Republicans looking to challenge Warren sound off on migrants, wind energy, student loan debt

BOSTON — The three Republicans running to unseat U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren railed against her attempts to cancel student loan debt, criticized local efforts to manage an influx of migrants into Massachusetts, and bashed a wind energy project during a debate Friday evening.

Attorney John Deaton, Quincy City Councilor Ian Cain, and industrial engineer Bob Antonellis are set to face off Tuesday in the state’s U.S. Senate Republican primary, with the winner going on to challenge Warren in November.

The conservative trio each argued they were best positioned to beat Warren, with Deaton pointing to his ability to fund a campaign, Cain touting his local roots in Massachusetts, and Antonellis proclaiming he was the only candidate to fully support former president and convicted felon Donald Trump.

It was a largely civil affair hosted by Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr, though Antonellis did make a personal swipe at Deaton during the later half of the event for “a knife incident” outlined in Deaton’s personal memoir that “seemed very anti-woman” and “very similar to Karen Read’s case.”

Deaton quickly defended the episode as an attempt to defuse a situation between his mother and sister, who he said was a heroin addict who had overdosed twice but was saved by another brother and first responders.

“She robbed my mother at gunpoint, drugged out of her mind, and in an act of love, I went back and I cut my arm, made a false police report. My sister went to jail for about six weeks, dried out, and you want to know something, she’s alive today,” Deaton said. “I would do it again because I get to talk to her and speak with her on a daily basis.”

Earlier in the debate, both Cain and Deaton quickly jumped on a surge of arriving migrants in Massachusetts that has overwhelmed state-run shelters and is set to cost taxpayers more than $1 billion during each of the next several fiscal years.

Cain said he is the “only candidate to have put out a policy piece about” the state’s right-to-shelter law, a decades-old statute that guarantees temporary housing to pregnant women and families with children.

“The first thing that we would do is make sure that cities, states, and towns across the country cannot designate themselves as sanctuary status,” he said. “When you don’t have any power to make changes to the right-to-shelter law, because there aren’t enough members of the Legislature who are willing to take this courageous move, then you have to start making noise at the local level.”

Deaton said he has a fundraising agreement with the Republican Party and set up a victory fund to support candidates for the state Legislature who are willing to take different approaches to addressing the shelter system.

“I’m doing it right now by helping get Republicans elected in the state Legislature. When I become a U.S. senator, you can see what I’ll do then,” he said.

Antonellis said he had “not researched it specifically what I would do” about shelter spending or the right-to-shelter law.

Both Cain and Deaton said they disagreed with Warren’s efforts to cancel billions in student loan debt.

Cain said he believes student loan debt cancellation is “a very unfair measure … that we are covering the cost of as taxpayers.”

“That’s something that she is still touting, but it is not something that works for the American people,” he said.

Deaton also said he disagreed with “all of (Warren’s) policy issues.”

“You do not have to attack other Americans and tear them down to lift people up. I’m going to lift them up without tearing Americans down,” he said.

Antonellis said he wanted to focus on “parents’ rights” before making a critical remark about transgender people.

“Parents should have the right to make the decisions regarding how their children will be schooled and whether they will be whatever you want to call it co-opted when they go to school, if you put a girl named Jill on the bus, you don’t want a boy named John getting off that looks an awful lot like Jill,” he said.

All three candidates took aim at offshore wind after a damaged blade detached from a Vineyard Wind turbine earlier this summer and debris washed offshore on Nantucket.

“We’ve seen severe economic and environmental consequences already taking place right on our shores, and what we really need to be doing is looking into baseload power generation to fulfill our actual needs, because all these wind turbines aren’t going to fulfill it anyway,” Cain said.

Deaton said the United States does need a “smart energy transition plan” that includes solar and wind and “even very limited, small nuclear.”

Antonellis said wind projects should be banned off the coast of Massachusetts.

Each candidate also addressed the $5.2 million in campaign cash Warren has stored away — a formidable war chest compared to what the three Republicans have raised so far.

Cain said there are “plenty of people” who are sitting on the sidelines waiting to donate once the primary election is over.

“I know that at 9 p.m. on Sept. 3, next Tuesday, the faucets will turn on,” he said.

Deaton pointed to the $1 million he has loaned himself and argued the “faucets (are) already running for me.”

Antonellis said he expects donations to flow into his campaign if wins the primary because “it would be the cultural clash of the ages — Antonellis versus Warren.”