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“Our movement has won this election,” her challenger, graduate student and organizer Evan MacKay, told supporters, declaring victory. With the race still uncalled, Decker did not explicitly concede, nor did she call MacKay, but seemed to come close in an emotional speech.
“I’m not going away, trust me,” Decker said in her speech, pledging to help elect Vice President Kamala Harris this fall. “I don’t know how to go away.”
Deaton’s victory positions the 57-year-old in a tough general election matchup against Warren, a second-term incumbent who is well known in the state and a powerful fund-raiser.
Warren did not draw a Democratic opponent this year. Neither did a single one of her colleagues in the all-Democratic congressional delegation — or, for that matter, most Democratic incumbents in the Legislature. As voters across the state weighed in on a few competitive contests for the Legislature and in a handful of buzzy local races, it was yet another year with a dearth of electoral competition. Many voters showed up to the polls to find no contested races on their ballots at all.
At Deaton’s victory party Tuesday night, a packed room of supporters enjoyed Caesar salad and cavatelli as they waited for results. The room’s many windows were lined with red, white, and blue Deaton campaign signs.
He used his 15-minute acceptance speech as an opportunity to tell his story, starting from poverty in Detroit to becoming a millionaire and starting his own law firm. As he often has during the campaign, Deaton billed himself as “the walking, breathing, living embodiment of the American dream.” He was the first in his family to complete high school before graduating from Eastern Michigan University and New England Law Boston and joining the Marines.
“I refuse to be one of the last poor people in this country to make it,” Deaton told a room of gleeful supporters at the Big Night Live event space near TD Garden in Boston.
Deaton moved to Massachusetts in January from Rhode Island, where he has worked for decades as an attorney on mesothelioma and asbestos cases. A veteran who has been registered to vote with both parties and contributed to Democrats in the past, Deaton has promised he would work across the aisle as a senator and said he will not vote this fall for former president Donald Trump.
In his speech, Deaton said he would have only one test as he decided how to vote in the Senate: “Is it good for Massachusetts and America?”
Speaking to reporters later, Deaton would not say who he would support to lead the Senate, saying he would consider voting for a leader of either party.
The Senate race presents a tantalizing opportunity for Massachusetts Republicans, though the odds of capitalizing on it are long. Bedeviled in recent years by campaign finance probes, crushing debt, and embarrassing electoral losses, the party has a chance to claw its way back to relevance by defeating Warren, or even just posting a strong showing. Republicans no longer hold a single statewide office after Charlie Baker did not seek reelection as governor in 2022.
But beating Warren is a tall order, and it requires the right nominee. A former presidential candidate, she commands national attention, and her progressive politics are popular with many in the reliably blue state. Six years ago, when the GOP ran an outspoken supporter of Trump, Warren beat him by 24 percentage points. More moderate Republican candidates, such as Baker, have had more electoral success.
Warren had $5.3 million on hand, according to her most recent campaign finance report, compared with Deaton’s $828,000. He loaned himself $1 million earlier in the campaign.
Warren’s campaign said Tuesday night that she would compete in two debates with Deaton: one in Boston, hosted by WBZ and the Globe, and one in Springfield, hosted by GBH and New England Public Media.
“The people of Massachusetts deserve a substantive policy conversation about abortion rights, the Supreme Court, funding for Medicare and Social Security, and other issues critical to our country’s future,” said Janice Rottenberg, Warren’s campaign manager. “Massachusetts voters have a clear choice that could determine control of the Senate.”
Rottenberg also slammed Deaton’s ties to the crypto industry and campaign support from some of its leaders, adding, “A small handful of crypto billionaires and corporate special interests poured more than $2 million into a super PAC to handpick their preferred Republican candidate.”
As he spoke to supporters Tuesday night, Deaton called for five debates, including one focused solely on the issue of women’s reproductive rights.
“Let’s not shortchange the voters,” he said, to cheers from the crowd.
Deaton beat two Republican opponents: Quincy City Council President Ian Cain and engineer Robert Antonellis. All three candidates were newcomers to the Massachusetts Republican political scene.
Cain was the only candidate who has served in elected office. But he has not been a Republican for long: He registered with the party in late February, just days before rumors emerged that he might enter the race. Cain is the first openly gay and Black City Council president in Quincy’s history and the cofounder of a startup incubator, called QUBIC Labs, which he said he hoped would bring blockchain technology to Quincy.
Cain conceded at an event at 16C, a restaurant in Quincy, telling a group of supporters the campaign had been the experience of a lifetime.
“I consistently refer to this as building a startup,” he said of the campaign. “If we were to be ultimately successful, it would take people, money, and capital. We had a good amount of capital, we had great energy, we had the right message — we just didn’t have all the people.”
Antonellis, meanwhile, was the only candidate of the three who said he would support Trump in November; at a primary forum last month, he wore a Trump hat, marking a stark contrast with his two opponents, who pledged a more moderate approach.
A vocal supporter of the cryptocurrency industry, Deaton has benefited from a super PAC that has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars promoting him, including with radio and television ads. Crypto heavyweights, including the Winklevoss twins and the company Ripple Labs, have poured $1 million each into that PAC.
The cryptocurrency industry could become a major factor in the race. Warren, who is one of Washington’s most vocal advocates for tighter regulations on the industry, has emerged as a potential target for power players in the industry who want to see their allies in Congress and have millions to spend on elections.
At the polls, Nicole Durocher of Quincy said she voted for Deaton. An independent, she said she chose him for his stance on border security, education, and China.
“I love immigrants, I come from immigrants, this country was built on immigration, and I love that, but you can’t cut the line,” said Durocher, 50.
Samantha J. Gross and Izzy Bryars contributed to this report.
Emma Platoff can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @emmaplatoff.