Edward Markey

So here’s John Deaton’s unified field theory on what’s ailing American politics.

Some of our biggest and most intractable public policy challenges — think abortion access, transgender rights and immigration reform — don’t defy solution.

Oh no, no, no. They’re totally fixable. There’s just no return on investment for fixing them.

“Those are, right now, the top three issues that both parties don’t solve, because if they fix it, they can’t campaign on it — and I’m including the current administration before everyone attacks me,” the 59-year-old Republican told MassLive in a wide-ranging conversation this week.

The current campaign cycle finds Deaton trying his hardest not to go 0 for 2 in back-to-back U.S. Senate bids.

In 2024, he sustained a 19-point drubbing at the hands of U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. In 2026, the cryptocurrency attorney from Bolton is hoping for a better result against Ed Markey, the state’s junior (but not younger) U.S. senator.

This time out, Deaton’s a little older, a little wiser and more inclined to listen to himself than the consultants who powered his first bid against Warren, he said.

For instance, he showed up for this interview alone, with no retinue of handlers or aides in his wake.

But here’s Deaton’s box. He’s too conservative for many Democrats and, as a vocal critic of President Donald Trump, too much of a RINO for some of the state’s MAGA faithful.

Bridging that gap, while reeling in the unenrolled voters who make up the biggest chunk of the electorate, is the three-pronged challenge of his second campaign.

Deaton’s behind a conference room table at MassLive’s offices near South Station in Boston, at ease with a cup of coffee.

He’s jumping nimbly from talk about Congress’ failure to regulate artificial intelligence and Iran policy to skyrocketing utility bills and the state’s still eye-wateringly expensive housing market.

He has plenty to say on all of it. But first, more on our national malaise.

The disincentive to solve problems leads to an electorate that — credibly — believes its leaders are more interested in scoring points than putting people first.

Hence the allure of the democratic socialism that powered New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to victory last year and fueled this summer’s progressive surge.

“Yes, it sounds great. Free transportation? Sounds great. Rent control? Sounds great. Groceries at 30% or more lower than I’m paying now? Sounds great,” he said.

“If you have cancer and it’s terminal and a charismatic surgeon says ‘I can cure you,’ you’re going to listen to that,” he continued. “And what we need in this country, truly need in this country, is a Teddy Roosevelt revolution.”

And if you guessed that Deaton, still Marine Corps fit heading into his sixth decade, had cast himself leading the charge up Capitol Hill, pat yourself on the back for your prescience.

“That’s how I view myself,” he said. “He came in — the wealth gap was extremely large, like it is today. He took on the oil barons. He took on the railroad tycoons. He busted the trusts. And, in my opinion, he saved capitalism.”

“I think we need that approach today,” he added.

On the campaign trail, Deaton likes to point out that he was 8 when Markey, now 80, began a Capitol Hill career that fell between the twilight of the Ford administration and the dawning of the Carter era in 1976.

The nation was still a relatively spry 200 years old that year and filled with bicentennial optimism. The bone spurs and algae stains of its semiquincentennial were still a half-century away.

Unlike Markey’s recently vanquished primary rival, U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, Deaton isn’t making his campaign all about the incumbent’s age. Especially not when his ideas and record offer far more fertile ground, he said.

In an interview with NBC-10’s “At Issue Sitdown” program last weekend, Deaton described Markey, a champion of the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, as “the most extreme, far-left U.S. senator in the country.”

But he might also be more challenging to run against than Warren, whom Deaton described as a “polarizing” figure with the advantage of a nationwide profile.

“Raising money was easier against Elizabeth Warren because I think she’s both loved and hated more than Senator Markey,” he said. “I don’t think anyone hates Sen. Markey, to be candid. Like, he’s the nice ice cream man, right? Like, who hates the ice cream man? And he’s an affable, nice kind of man.”

That’s when Deaton leans hard into his independent streak, arguing, not for the first time, that he’ll vote for the policies that best serve the state — no matter the “jersey” they’re wearing.

“If it’s good policy, I’ll support it, and if it’s not, I won’t. Whether it’s President Trump or President AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), that’s sort of my approach,” he said.

For example, he’s a fan of the bipartisan housing bill that Warren shepherded into law, over Trump’s resistance, with U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., earlier this year. He also thinks Democrats are wrong to oppose Trump’s savings accounts for the parents of newborns just because they have the Republican president’s name on them.

That was one of the hard-won lessons of his first campaign, the one where he — maybe jokingly — said he Googled “Charlie Baker, campaign manager” to see how a successful Massachusetts Republican had run his operation.

And the look, he found, didn’t fit.

“I got successful in life for being me, good, bad, evil, well, not evil, but good and bad,” he said. “And so I just need to find my own voice in my own campaign and not defer to decisions or let people influence me too much. That would be one thing. Another thing is you can’t take any vote for granted.”

And this time out, that means giving voters of all stripes an affirmative argument for voting for him.

“It can’t just be that the other guy or gal is negative. It can’t just be that Ed Markey is old and has been there for 53 years in elected office,” he said.

“You have to give every voter an affirmative reason to fill in that bubble for you. And so that’s one thing I think this time around, I’m not taking any votes for granted,” he continued.

“I tried to convince Republicans who blanked me last time — and quite a few did, more than I thought would — that there is a reason to vote for me; that I share enough of their values and ideology or whatever that you want to do it,” he said.

Making those connections, he allowed, can be difficult, but remains vitally necessary.

“It can be difficult to connect with someone who thinks Trump is the greatest president,” he said. “I don’t share that opinion, obviously, and to connect with the independent who feels the opposite, you know. And so, I think, I’m doing a better job.”

And with just about 7 weeks to go until Nov. 3, and even less time before early voting starts, “we’ll find out if I’ve navigated it, or if I’ve threaded the needle.”

“Because that’s really what you’re doing,” he said.