New from CommonWealth Beacon |
CAMPBELL SUES: Attorney General Andrea Campbell sues Milton to
force compliance with the MBTA Communities law. Jennifer Smith reports that housing advocates and lawyers say Milton is poised to learn a difficult lesson about state versus municipal power.
DIVIDED MILTON: Not surprisingly, the Select Board in Milton, a town divided on compliance with the MBTA Communities law, is divided on
how to move forward in the wake of a state crackdown. Bruce Mohl reports that consensus seems to be emerging for a challenge to the state’s classification of the town as a “rapid transit” community.
UNICORN? Read the back and forth between Milton and the state over whether the town is really a “rapid transit” community, subject to stricter zoning requirements. There’s the town’s unicorn argument, and the state’s rejection of that argument.
|
|
|
|
Warren challenger sounds a lot like…Warren
|
February 28, 2024
|
By Michael Jonas
|
|
|
John Deaton, the cryptocurrency lawyer who recently announced a Republican campaign to unseat Sen. Elizabeth Warren, brings a colorful life story to the race. It apparently includes a healthy share of sex and drugs, but is anchored by accounts of his childhood, raised by a single mother on welfare in a poor enclave of Detroit.
“I’ve overcome poverty, grew up in one of the worst neighborhoods in America,” Deaton said in an interview. “I listened to my mom cry at night when she couldn’t feed us.”
Deaton says he’s the only one in his family to finish high school, never mind college and law school. He’s gone on to score big as a lawyer representing clients in asbestos and mesothelioma cases and, more recently, as an advocate for the crypto sector.
As Deaton unspools his story and talks about how it inspired him to want to go to Washington to fight for the little guy, it’s hard not to think of the origin story that Warren says drives her, growing up on “the ragged edge of the middle class” in Oklahoma.
Warren’s tale, detailed in her 2012 autobiography, A Fighting Chance, included her maintenance worker dad once losing a car to the repo
man.
Deaton has penned a memoir of his own, and Food Stamp Warrior makes Warren’s ragged-edge-of-the-middle-class roots look like a day at the beach.
|
|
|
|
|
|
This week on The Codcast, John McDonough of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Paul
Hattis of the Lown Institute talk to CommonWealth Beacon's Bruce Mohl about what went wrong with Steward Health Care, and possible paths out of the current situation.
|
| LISTEN NOW |
|
|
|
According
to Politico’s Lisa Kashinsky and Kelly Garrity, Deaton writes that his upbringing came complete with brass-knuckle beatdowns, being the victim of sexual assault, and a situation in which, at 17, he may – or may not – have shot someone with his friend’s gun after the friend was gunned down in a drive-by. (Deaton emptied the gun on the fleeing car, but doesn’t know if he hit anyone.) Later, after going through a divorce, Politico says he writes of going through a “coke-fueled sex bender” before eventually settling down with his current partner.
Deaton, one of crypto’s highest profile champions, and Warren, who has charged that the sector needs to follow the same rules as others in the financial world, seem poised to clash on that issue. But crypto aside, the Democratic senator who made her name going after Wall Street honchos and the Republican challenger she may face in November sound like they’re singing off the same song sheet, if not belting the exact same tune.
In a recent interview on Fox News Business, Deaton calls himself “the ultimate underdog,” a background that has compelled him to fight for the underdog. “I fought for the little guy. I took on the greedy corporations and
the heartless insurance companies, and I won,” Deaton says in his campaign announcement video.
He “tells a story not unlike that of the incumbent he wants to unseat,” concludes WBZ-TV political analyst Jon Keller.
Deaton tries to push back against that idea, but still has a ways to go in finding his campaign footing.
“She’s great at fighting against people. She fights against the rich and wealthy. I fight for the poor and the working-class,” he said in an interview with CommonWealth Beacon. “That’s the fundamental difference. Where she pits American against American, I’m about uplifting people.”
The idea that lifting up working people doesn’t necessarily involve taking some shots at those with all the power and wealth seems a bit out of character for a guy who sports a brass-knuckles necklace in his Fox News Business interview and says in his kickoff video that he will “fight for what is right.”
Deaton, a first-time candidate who moved last month from Rhode Island to Swansea, has time to hone his message. But his familiarity with being an underdog will come in handy as he tries to unseat a Democratic US senator in deep-blue Massachusetts.
|
|
|
|
That said, Deaton is far from a MAGA Republican. He said he would not support Donald Trump as his party’s nominee for president.
“I’m a fiscally conservative Republican who’s socially moderate,” said Deaton, who is pro-choice. He emphasized that “unlike Elizabeth Warren, I’m not “a partisan person,” and has been a registered Democrat, independent, and now Republican.
