Massachusetts voters will choose among four candidates for the United States Senate in November: Democratic incumbent Ed Markey, Republican challenger John Deaton, independent Shiva Ayyadurai, and Socialism and Liberation candidate Joe Tache.
The principal policy contrast is between Markey, one of the Senate’s most prominent progressive Democrats, and Deaton, a Republican who has repeatedly emphasized his political independence from President Donald Trump and from the national Republican Party.
The two other candidates merit brief mention but do not materially alter our evaluation. Joe Tache, the Socialism and Liberation candidate, runs on an explicitly socialist platform well to Markey’s left. He calls for public seizure of the nation’s largest corporations, a 100 percent tax on assets above $10 million, a 90 percent reduction in military spending and an end to U.S. aid to Israel. Those positions place him far outside the range of policies CIVPAC supports.
Shiva Ayyadurai, running as an independent, is harder to place in a conventional political category or philosophy. His campaign centers on what he calls a “Systems Upgrade”, including decentralized AI and computing, local energy systems, data and currency sovereignty, alternative approaches to health and medicine, and his broader “Truth Freedom Health” movement. The program is highly unconventional and does not provide the kind of conventional policy framework that would make comparison with Markey and Deaton especially useful.
Ed Markey
Markey has served in Congress since 1976, first in the House and, since 2013, in the Senate. He consequently presents voters with relatively little uncertainty about his political philosophy or legislative priorities.
His current campaign explicitly identifies with the progressive movement. Markey supports Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, stronger labor protections, substantially higher taxes on the very wealthy, and an expanded federal role in climate, health and economic policy.
These are not simply labels. Markey is a cosponsor of Senator Bernie Sanders’s current Medicare for All Act, which would establish a national health-insurance program without premiums, copayments or deductibles and replace most existing private and employer-provided health insurance. Private insurance could remain for benefits not covered by the federal program. The bill explicitly prohibits duplicative private coverage once the program is fully in effect.
Markey also embraces the broader economic and social components of the Green New Deal, not merely its environmental provisions. The framework he developed with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez includes stronger labor protections, a goal of jobs paying family-sustaining wages, health care, affordable housing and economic security. His more specific Green New Deal legislation has included large federal investments in public housing, health-care facilities and other public infrastructure as well as climate-related investments.
His tax proposals are similarly specific. Markey is a cosponsor of the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act of 2026, which would impose an annual 2 percent tax on household net worth between $50 million and $1 billion and a 3 percent tax on wealth above $1 billion. The bill provides that the rate above $1 billion would increase to 6 percent if legislation establishing a qualifying universal health-insurance program were in effect.
Annual taxes on net wealth have become relatively uncommon among developed economies. The OECD’s review of wealth taxation reports that 12 member countries imposed recurrent net-wealth taxes in 1990, compared with four today. Countries that repealed them cited, among other concerns, valuation and administrative difficulties, avoidance and evasion, capital mobility, economic distortions and relatively limited revenue. The experience of other countries does not resolve the merits of the particular Markey-Warren proposal, but it provides useful context for a form of taxation that many developed countries have tried and subsequently abandoned.
We support retaining and reforming the estate tax but oppose an annual tax on the stock of accumulated wealth. Even if one favors taxing wealth more aggressively, we do not believe that an annual wealth tax is the best way to do so.
On immigration, Markey has gone considerably beyond conventional comprehensive immigration reform. He was the first U.S. senator to call for abolishing ICE and supports expanded due-process protections, refugee admissions and pathways to legal status or citizenship for immigrants including Dreamers. We view slogans such as “abolish ICE” and “defund the police” as unnecessarily inflammatory and likely to drive away potential allies who favor immigration reform.
Those domestic positions place Markey clearly within the progressive rather than centrist wing of contemporary Democratic politics.
Foreign Policy and Congressional Authority
Markey’s foreign-policy record is more complicated than his domestic ideological label might suggest.
He has consistently supported Ukraine following Russia’s invasion. He voted for major military and economic assistance to Ukraine, has described Russia’s invasion as illegal and unprovoked, and has emphasized the importance of the transatlantic alliance. During visits to Poland and NATO headquarters, he explicitly supported assistance to Ukraine and protection of NATO territory.
At the same time, Markey has long emphasized arms control and restraint in the use of American military power. In 2026 he repeatedly voted for War Powers resolutions challenging President Trump’s military operations against Iran and argued that continued hostilities required congressional authorization.
He has similarly opposed President Trump’s broad use of emergency tariff authority and supported legislation requiring refunds of tariffs after the Supreme Court ruled that the president lacked authority under IEEPA to impose the sweeping tariffs at issue.
On Israel, Markey supports Israel’s right to exist and defend itself and has supported defensive military assistance, including systems such as Iron Dome. He condemned Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack, supports the release of the hostages and favors a two-state solution. At the same time, he has become a strong critic of the Netanyahu government’s conduct of the Gaza war and has voted to block transfers of certain offensive weapons that he argues exceed Israel’s defensive needs and contribute to civilian casualties. He has repeatedly called for humanitarian assistance to Gaza and for diplomacy leading to a lasting peace.
Markey’s domestic agenda differs sharply from the market-oriented approaches that we favor. However, on Ukraine and NATO, congressional war powers, limits on executive tariff authority and several important aspects of Middle East policy, his record is well established and overlaps substantially with positions CIVPAC has taken.
John Deaton
Deaton presents a less conventional Republican profile.
A Marine veteran, attorney and small-business owner, he has never held elected office. He was the Republican nominee against Senator Elizabeth Warren in 2024 and returned in 2026 to challenge Markey. Deaton describes himself as an independent-minded Republican rather than a representative of the MAGA movement. He says he has never voted for Donald Trump, has said publicly that he would stand up to Trump when he disagreed with him, and emphasizes that his loyalty is to Massachusetts and the country rather than to a party or individual.
