Warren, Deaton clash over immigration, abortion rights in first US Senate debate
- by The Boston Globe
- Oct 16, 2024
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Ken McGagh for The Boston Globe
Senator Elizabeth Warren and Republican challenger John Deaton tangled in their first televised debate Tuesday, as Deaton sought to distance himself from a national GOP that is deeply unpopular in Massachusetts while Warren worked hard to tie him to Donald Trumpâs agenda.
The debate, cosponsored by WBZ-TV and the Globe, offered Deaton, a newcomer to Massachusetts and GOP politics, his most high-profile chance to introduce himself to voters and try to claw away at Warrenâs support among the stateâs largely center-left electorate. In the first of two debates this week, the two landed sharp blows on immigration, abortion rights, and cryptocurrency.
Deaton, a Marine Corps veteran, personal injury attorney, and advocate for the cryptocurrency industry, repeatedly cast Warren as a partisan âextremistâ loyal to a dysfunctional Washington power structure, while framing himself as a moderate who would bring a common-sense approach to the Senate.
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âI got news for you, Senator Warren: All of you suck in Congress. All of you,â Deaton said. âItâs a broken system. Iâm disrupting that system.â
Warren defended her record, saying she has gotten meaningful legislation passed despite Deatonâs claim that she has little to show after 12 years on Capitol Hill. And, she argued her opponent is merely putting a veneer on hard-line Republican priorities.
âDonât trust John Deaton,â she said.
That was a message she hit over and over Tuesday night, most sharply on the issues of immigration and abortion, which have animated the race. Massachusetts is thousands of miles from the southern border, but Deaton has worked to make the race a referendum on immigration, particularly as thousands of migrant families seeking a new life here have strained the stateâs shelter system.
Deaton repeatedly needled Warren on her vote earlier this year against a bipartisan border security package that included measures that would effectively shut the border if crossings reach a certain magnitude and raise the standard migrants must meet in seeking asylum. It also included $1.4 billion for a federal program that reimburses states and cities sheltering migrants. The bill, however, had no chance of passing the Senate given Trumpâs opposition to it.
âSenator Warren just . . . said, âWe need [a] comprehensive immigration reform bill.â It was on the table, bipartisan, and she rejected it,â said Deaton, who also asserted that thousands of migrants with criminal records were being allowed to cross the border. âThe problem is, Senator Warren will say, âOh, you call it a national security crisis and youâre a racist.â Thatâs insane.â
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Warren said she did back comprehensive immigration reform through a bipartisan 2013 bill, and accused Deaton of trying to pull âa page out of the Donald Trump playbook.â That would prove to be a familiar refrain throughout the night, such as when Deaton said he would not support mass deportations as proposed by Trump.
âIt may have a little nicer face on it, but itâs the same,â Warren said. âLetâs talk about how theyâre rapists and criminals, and letâs figure out a way to make that the only issue in the debate because Republicans believe that they will win on that issue.â
Democrats currently hold a slim majority in the Senate, thanks in part to independents who caucus with them. That dynamic means Deaton has to appeal to a large swath of left-leaning or centrist voters who may be wary of potentially tipping control of the upper chamber to the GOP, particularly in a presidential election year.
Heâs cast himself as a moderate, suggesting he may even write-in former Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker for president. Since winning the GOP primary in September, Deaton has distinguished himself from his own party in major ways, criticizing Trump and framing himself as âfierce advocate for womenâs rightsâ who would switch parties if Congress brought a federal abortion ban to the floor for a vote.
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Thatâs led some Massachusetts Republicans to reject him as a Republican in name only. Even as Deaton repeatedly stressed his support for abortion rights, Warren cautioned that the Republican Party has undermined them.
âThis is about trust,â Warren said, describing the Supreme Court justices who pledged fealty to legal precedent that protected abortion rights during their nomination hearings, but then voted to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.
After the debate, Warrenâs campaign released a digital ad about abortion rights, pointing to an interview in which Deaton said he âprobablyâ would have voted to confirm Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was among the majority of justices who overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and ended the national right to abortion. (In the same interview, Deaton also indicated he likely would not have supported Trumpâs two other high court nominees.)
Deaton acknowledged in a recent interview that the debates this week offered one of his last chances to break out in an election that has long looked to be heavily stacked in Warrenâs favor.
The Cambridge Democrat enjoyed a 24-percentage-point lead in a recent Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll, with just 6 percent of likely voters saying they were undecided in the race.
In 2018, Warren easily fended off a challenge from a more conservative opponent, and has maintained a national presence, regularly traveling in support of Vice President Kamala Harris and other like-minded Democrats. A prolific fund-raiser, she ended the last quarter with $5.4 million in campaign cash, more than six times what Deaton reported.
On Tuesday, the two also butted heads over cryptocurrency. Warren is one of the industryâs loudest critics, while Deaton is a champion for digital assets and enjoys support from the industry through an outside super PAC.
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Deaton tied his support for cryptocurrency to his personal backstory, talking about his low-income motherâs struggle with minimum bank balance requirements and fees. Cryptocurrency, he said, âcuts out the predatory banks in the middle,â and âcould help unbanked people like my mom.â
Warren, in turn, demanded to know what âreturn on investmentâ wealthy crypto investors would get for boosting Deatonâs campaign.
The two also differed on a controversial ballot question that would eliminate the MCAS exam as a graduation requirement for Massachusetts high schoolers. Deaton said he would vote against the measure, warning that getting rid of the mandate could produce high school graduates who âcanât fully speak English.â
Warren said she would vote âyesâ on the ballot question, saying Massachusetts has one of the countryâs top education systems not because of the statewide test but because of teachers, whose largest union, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, put the measure on the ballot.
Warren and Deaton will meet again Thursday evening in a debate sponsored by New England Public Media and GBH News.
Emma Platoff can be reached at emma.platoff@globe.com. Follow her @emmaplatoff. Matt Stout can be reached at matt.stout@globe.com. Follow him @mattpstout.
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