‘I’m not loyal to any party’: John Deaton pitches himself as moderate alternative to Elizabeth Warren

In a wide-ranging interview with Boston.com, John Deaton explains the roots of his candidacy, and his positions on topics from reproductive rights to housing affordability.

John Deaton has never run for an elected office and, in his own words, he’s not starting small. A personal injury lawyer who grew his reputation in the world of cryptocurrency, Deaton is hoping to oust Sen. Elizabeth Warren this November.

After defeating two challengers in the Republican primary, Deaton has come out in full force against Warren, painting the popular incumbent as a partisan who is more concerned with burnishing her reputation than getting things done in Washington. He is running as a moderate Republican in the vein of former Gov. Charlie Baker, distancing himself from the party’s allegiance to Donald Trump in a reliably blue state. Despite this opening, Deaton is facing an uphill battle. Recent polling shows Warren leading him by almost 59% to 35%.

The dynamics of the race could shift this week, when Warren and Deaton will meet for televised debates on Tuesday and Thursday. Ahead of those matchups, Boston.com sat down with Deaton for a wide-ranging interview.

Boston.com will be interviewing Sen. Warren later this month. The following interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Boston.com: This is your first time running for elected office. Is there a specific moment you can pinpoint when you decided to run? What was that decision-making process like for you?

John Deaton: I came across a poll that showed former Republican Governor Charlie Baker would destroy Senator Warren in a head to head for the Senate seat. A real credible poll. He beats her by 15 points.

So I reached out because Senator Warren’s got a bill that bans Bitcoin, and she’s out there, in my opinion, gaslighting the public saying that the only people that use it are criminals and stuff. I was going to reach out assuming that maybe Governor Baker was going to run because of that poll and I would basically do his platform, teach him about central bank, digital currencies, Bitcoin, crypto, whatever, not looking for anything. Just wanted to do my part, to make sure the truth came out.

I was told Governor Baker was not going to run. So I said, “well, who’s running?” I looked and saw that really no one was challenging her. I felt that she’s beatable with the right candidate, i.e. like a Charlie Baker. First I had to decide: what did the primary look like? Could I win a primary, even though I’m a moderate? The second thing would be, could I find a team? And so I reached out to Governor Baker’s team and they were interested.

But the pinpoint where I said, “I’m for sure doing this” was a conversation with my two adult daughters. I called them and said, “listen, Dad’s thinking of jumping in and running for office. And, girls, I’m not going to start off small. I’m going to take on one of Washington’s most entrenched elites, the darling of the left,” that kind of thing, and my daughters looked at me and said, “Dad, you’re great at everything you do, but we think you’re going to lose.”

I asked why, and they said, “because you’re too honest, and you will never say something that you don’t believe in, and you’re incapable of selling out.” I looked at them and said, “You just convinced me to run.” That can’t be the standard in our country. It just can’t be … Here are my daughters, very intelligent, very independent young women saying that you have to be a sellout, or you have to be a liar, or you have to be willing to sell your soul to come into elected office.

Senator Warren’s campaign has said that a “small handful of crypto billionaires and corporate special interests” spent millions to “handpick you” as a candidate. What’s your response to that?

I remind Senator Warren I’ve only been recruited to do anything in Massachusetts one time in my life, and that was when the Marine Corps recruited me to represent the Commonwealth in 1994.

Obviously, I’m not a Trump supporter. So I got news for people. The Republicans didn’t want me, either. Not all Republicans, but a segment of Republicans, because of my lack of support for President Trump, didn’t want me.

Senator Warren has earned the attention of people in crypto, not me. Not me. Her bill bans Bitcoin in crypto in the United States, that’s a fact. If you’re going to ban an entire industry in America that might cause them to be motivated. If they see a candidate that they think can beat you, they may want to support that candidate.

What’s ironic is, if you actually look at what I’ve done in crypto for the last five years, I did all of it pro bono. I sued the Securities and Exchange Commission on behalf of token holders, including 627 in Massachusetts. A lifelong Democratic judge, appointed by President Obama, agreed with me and disagreed with Senator Warren by the way. A lifelong Democratic judge. In the process of that, I actually uncovered conflicts of interest at the SEC. There are crypto billionaires who block me, who are very angry at me because I uncovered all that.

