2024 MA Senate race: on Environment

John Deaton: Represented people stricken by asbestos-related illnesses

Deaton gets feisty when he's asked about his comparably brief residency in the Bay State. He quickly points out that he lived in Roxbury while attending the New England School of Law in Boston. He supported himself, he said, by working at Legal Sea Foods at Copley Place. "You could find me playing basketball at Washington Park [in Roxbury]," Deaton said of his law school days.

Later, as an Ocean State-based attorney representing people stricken by asbestos-related illnesses, Deaton said his clients spanned the Commonwealth. "I have literally been sitting at the kitchen tables of Massachusetts residents who are asbestos victims for the last two decades," he said. The question isn't merely an academic one. Political hopefuls with residency issues traditionally haven't had great luck at the polls.