MELROSE — There was only one contested race on Tuesday’s state primary election ballot, but 20 percent of the city’s 21,717 registered voters participated anyway.
In the Republican Party race for United States Senate, Attorney John Deaton won a three-way primary to face off against incumbent U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who ran unopposed in Tuesday’s Massachusetts primary.
Deaton, a former U.S. Marine and cryptocurrency attorney who was born in Detroit, announced earlier this year that he would vie for the chance to challenge Warren in November as she runs for her third term in office. He defeated fellow Republicans industrial engineer Bob Antonellis and Quincy City Council President Ian Cain.
Deaton said in a statement that he was humbled by the support from voters.
“(On Wednesday), we begin the next phase of the campaign – an effort that will hold Elizabeth Warren accountable for her failures on the border, the unaffordable cost of supporting a family, a broken healthcare system, abandoning our ally Israel, and restoring faith in our politics,” Deaton said.
Warren said in an email that she’s accepted two October debates, one in Boston and one in Springfield.
“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, and now Massachusetts voters have a clear choice that could determine control of the Senate,” Janice Rottenberg, Warren campaign manager, said in a statement.
Relatively unknown in Massachusetts politics, Deaton faces a steep climb against Warren, a former Harvard law professor who has twice won a Senate seat but came in third in Massachusetts in her 2020 bid for president. She remains popular in the heavily Democratic state.
Warren faced a competitive race in her first U.S. Senate bid in 2012, when she toppled Republican incumbent Scott Brown. She received more than 60 percent of the vote in 2018. Biden carried the state with 66 percent of the vote in the 2020 presidential race.
Democrats have a lock on the Bay State’s congressional delegation, with both U.S. Senate seats and all nine U.S. House seats firmly in their column. They also hold lopsided supermajorities in both chambers of the state legislature, where all seats are up for election in November.
Nonetheless, Republicans hope they can build on their toehold in the state Senate, where they flipped a vacant Democratic seat in 2023.
Without any opposition, Melrose’s Beacon Hill delegation will return to office after the November general election. State Representative Kate Lipper-Garabedian will join state Sen. Jason Lewis to do the city’s work in Boston.
— Steve LeBlanc of the Associated Press contributed to this report.