This is what I tell Senator Warren at the end of the day. She’s read my book… She should probably pick it up again. It’s called “Food Stamp Warrior.” It’s not called “billionaire warrior” or “crypto warrior.”

She’s the crypto candidate in this election, not me. I’m focusing on immigration, the debt crisis, inflation, the housing crisis, opioid addictions, foreign wars. Crypto is not a top 10 issue in Massachusetts. It’s just not. I don’t even bring it up, usually. I get asked about it, and I’ll respond. She deserves their attention. Don’t try to ban an entire industry. Maybe they won’t be motivated against you.

You’ve been vocal about overcoming substance abuse issues in the past. How do you view the state of addiction treatment in Massachusetts right now? And what can we do better?

We have to understand the problem and not view it from a point of judgment. I was injured in the Marine Corps, not in combat, but in training. After spinal surgery, they handed me some pills … they said, “Here’s these oxycontin pills, and they’re not addictive, John.”

They gave me 120 milligrams a day. I took a 60 milligram pill of oxycontin every 12 hours. Well, you do that for three months, and I can assure you that it’s addictive. A lot of people judge: “How could you allow yourself to get addicted?” It’s quite easy for your body to become dependent on prescription pills.

The first thing we have to do is stop the fentanyl entering our state. I went to the border … I used to be stationed in Yuma, Arizona in the Marine Corps, so I know that area quite well, and I actually used to battle the cartels who were trying to enter drugs through the Yuma Crossing, and I was successful in a few of those sting operations of stopping it. I learned that 50% of the fentanyl entering Massachusetts is coming from the Yuma crossing alone. So the one thing we have to do is stop the drug infiltration and have a real war on drugs and a real war on the cartels.

I know there’s this debate about drug treatment centers. Whether or not you should allow people to do drugs and try to control it, and all that. That’s not something — we don’t treat addiction by creating more addiction.

We have to come up with enough money to actually deal with the problem and the root of the problem. And that’s something that I’m certainly going to support.

You call Massachusetts “ground zero” in the migrant crisis. What are your thoughts on the bipartisan border deal that was killed earlier this year? Would you have voted for it?

I tell people that there’s two crises. There’s a national security crisis at the border, and there’s a humanitarian crisis. I don’t demonize the migrants, and you’re never going to find me demonizing the migrants.

But on a national security level it is an absolute math issue. If 12 million people cross and you assume 99% are good people who want a better life, I can identify with that. But if one out of a hundred is a bad guy, that’s 120,000 bad guys. If my assumption is wrong, and it’s 95% that are good people wanting a better life, that’s 600,000 bad guys. You have to secure the border because there have been over a hundred people on the terror watch list caught, and Border Patrol told me that they’ve missed four or five times that. Well, that would be 400 or 500 people on the terror watch list who want to do harm to America, who have crossed our border.

Massachusetts is ground zero because of our right to shelter law. It’s impacting our infrastructure. It’s costing over a billion dollars a year in hard money. But it’s taxing our schools, our urgent cares, our emergency rooms … there is no plan. I would have voted “yes” for that border bill. It wasn’t perfect. I’m someone who wants to expand legal immigration, make it easier, but have zero tolerance for illegal immigration.

Is it true that President Trump told the Republicans, “Hey, don’t support that bill,” sure. But Elizabeth Warren is right there next to him, because she voted “no” on the border bill, and then she went further and objected to President Biden’s executive order that limited it to 2,500 migrants per day.

She is completely supportive of an entirely open border, and that’s unsustainable … Her silence has been deafening in the last four years, and it’s because she’s a partisan person. She is all about an agenda or the Democratic party, and what her motivations are. She’s not loyal to the state or to this country, as opposed to me. I’m not loyal to any party. I’m not loyal to any person, other than my family, and I’m not loyal to an agenda. If I get to the Senate I will have one test: “Is this good for Massachusetts and America?” That border bill? The answer is “yes.”

Where do you stand on IVF specifically and reproductive rights generally?

I am pro-choice. If you look on Feb. 23 of this year, that’s when that Alabama IVF ruling came out. Who do you think was first to speak out against it, me or Senator Warren? Me. I’m a father of three daughters. I’m incapable of supporting laws or restrictions that are going to take the rights of my daughters away.