His social positions also differ substantially from those of many national Republicans.
Deaton supports codifying the protections of Roe v. Wade into federal law and says that if Republicans attempted to enact a national abortion ban, he would vote with Democrats to stop it—even stating that he would switch parties if necessary. He supports exceptions later in pregnancy for fatal fetal abnormalities and threats to the mother’s life. CIVPAC’s own abortion policy also uses Roe and Casey as its starting point.
On immigration, Deaton favors substantially stronger border enforcement and opposes sanctuary policies, but he also calls for expanding legal immigration and supports an earned path to legal status and ultimately citizenship for Dreamers. He rejects both mass deportation and blanket amnesty.
His health-care approach retains private insurance. Deaton emphasizes greater competition, price transparency, telehealth, and action against vertically integrated insurers and pharmacy-benefit managers rather than Medicare for All. CIVPAC’s own approach to universal coverage is described in our health-care policy.
On energy, he emphasizes reliability and affordability and argues that nuclear generation should have a larger role in decarbonization rather than being excluded from the discussion. CIVPAC similarly favors removing governmental impediments to nuclear power as part of its energy policy.
The Foreign-Policy Question
The largest substantive difference between Deaton’s heterodox domestic positions and his foreign policy is his much more conditional approach to overseas commitments.
Deaton says that American foreign aid and military assistance should be supported only when the expenditure can be demonstrated to advance American security. His campaign states that he will not support further foreign assistance unless he is convinced that it serves the interests of the United States and the people of Massachusetts. He argues against open-ended commitments and what he describes as blank checks overseas.
Deaton has not said that he opposes Ukraine or NATO. But his published platform does not provide the same explicit commitment to continued Ukrainian resistance or to the transatlantic alliance that appears in Markey’s record. It therefore leaves an important practical question unanswered: how would Deaton respond if continued support for Ukraine were strategically important to the United States but politically unpopular or imposed significant short-term costs?
There is also an unusual element in the formulation that foreign policy must serve “the people of Massachusetts.” Senators represent states, but decisions about alliances, deterrence, war and peace necessarily involve national interests. How Deaton would apply that standard in practice remains an important question.
Trump and Institutional Independence
Deaton’s statements distancing himself from Trump are unusually explicit for a Republican Senate nominee in 2026. In a September interview, he again emphasized that he had never voted for Trump and has publicly criticized the administration on specific Massachusetts issues.
That provides meaningful information about his political identity, but Deaton has never served in Congress, so voters do not yet have a legislative record showing how he would behave when opposition to a Republican president carried significant political costs.
That distinction is important. Political independence can be asserted in a campaign, but in office it is ultimately demonstrated by votes on nominations, presidential emergency powers, tariffs, war powers, appropriations and congressional oversight.
In addition, his personal independence would not eliminate the significance of his partisan alignment in the Senate. Republicans currently hold a 53-seat majority. Depending on the results elsewhere in 2026, a Massachusetts Senate seat could contribute to determining which party controls the chamber and, with it, committee chairmanships and much of the Senate agenda.
Markey presents the opposite situation. His opposition to Trump is not in doubt, and his 2026 votes on Iran war powers and his opposition to Trump’s use of emergency tariff authority provide a legislative record on limits to presidential power. The different question raised by Markey is the extent to which his strongly progressive domestic agenda would expand federal spending, taxation, regulation and authority.
An Unusual Choice
The Massachusetts contest does not fit neatly into a conventional Democratic-versus-Republican comparison.
Markey offers extensive governing experience, a clearly documented record of support for Ukraine and NATO, strong congressional-war-powers positions and a demonstrated willingness to oppose President Trump. At the same time, his domestic program includes the full Sanders version of Medicare for All, the broad economic and social agenda of the Green New Deal, abolition of ICE, an annual wealth tax on fortunes above $50 million, and a strongly pro-labor economic agenda. CIVPAC’s different approach to organized labor is set out in our labor-union policy.
Deaton favors maintaining a private health-insurance system, greater reliance on competition in health care, expanded use of nuclear power and stronger immigration enforcement while taking positions on abortion and legal immigration that differ from much of the national Republican agenda. He also repeatedly distances himself from Trump and says he would act independently of his party. His unresolved questions are different: he has no governing record with which to test those claims, and his foreign-policy language is considerably more conditional about continuing American support for other countries.
Several questions therefore remain especially important.
For Markey, how does he propose financing Medicare for All and the large spending commitments associated with his broader domestic agenda? What limits, if any, does he place on the growth of federal spending and regulation?
For Deaton, what specifically are his commitments to NATO and Ukraine? Under what circumstances would he vote for additional military assistance to Ukraine? How would he vote when President Trump seeks authority that Deaton believes properly belongs to Congress? And how does his reference to the interests of Massachusetts fit with a senator’s national responsibilities in foreign policy?
Deaton has publicly called for multiple general-election debates. Markey’s campaign has now agreed to a WBZ-TV debate on October 13. Deaton says he has accepted invitations to that debate and three others.
For now, the Massachusetts race presents voters with unusually different tradeoffs: a senator with a long and readily assessable record whose domestic agenda extends well to the left of centrist positions, and a challenger whose domestic positions depart in significant ways from those of the national Republican Party but whose record in office and approach to several major foreign-policy questions remain untested.
For that reason, we are not making an endorsement in this race at this time. After observing the October debate, we will revisit the issue, but if these questions remain unanswered we will not issue an endorsement in this race.
Our non-endorsement means only that, after examining the candidates, we are not prepared to tell voters that one has earned our support; it should not be read as a recommendation to abstain. We hope that the information we have provided above will help voters make this difficult decision in the Massachusetts U.S. Senate race.