“She promised to be a champion for those in need,” he says about Warren in his announcement video. “Instead, she gives lectures and plays politics and gets nothing done for Massachusetts.”
Not surprisingly, Warren took issue with that charge when asked about Deaton’s volley at a Democratic Party event on Saturday in Quincy. And for all her high-profile battles with “Republican extremists,” her message was all about bread and butter.
“I’ve spent my whole life fighting for working people, long before I ever got into politics,” Warren said. “And [in] the two terms I’ve had, it’s been the honor of a lifetime to be in this fight and to get important things done, like reducing costs for families – $35 insulin, nearly 4 million people who've seen their student loan debt canceled, cutting the cost of hearing aids – all the pieces that make life work better for working families.”
|
|
|
|
More from CommonWealth Beacon |
OPINION: Alan Sager, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, says the state must learn some hard lessons from the Steward debacle. One of many: “Trusting profit-making in health care is like believing in the tooth fairy.”
OPINION: John McDonough of the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard and Paul Hattis of the Lown Institute focus
in on Steward, who they say has a modern-day version of Snidely Whiplash at the helm.
FIRES EVERYWHERE: For Gov. Maura Healey, there are fires everywhere to put out, reports Bruce Mohl. The list is long – migrants,
Steward, Milton, offshore wind, MBTA, and a Legislature slow to act.
|
|
|
|
In Other News |
BEACON HILL
The low-profile Governor’s Council appears poised to confirm today Gov. Maura Healey’s pick of her former romantic partner, Gabrielle Wolohojian, for a seat on the Supreme Judicial Court, even as it remains largely unknown when she would recuse herself from cases involving the governor. (Boston Globe)
Healey’s 2025 budget proposal does not evenly split proceeds between education and transportation from the state’s new surcharge on million-dollar-plus earners, as envisioned by backers of the tax, but instead directs about 20 percent of the money for the coming year to education needs. (Boston Herald)
Rep. Peter Capano of Lynn says he won’t seek reelection. (Daily Item) He’s not alone. (CommonWealth Beacon)
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
The Catholic Archdiocese of Springfield wants to remove five stained-glass windows from a shuttered church, but town officials are balking because the church is in a historic district. The case has gone to court and the judge is preparing to rule, but tells both sides they should be able to come to an accommodation themselves. (Daily Hampshire Gazette)
Beverly City Councilor Todd Rotundo accuses Mayor Mike Cahill of being “almost dishonest” about the cost of a library overhaul, which has ballooned in cost from $3.5 million two years ago to $18 million today. (Salem News)
The Bourne Historical Commission will work with the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe to review the town’s seal, which currently includes inaccurate depictions of Native people. (Cape Cod Times)
Animal advocates are upset after Springfield’s fire commissioner responded to a call about a potentially rabid raccoon, and took matters into his own hands by running it over with a city-issued SUV. (MassLive)
At Boston’s first annual Dominican Independence Day Breakfast, officials celebrated the rise of three Dominican-Americans to the 13-member City Council, including Julia Mejia, Henry Santana and Enrique Pepen. (WBUR)
HEALTH/HEALTH CARE
Massachusetts has a long history of supporting in-vitro fertilization, or IVF, but a recent Alabama court ruling that could put the procedure before the US Supreme Court has Bay State residents worried. (Worcester Telegram)
The nonprofit Atrius Health Equity Foundation has a goal of getting rid of $500 million in Massachusetts residents’ medical debt over the next five years. One in eight residents say they carry family medical debt. (Boston Business Journal)
ELECTIONS
EDUCATION
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu pulls the plug on her plan to move the O’Bryant School, one of the city’s three selective-admission high schools, to West Roxbury, a proposal that had drawn sharp blowback. (Boston Globe)
The union representing faculty at North Shore Community College takes a vote of no confidence in the school’s president and provost. (Salem News)
As expected, the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education named Russell Johnston to serve as acting education commissioner beginning next month, when Jeff Riley steps down. (Boston Globe) Riley announced earlier this month that plans to step down after six years on the
job.
The state will fund a safety audit of all Brockton Public Schools, which have struggled with physical violence, drug use and other security and safety issues. (The Enterprise)
MEDIA
The Patriot Ledger newsroom is the latest to bite the dust, as the Quincy-based newspaper, owned by Gannett, gave up its offices last month. The paper’s barebones staff of 12 journalists – down from more than 100 in its heyday – now work entirely remotely. (Boston Globe)
PASSINGS
Richard “Rick Abath,” the former Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum guard who opened the door to a pair of thieves in what became known as one of the most infamous art heists ever, has died. He was 57 and had continuously said he was not involved in the heist. (WBUR)
|
|
|
|
|