I will be a fierce fighter for women’s reproductive rights in the U.S. Senate, and I think I will be much more effective than Senator Warren because all she does is react to things … How come she didn’t write a bill codifying Roe v. Wade? Those three justices had already been appointed by President Trump. He said that he would only appoint justices if they were willing to overturn Roe v. Wade. So that happens, they are in control, write your bill. Make people take a stand. And she didn’t. Then the Dobbs decision comes down. It’s overturned, and she’s outraged. And she should be outraged, and I believe her outrage is sincere. But where was the action before? Did she think they were bluffing?

If you have loyalty to only the state and the country, and not trying to stay in power and worry about, “Will this bill upset Joe Manchin in West Virginia, that Democrat? Or will it make this Democrat over in this other state upset and weaken their reelection?” That’s all they care about.

Senator Warren was asked last week, “What’s wrong with John Deaton’s policies?” Do you know what her answer was? “The Crypto people like him.” And then the host said, “Other than that, what’s wrong with Deaton’s positions?”

Her answer: We don’t want the Democrats to lose control. We don’t want to lose power. She couldn’t come up with one valid criticism of where I stand on policy. That should tell all the voters what they need to know.

She had a chance to actually do something proactively, and she chose not to. She won’t debate me on this issue solely because she will lose, and I will expose her for the person she is. She cares about the issue, don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that she doesn’t care about the issue. She cares about her career more than that issue. I don’t. I care about my daughter’s rights way more than I care whether I win this race, or if I am a senator, or what my next election may or may not be.

How do you view Senator Warren’s time in Congress up until this point? And do you think you can reach across the aisle and get legislation passed in a more accomplished way than she can?

Here’s the bottom line. She talks about income inequality. Has the wealth gap improved or not improved during her 12 years? The wealth gap’s gotten larger. It got larger under Barack Obama. It got larger under George W. Bush. It got larger under Donald Trump, and it got larger under Joe Biden. And I think we need someone to go to the Senate who actually understands poverty, who actually sincerely wants to do something about poverty in the United States of America, and I know more about poverty from a weekend of my life than these politicians, including Senator Warren, could fathom to ever understand.

I already talked to you about how she waits until there is a ruling against women’s rights and then she responds and then she reacts. On her core issues that she talks about: income, inequality, women’s rights, she has not been the fighter she claims to be.

And so when you talk about 12 years, that’s what I support. I support two terms, I went on record to say I would not run for a third term under any circumstance, and that’s guaranteed. Written in stone. I would never go against my word, because if you can’t bring change or help, bring change in 12 years, then step aside, let someone else have a shot, someone who might have a fresher approach than you … It’s called public service, not self service.

How’s it possible that all of these politicians go to Washington, D.C. and they become millionaires? They become multimillionaires. I made my money before going to Congress. I think she’s been completely ineffective. I disagreed with a lot of the policies of Ted Kennedy when he was a senator. But you think those Cape Cod bridges would have got money by now if Ted Kennedy was in the Senate? Of course they would have.

In 2019, the bridges were documented as functionally obsolete by the Army Corps of Engineers. Governor Baker was trying to get money for the bridges. Where was Senator Warren fighting for Massachusetts and fighting for money?

There was the infrastructure bill while she’s in office, that she fought for. That infrastructure bill had $110 billion go to bridges across the United States. Not $1 went to the Cape Cod bridges.

She’s ineffective when it comes to fighting for Massachusetts. She’s more of a national celebrity, national identity. She’s actually spending more time helping other politicians than even dealing with my race. And maybe it’s because she isn’t taking me seriously, or maybe because she underestimates me or any of those things. But I think it’s time that she turned her attention to this state.

On the topic of gun control, we have some of the strictest laws in the country here in Massachusetts. Do you think Massachusetts can or should be a model for other states in terms of gun control? And specifically, do you support a national assault weapons ban?

First of all, I support the laws of Massachusetts, as it relates to the Second Amendment, though I haven’t studied the recent law that the governor signed. It appears that it could be too vague and needs to be challenged, or something like that. But I haven’t studied enough to really give you a detailed legal analysis of it. But, generally speaking, I support the laws of Massachusetts.

Now, what’s good for Massachusetts might not be good for Texas, might not be good for Georgia or Alabama. I looked up the federal ban that existed under President Clinton and the statistics weren’t really any different, a federal ban doesn’t necessarily statistically give you any more safety or less deaths or anything like that. So when we talk about banning stuff, whether it’s a federal ban on abortion or a federal ban on guns, I’m going to always pause and say, “Wait a minute, we live in America, I believe in freedom.” So at this point I would not support a federal ban.

