Mass. Primary 2024: Meet the Republicans who want to unseat Elizabeth Warren

The crypto guy. The city councilor. The conservative activist. What do they have in common?

All three of them are Republicans. All three are looking to unseat long-serving U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.

And on Sept. 3, they’ll duke it out in Massachusetts’ GOP U.S. Senate primary. The winner advances to the Nov. 5 general election.

• Read More: Primary Preview: 2024 Massachusetts primary election

No matter which of the candidates emerges victorious from the primary — John Deaton, the crypto guy; Ian Cain, the city councilor, or Robert Antonellis, the activist — one thing is certain, they’ll face an uphill battle in heavily Democratic Massachusetts, where the political topography favors Warren, a deep-pocketed and deeply entrenched, incumbent.

“With Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket, expect a bigger turnout of young voters in Massachusetts,” UMass Amherst political scientist Ray La Raja said. “That’s not a happy situation [for Republicans].”

Here’s who’s running, and what you need to know about the race.

John Deaton

Deaton, 56, a former Marine-turned-attorney, who’s hoping to add “U.S. Senator” to the hyphenated titles he already bears, moved from Rhode Island to Swansea to mount his campaign.

In an interview with MassLive in April, he described himself as a “Charlie Baker-type” Republican, referring to the Bay State’s socially moderate and fiscally prudent former chief executive.

“I am tired of these presidential candidates not representing the people that I care about — that’s the working class and the poor,” Deaton told MassLive. “I got in this race because they are not being represented,” he said. “When you look at the Senate, you do not see someone who has been working 50 hours a week, and yet you feel like you can’t get ahead.”

Deaton supports abortion rights and marriage equality. And while he’s a Republican, he doesn’t support former President Donald Trump.

• Read More: Who is John Deaton, the long-shot Republican trying to unseat Mass. Sen. Elizabeth Warren?

He said he also “100%” believes that President Joe Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election. It’s a position that puts him at odds with many in the party’s MAGA base.

In May, Deaton took on the state’s migrant crisis in a campaign advertisement taking Warren and other “career politicians” to task for failing to get a deal on immigration reform.

“Hundreds of migrants overwhelm our border every day, right where I’m standing nearly 12 million over the last three years,” Deaton, who once served at a border installation in Yuma, Ariz., intoned over news footage in the 90-second spot shared on YouTube and other social media channels. “Our health care system and social service agencies break under the weight of this crisis.”

Deaton has said he favors a path to citizenship for so-called “dreamers,” the young people who were brought to the United States as children; requiring asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while their cases are adjudicated, and ending the Biden administration’s “catch-and-release” program.

“We’re a country of laws,” he said.

Ian Cain

Cain, 41, jumped into the race in April, positioning himself as an “independent voice,” and a pragmatic alternative to Warren, who will “[get] s**t done and [fight] for us.”

Cain, who launched with a two-minute introductory video, is the only Black and openly gay candidate. Like Deaton, he has an affinity for tech and crypto. His video featured him dressed in the obligatory fleece vest uniform beloved by the FinTech set.

Like Deaton, Cain is a recent convert to Republicanism. He joined the party in late February, according to the Boston Globe. Prior to that, he had been an unenrolled voter and a Democrat.

Like Deaton, Cain has said he wants to end the state’s migrant crisis by “[securing] our border with physical and technological barriers, [reinstating] Remain in Mexico, and [restoring] a simpler process for legal immigration that prioritizes our needs first.”

When it comes to questions of energy and the economy, Cain has said the nation needs to “invest in diversified energy, a secure and expansive digital network, and build in a way that looks towards the future, not tries to fill holes from the past.”

Robert Antonellis

Antonellis, 62, an engineer from Somerville, stands alone among the primary pack as a confirmed Trump supporter.

“The big differentiating litmus test is whether someone supports the head of the ticket, which is why I’m wearing this hat,” Antonellis, sporting a red Make America Great Again hat, said during a debate sponsored by CBS News Boston.

“I’m the [only] one on the stage here who plans to vote for Donald Trump in November, and he’s the head of the ticket,” Antonellis said.

On his campaign website, Antonellis vows, if elected, to “[offer] up his powerful [problem-solving] abilities, his absolutely unique intellect and his special brand of charisma as a bulwark against the endless attacks Americans now face, on a daily basis, from a self-serving and dangerous, rogue government.”

Antonellis, who has said he supports American energy independence, has called for “banning offshore and onshore wind farms in all 50 States, U.S. Territories, and U.S. Territorial waters.

“The massive environmental devastation, onshore and offshore, is not worth the meager amount of undependable energy provided, not even counting the permanence of the landfill created,” the candidate asserted on his website. “The zero net impact to global warming reveals the whole operation was a hoax, giving billions of dollars to China and mostly foreign oil giants, like British Petroleum.”

The polling

Warren, the two-term incumbent, has held a steady polling lead in the closely watched contest.

The Cambridge lawmaker led her eventual Republican opponent 52.8% to 32.8% in a Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll released in May.

The poll, at the time, suggested that the GOP primary field had plenty of ground to make up, with nearly 9 in 10 respondents to the poll (86%) saying they were undecided.

A Mass Amherst/WCVB poll released in May showed Antonellis leading the primary pack, taking 19% support, with voters leaning toward a particular candidate factored into the equation.

That was before Deaton, with the assistance of a friendly super PAC, began blitzing the airwaves with advertisements.

In hypothetical, head-to-head match-ups, Warren led Antonellis 50%-23%; had a 48%-24% advantage over Cain; and would defeat Deaton 47%-24% in an election held today, according to the poll.

The money game

Warren was sitting on a cool $4.9 million as her 2024 re-election race entered the hottest months of summer, MassLive reported after new campaign finance tallies became available in July.

Warren raised more than $1.3 million through the end of June, putting her well ahead of her Republican challengers as she looks to win a third term in heavily Democratic Massachusetts.

• Read More: As summer heats up, Mass. Sen. Warren holds hefty fundraising lead

About three-quarters of the 31,903 donors who gave to Warren’s campaign between April and June gave $25 or less.

Deaton had $974,769 on hand at the end of June, according to his Federal Election Commission filing. Most of that came from a $1 million loan that Deaton made to his campaign, records showed.

Deaton raised $656,109 through the end of June, his campaign filing showed.

Thanks to his support from the cryptocurrency industry, Deaton saw contributions from some of the sector’s biggest names.

That included Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the cryptocurrency pioneers; investor Trent Herren; real estate magnate Jeff Wilhelms, and Chris Larsen, the executive chairman of the tech firm Ripple Inc., election filings showed.

Ripple also kicked in $1 million to a super PAC, the Commonwealth Unity Fund, supporting Deaton’s candidacy. It was founded by attorney James Murphy.

Deaton defended Ripple during a court fight with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission.

A separate political action committee, the Deaton Victory Committee, an effort between the candidate and the state and national GOP, raised a little more than $123,000, according to FEC filings.

Election filings showed Cain with $48,392 on hand at the end of June. Cain raised $359,146 during the second quarter of the year, and spent $312,722.

Cain’s donors included Josh Kraft, son of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who has been mentioned as a potential challenger to Boston Mayor Michelle Wu.

Antonellis had $9,666 on hand at the end of June, after raising $43,352 and spending $37,249, filings showed. Antonellis loaned his campaign $24,296.