killed in a drug-related drive-by shooting. As he was dying, Deaton, then 17, took his friend’s gun and opened fire: “I kept squeezing the trigger, as bullets shot through the car and blasted the back window into shards. I saw a person in the back slump down, and I’m still not sure if it’s because I hit him or if he ducked.”

After going through a divorce, Deaton “went on a coke-fueled sex bender,” according to his memoir. Using sites like “Plenty of Fish” and “Sugar Daddy” to find partners, Deaton says he would search for “women in their mid-twenties, decades younger than me.”

He met his current partner, Kristiana, when he hired her as an assistant at his law firm. “Within a couple of years of Kristi working for me,” they struck up a romance. Deaton has two daughters from his first marriage, and one from his current marriage. 

Asked why people should vote for him, Deaton said, “because we’d actually give Massachusetts a real, true, independent voice in the Senate.”

“A true nonpartisan person says, ‘my goal is to fight for Massachusetts and America and if it’s good for Massachusetts and America, I’m going to support it, and if it’s not, I don’t.’ Call it conservative, call it progressive, I don’t give a [explative].”

The general election, where voters can weigh in on whether Markey should be re-elected to the U.S. Senate, or if Deaton should fill his seat, is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 3.