Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., 80, defeated Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., in Tuesday’s Democratic Senate primary, turning back a generational challenge from a candidate 33 years his junior by running further to the left, not the center.
Moulton built his campaign around the case for generational change and warned that the party’s embrace of positions like transgender participation in sports had cost Democrats votes in 2024. Markey did the opposite. He leaned into the issue and attacked Moulton’s progressive record head-on.
“Trans athletes should be able to play,” Markey told The New York Times. “That reflects Massachusetts and who we are. And Seth Moulton does not.”
The strategy worked. Markey is heading to the Nov. 3 general election as the heavy favorite in deep-blue Massachusetts, where he beat Republican Kevin O’Connor 66.2% to 33.0% in his last reelection bid.
The far left cheers
Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who has backed multiple primary challengers against moderate Democrats, celebrated the outcome on X.
“It’s very clear that the Dem voters care more about policies and having a progressive represent them in the Senate than age! Another w for our movement!” Piker wrote.
The Sunrise Movement, which describes itself as a group of young people fighting for a Green New Deal, also praised the win, crediting Markey as “a leading climate champion in the fight for a Green New Deal to create jobs and lower costs for working people.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., 84, added his own endorsement of the outcome, writing that “Ed knows that, at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, Congress must take on the billionaires and fight for working families.”
A political conversion
David Axelrod, the veteran Democratic strategist and former adviser to President Barack Obama, pointed out that Markey’s current image as a progressive champion is a relatively recent development.
“[Ed Markey] was first elected to Congress 50 yrs ago as a social conservative, opposed to abortion rights and school busing,” Axelrod wrote on X. “Now 80, he’s likely to sail in tonight’s primary in MA, despite his age, because, in his Golden Years, he’s grabbed on to the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, trans rights and other marquee priorities of the Left, undergirding himself against younger, more moderate challengers in very blue MA.”
Markey’s win keeps two of the Senate’s most visible far-left standard-bearers, Markey and Sanders, both in their 80s, at the front of a movement increasingly driven by voters decades younger than they are.
