BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren won a third term in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, further cementing her role as a key progressive voice in the state and on Capitol Hill.
Warren fended off a challenge from Republican John Deaton, an attorney who moved to the state from Rhode Island earlier this year. Deaton 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. She 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.
Warren told supporters gathered in Boston on Tuesday evening that she was “grateful down to my toes.”
“More than once we have reminded people that government can be harnessed to work — not just for the wealthy and well connected — but that we can actually make government work for the people,” Warren said.
Warren said she was happy being a teacher, researcher and self-described “policy nerd” and hadn’t considered running for public office until her first bid for the Senate in 2012.
“I moved from being only a policy nerd to becoming a policy nerd and full time-fighter to give everyone in our commonwealth and our country a fighting chance to build a future,” she added.
Warren began the day casting a ballot at an elementary school a short walk from her Cambridge home.
Warren had worked to get Kamala Harris elected president but said she has also reached across the partisan divide and would continue to do so.
Deaton voted Tuesday morning at a regional high school in his hometown of Bolton. He released a statement Tuesday evening acknowledging the tough challenge he faced.
“I’m blessed to have…