How Ed Markey may survive Seth Moulton’s generational challenge

The 80-year-old senator once looked more vulnerable. But his primary is defying the norms of the cycle’s other big generational fights.

Ed Markey should be in more danger.

The 80-year-old junior senator from Massachusetts is facing a primary challenge from a representative who wasn’t even alive when he was first elected to Congress. Democrats rebelling against their establishment and the gerontocracy are toppling longtime incumbents across the map. Markey’s coalition has frayed since he survived his last generational fight six years ago; the editorial board of the state’s largest newspaper, which backed his last bid, now says it’s time to move on.

Yet Markey’s showdown with 47-year-old Rep. Seth Moulton on Tuesday defies the norms of nearly every other age-driven clash this cycle. It’s the aging incumbent who is the progressive in the contest, a Green New Deal coauthor and champion of Medicare for All backed by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). Moulton is the center-left candidate whose biggest supporters include fellow military veteran New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill and service-oriented organizations like VoteVets and New Politics.

Recent surveys show the senator with a 15-to-35-point lead. And his left-wing cred has produced an unusual phenomenon in the Bay State where many of the same Democrats angling to oust a pair of septuagenarian House members are working to save the octogenarian senator.

“Compared to a number of other incumbents, I think Ed has been able to get himself prominently connected to various issues that have cross-generational constituencies,” said Jonathan Cohn, the policy director of Progressive Massachusetts, which is backing Markey as well as progressive challengers to more-centrist Massachusetts Reps. Richie Neal and Stephen Lynch. “This is one where progressive forces are very much sticking with the incumbent.”

A Markey win would suggest ideology matters more to the Democratic base than generational change does and offer progressives another proof point in their quest to show their policies are the party’s future, even as Markey himself pledges this will be his last term in office.

“It’s not about your age, it’s about the age of your ideas. And I am the youngest guy in this race when it comes to ideas,” Markey said in a phone interview Monday. “Democrats want a victory this November. But then they want, beginning next January … a progressive vision turned into reality on the floor of the House and Senate.”

But Moulton and his allies argue Massachusetts voters want younger, more aggressive leadership.

“It’s a different time. Six years ago, people were not concerned about AI. People did not come face to face with the experience of Joe Biden, Dianne Feinstein, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham,” Moulton said in a phone interview Sunday. “People can really see the risks of reelecting an 80-year-old to a six-year term.”

Moulton has argued Markey’s recent debate-stage stumble over artificial intelligence — asked whether he uses platforms like Claude or ChatGPT, Markey said he uses “whatever comes up” on his Apple devices — shows the senator can’t handle the nation’s future challenges. (Markey counters he’s taken steps to regulate AI in Congress.)

His campaign and allies suggest polls that have wildly missed the mark across the country this year, mostly by overestimating progressives’ strength, are also off here. And they point to Connecticut, where a younger military veteran backed by the same service groups ousted a longtime progressive incumbent, as evidence Moulton could pull off a similar upset in Massachusetts.

There was a time when Markey looked more vulnerable.

The young, progressive and hyper-online network that powered Markey to a double-digit victory over former Rep. Joe Kennedy III in 2020 cracked over the years as some activists moved on, the senator grew older and he took initial stances on Israel that were out of step with the far-left flank.

Biden’s sharp decline and the deaths of several sitting lawmakers sparked a fierce debate within the party over when their leaders should step aside. Several prominent Massachusetts Democrats began exploring challenges to Markey, who was first elected to the House in 1976 before moving to the Senate in 2013.

But Moulton is facing an uphill battle. And the representative continues to face backlash over comments he made after the 2024 election about transgender athletes, in which he told the New York Times: “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

Moulton apologized in an early August debate and has pointed to pro-LGBTQ legislation he supports. He told POLITICO on Sunday that while “I never intended to hurt anybody with my comments … I absolutely do not apologize for starting a debate that we need to be willing to have in the Democratic Party.”

Some of Moulton’s supporters believe he failed to neutralize an issue that Markey’s team said it identified early as liability and has made an attack line throughout the race. Other backers say Moulton has simply struggled to make the case for change, much like Kennedy did before him.

“There was an opening. But to defeat an incumbent is hard,” said Matt Barron, a western Massachusetts-based Democratic strategist who said he’s supporting Moulton but is not working for his campaign. “Moulton has not prosecuted Markey. … You have to convince voters to ‘fire’ him and hire you, and he just hasn’t done it.”