In November, do you have a plan to vote for either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump?

No, I’m not going to vote for either of them. I’m using my platform to send the message that we’ve got to be tired of this lesser of two evils choice that we’re facing, and neither one of their policies that they’re out there promoting are going to be beneficial to poor people in the middle class, as far as I’m concerned. So if you don’t support policies that are going to lift people out of poverty and expand the middle class, then I’m not going to support you.

I voted for Joe Biden last time. So clearly, I’m someone who has made that choice before. But Joe Biden had promised to unite us. He bragged that he was somebody as a senator who had even worked well with the white segregationists, if you remember, and that he would bring the country together. And that’s what we needed. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, and half the country is considered deplorables and half the country isn’t, and it’s more division, and there’s no unification. I want somebody who is truly going to bring us together.

I don’t support Donald Trump. You know that. Senator Warren knows that. But she’s lying and telling people that I’m a MAGA extremist. She’s literally saying that in her emails, and she publicly stated it when I announced my candidacy, and she knows it’s not true. Why would she do that? Why would she say, “Hey, John Deaton is this big Trump supporter MAGA person” when she knows I’m not?

Because they want to divide us, and they want to keep us divided, and they don’t want to have a substantive conversation about these policies, because it’s all about power, and it’s all about maintaining power and control. I’m done with that. So I’m using my platform to say, “When someone supports the policies that will help regular people, I’ll be their biggest supporter.”

Housing affordability is a big concern for many in Massachusetts. How do you view the housing crisis and the lack of affordable housing in the state?

First, let’s recognize that Massachusetts is now the second most expensive state to live in, beating out California, only behind Hawaii. Let’s also recognize that Massachusetts is the third highest when it comes to housing. The average home statewide is $600,000 to $650,000.

That’s $200,000 more than the national median. When you’re talking about the greater Boston area, the median sale price is $980,000.

Clearly regular people are being priced out. So we have a lack of inventory and high demand. That’s going to cause prices to go up. Inflation is causing a big problem because the government keeps overspending money they don’t have, increasing the national deficit. We’re paying $3 billion a day in interest alone on our debt. We’re going over a cliff, but no one’s talking about it. There wasn’t one question in the presidential debate about the debt crisis in this country.

So I’m talking to builders. And you want to know what they tell me? They said, “John, it takes two years to pull the necessary permits here in Massachusetts to build.” We’ve got to cut the over regulations that are choking the industry and strangling innovation and whatnot. That’s one thing we have to do. We have to make it easier.

Until we get our spending under control, we’re going to continue to see inflation increase and no one’s talking about that, and that’s something that must be talked about. We are way over-regulated on all of the government regulations, restrictions, permits, all of that. We have to make it much more suitable. Builders aren’t going to build if they can’t make money off it. So that’s probably the first thing that needs to be done here in Massachusetts.

Thank you, John, for taking the time to chat today.

Could I address one more issue? If you don’t mind. It’s only because this is the number one argument that Senator Warren is out there saying about me, other than lying about who I am. She’s saying that, in a 50-50 Senate, “We can’t elect John Deaton because the Democrats would lose control.”

That’s the number one reason to vote for me. Because I would give Massachusetts a real voice. I am not loyal to the Republican party. You don’t see me in any of these MAGA fundraisers … I have no loyalty to the Republican party. I have no loyalty to an agenda, only to Massachusetts and America. So imagine in a 50-50 Senate whose vote would count the most? I would literally give a voice to the Senate.

Senator Warren is just another partisan person from the other side. If there’s a federal ban on abortion, she’s just going to be dismissed as someone from the other side. A person in the party, standing up to his own party, saying, “This is never going to happen. It’s going to only happen over my dead body.” That is a more effective fighter for those issues than someone from the other side.

She’s so blinded by partisanship. She doesn’t realize she’s making the case for me, and I just want to address that because I keep hearing her make that comment about “ultimately don’t vote for Deaton, because in a 50-50 Senate we lose control.” No, you, Massachusetts, would actually have a voice. So that’s it.

Staff Writer

Ross Cristantiello, a general assignment news reporter for Boston.com since 2022, covers local politics, crime, the environment, and more.