Deep blue Boston may consider itself the hub of Massachusetts, but at Leominster’s Johnny Appleseed Festival this past Saturday, a different side of the Bay State was on display. Republican candidates for state and federal office milled about the apple stalls, local church booths, and food trucks. Nearby, members of the Christian Jeep Association chatted with their leather-clad counterparts in the Christian Motorcyclist Association.
As Leominster residents enjoyed live music and fair food, they told me about their growing grievances with the state’s one-party leadership. Republicans complained strenuously about the immigration crisis and affordability. But even independents told me they are growing weary with the state of the state.
“When you read in the Globe about a billion dollar project to add two more stops to the Green Line, and then my road looks like something from Iraq, you’re kind of like, cool for Greater Boston but there’s a whole rest of the state,” said Erik Radvon, an unenrolled voter who left the Democratic Party because he felt they didn’t do enough to protect abortion rights after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
While Republican messaging on immigration doesn’t resonate with Radvon, he said he’s worried about affordability and transparency. He says he’s tired of being told that “the answer to everything is just a knee-jerk reaction for more spending.” Once, he said, acknowledging these issues would get someone branded as supporting “right wingers.” But now, he said, “I get it.”
The state’s small and largely powerless Republican Party is hoping to galvanize a growing number of unenrolled voters in the state who they see as frustrated with rising prices, the immigration crisis, and mounting transparency concerns with state government. But to turn these frustrations into votes in such a liberal state will take more than strong policy stances. Candidates like John Deaton, who is challenging Senator Elizabeth Warren, are central to the MassGOP’s strategy of playing to the middle. Deaton’s candidacy as an openly anti-Trump Republican represents a pragmatic new approach after years of failure with Trump-friendly candidates.
After Donald Trump’s 2016 election to the White House, Massachusetts Republicans nominated candidates who were aligned with the former president’s populist agenda – and most of them failed, whether running for local, state, or federal office. In Geoff Diehl’s 2022 campaign for governor against Maura Healey, Trump’s endorsement — and guarantee that Diehl would rule “with an iron fist” — might as well have been the kiss of death in a state where Joe Biden won by more than 30 points. Diehl, who cochaired Trump’s Massachusetts campaign in 2016 and ran on his policies, also lost a Senate race to Warren in 2018. In 2020, Kevin O’Connor, a moderate Republican, went down against Senator Ed Markey, who branded him a Trump Republican — and faced the challenge of running during a presidential election year.
Deaton won his primary after proclaiming he wouldn’t support Trump — though he isn’t supporting Harris either. His main opponent, Bob Antonellis, debated him while wearing a MAGA hat. And even though the MassGOP’s chair, Amy Carnevale has supported Trump, her party clearly knows what state it’s running in.
“There’s a recognition, frankly, that Republicans are tired of losing, and we need to adopt a mentality and a campaign strategy that’s designed to win and to get elected to office, and part of that strategy is reaching out to that 64 percent of unenrolled voters,” Carnevale told me.
Deaton is running as a moderate on some of the issues most important to Massachusetts voters, like immigration. On a picnic bench in downtown Leominster, he told me that candidates don’t need to demonize migrants to emphasize the fact that there’s a “national security crisis” at the border. He criticized Warren for voting against a February bipartisan immigration bill that would have sent more resources to the US-Mexico border. “You want to stop the bleeding,” he said. “So I would have voted for it and then fought to get even more.”
Conspicuously absent from Deaton’s campaign are any conservative hot-button culture war issues. On some social issues, he’s downright liberal. He told me that after voting for term limits, the second bill he would support in Congress is the codification of Roe v. Wade to make abortion legal nationwide. Warren’s campaign has unfairly suggested that Deaton would help Republicans secure a nationwide ban on abortion and declined his offer for five single issue debates, including one on women’s reproductive rights. “In a 50/50 Senate, I’ve guaranteed that I would prevent an abortion ban from ever reaching the Senate floor,” he posted on X.
Deaton is also trying to prove that his lived experience makes him a better representative of the middle-class and lower-income households than Warren. Growing up in Highland Park, Mich., Deaton has overcome abuse, violence, and poverty as one of six siblings, becoming the only member of his family to graduate from high school. While he worked toward his law degree at the New England School of Law, Deaton enlisted in the Marines and served as a federal prosecutor and a criminal defense attorney at the Marine Corps Air Station Yuma in Arizona.
When the Securities and Exchange Commission sued cryptocurrency company Ripple Labs, Deaton made a name for himself when he joined the case as amicus and his position won. “I really do represent the American dream and what’s capable in a great country,” he told me.
Despite having a compelling profile, Deaton will struggle as a Massachusetts Republican running in a presidential election year against a well-known incumbent in an overwhelmingly Democratic state. The latest polls have him trailing Warren by over 20 points.
“I think it’s difficult for any Republican ever to win statewide again in Massachusetts, but certainly in a presidential year it’s not possible,” said Ryan Williams, a Republican strategist and former Mitt Romney spokesperson. And while the Deaton campaign tried to get Warren to the debate stage earlier in the campaign, she turned him down. They’ll debate on Oct. 15, making it difficult for Deaton to boost his name recognition.
Deaton faces an uphill battle in November. But the key question is whether his candidacy represents a promising shift for a MassGOP that is tired of losing — and for a state suffering the consequences of uniparty rule.
This column first appeared in The Primary Source, Globe Opinion’s free weekly newsletter about local and national politics. If you’d like to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.
Carine Hajjar is a Globe Opinion writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
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Publish date : 2024-09-25 05:16:00
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