Sen. Ed Markey just survived another primary. He treated it like the end of the story. It isn't.
Massachusetts still has a choice in November. I am that choice. I'm not asking anyone to become a Republican. I'm asking voters to send someone to Washington who has lived the life career politicians talk about.
I'm 59. I was born into poverty and wrote about it in my Memoir, Food Stamp Warrior, because I refuse to hide where I came from. Brass knuckles. A mother stabbed in a robbery. Childhood sexual abuse. The Marines. Law school in Boston. Addiction, and mistakes I made as an adult. Before I ever touched cryptocurrency, I spent years representing asbestos victims against some of the biggest corporations in America. All of it is public. I would rather voters know the whole record than pretend I arrived here polished.
Ed Markey is counting on voters never learning any of that.
Instead of debating my ideas, he has spent this campaign calling me a "Trump sycophant" and a "MAGA Republican." He knows it isn't true. I have never voted for Donald Trump. I said so in 2024 when I ran against Elizabeth Warren, and I say it now. But Sen. Markey isn't interested in the truth. He's interested in a label, one that gives voters permission to stop listening before I've said a word. It's the oldest trick in politics: if you can't beat a man's ideas, make sure no one hears them.
That tactic only works if voters stay home from the conversation, and that's exactly what Sen. Markey is hoping for.
In June, he was invited to debate Seth Moulton and me on the same stage. He didn't show up. Only as primary day approached did he find the time, debating Moulton three times before the election. Now that he's facing voters of every party and none at all, he has, so far, only agreed to one general election debate. The pattern tells you everything. He shows up when he's scared. He disappears when he thinks he's safe.
And he clearly thinks he's safe. Rather than campaigning across Massachusetts, the senator has been out of state stumping for other candidates. He's so sure of your vote that he's spending his time earning someone else's. After fifty years in Congress, that's what being taken for granted looks like.
Massachusetts deserves better. Sixty-seven percent of voters here are unenrolled. They're tired of both parties treating them like a cheering section, and they're tired of being told how to vote by people who won't even come ask for it. So I'll keep doing what I've done from the start: holding People Over Politics town halls in every corner of this state, and challenging Sen. Markey to a full slate of debates before November 3. If he could take the stage multiple times in the middle of a pandemic to save his seat, he can take it again now to earn it.
Here's what I'd bring to that stage.
The first bill I'll file is my Clean Hands Act. It caps House service at three two-year terms and Senate service at two six-year terms. It bans members of Congress from trading stocks, crypto, and commodities. It imposes a lifetime lobbying ban after they leave. And if Congress fails to pass a budget, members don't get paid. Those aren't Republican ideas or Democratic ideas. They're accountability ideas.
Career politicians have turned Congress into a retirement plan. Sen. Markey is 80 and says this will be his last term. Fine. Then let's make the rule apply to everyone, not just the man who has already been there half a century.
Massachusetts doesn't need another six years of the same speech. It needs a senator who treats immigration like a problem to solve, health care like a bill families actually pay, and Washington like a job you can lose if you stop doing it.
I'm not asking you to like my party. I'm asking you to look past the label Ed Markey wants you to see and judge me on what I've done and what I'll do. Put people over politics. That's the only test that matters.
John Deaton is the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts.