Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren seeks third term in US Senate against challenger John Deaton

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BOSTON (AP) — Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is hoping to brush back a challenge from Republican John Deaton on Tuesday as she seeks a third term representing Massachusetts.

Deaton, an attorney who moved to the state from Rhode Island earlier this year, tried to portray the former Harvard Law School professor as out of touch with ordinary Bay State residents.

Warren cast herself as a champion for an embattled middle class and a critic of regulations benefitting the wealthy. Warren has remained popular in the state despite coming in third in Massachusetts in her 2020 bid for president.

Warren first burst onto the national scene during the 2008 financial crisis with calls for tougher consumer safeguards, resulting in the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She has gone on to become one of her party’s most prominent liberal voices.

“I first ran for the Senate because I saw how the system is rigged for the rich and the powerful and against everyone else and I won because Massachusetts voters know it too,” Warren said in a recent campaign ad.

In 2012, Warren defeated Republican Scott Brown, who was elected after the death of longtime Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy to serve out the last two years of his term. Six years later, she easily defeated Republican challenger Geoff Diehl.

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During the campaign, Deaton likened himself to former popular moderate Republican Massachusetts governors like Bill Weld and Charlie Baker, and said he did not support former President Donald Trump’s bid for a second term.

Although the candidates have taken similar stands on some issues, they tried to sharply distinguish themselves from each other.

Both expressed sympathy for migrants entering the country but faulted each other for not doing enough to confront the country’s border crisis during a debate on WBZ-TV.

Warren said the country needs comprehensive immigration reform and said Republicans, led by Trump, have blocked progress.

“The Republican playbook is one that Donald Trump has perfected,” she said.

Deaton said Warren should have confronted the issue more directly while in office, noting that she voted against a bipartisan border bill that failed.

“It would have brought relief, it wasn’t perfect, ” Deaton said.

Warren has said the bill was already doomed and she voted against it to show she wanted changes.

Both also said they support abortion rights. Deaton criticized Warren and other Democrats for not immediately pushing to write Roe v. Wade into law after the Supreme Court overturned the earlier ruling guaranteeing abortion rights.

“They didn’t want to settle the abortion issue. They wanted it divisive. They wanted it as an election issue,” Deaton said.

Warren said it was a matter of trust. She said Deaton had said he would have voted for Neil Gorsuch, one of the justices who overturned Roe.

Warren’s popularity failed to translate when she ran for the White House in 2020. After a relatively strong start, Warren’s presidential hopes faded in part under withering criticism from Trump who taunted her over her claims of Native American heritage.

She ultimately finished third in Massachusetts, behind Joe Biden and Vermont independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.