People wait in line to vote on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in the East Boston neighborhood of Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

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 escaped the poverty of my childhood and achieved the American Dream." he said. “When you come from that kind of life, when you get to run against one of the most powerful and influential people in Washington and hold your own on the debate stage — that only happens in America.”

In 2012, Warren defeated Republican Scott Brown, who was elected after the death of longtime Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy to serve out the last two years of his term. Six years later, she easily defeated Republican challenger Geoff Diehl.

During the campaign, Deaton likened himself to former popular moderate Republican Massachusetts governors like Bill Weld and Charlie Baker, and said he did not support Donald Trump’s bid for a second term as president.

Although the candidates have taken similar stands on some issues, they tried to sharply distinguish themselves from each other.

Both expressed sympathy for migrants entering the country but faulted each other for not doing enough to confront the country’s border crisis during a debate on WBZ-TV. Both said they support abortion rights.

Warren’s popularity failed to translate when she ran for the White House in 2020. After a relatively strong start, Warren’s presidential hopes faded in part under withering criticism from Trump who taunted her over her claims of Native American heritage.

She ultimately finished third in Massachusetts, behind Joe Biden and Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders.

News from © The Associated Press, 2024