BOSTON (AP) — U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, a moderate Democrat from Massachusetts, said Wednesday that he will challenge U.S. Sen. Edward Markey for the Democratic nomination in next year’s Senate race, arguing it is time for the party to embrace a new generation of leadership.
The announcement makes the race one of the most anticipated primaries in the country and pits two of the heavily Democratic state’s top politicians against each other. Markey, who defeated Rep. Joe Kennedy III in the 2020 Senate primary, would be 80 before the start of his third six-year term.
In a video accompanying his announcement, Moulton, 46, said the Democratic Party is stuck in the “status quo” and “isn’t fighting hard enough.”
“I get as many questions about the mistakes of our own party as I do about the mistakes of the Trump administration,” Moulton said in an interview Wednesday. “Because Democrats, certainly across Massachusetts, believe that a lot of people aren’t fighting hard enough.”
Without mentioning former President Joe Biden by name, Moulton referenced the 2024 presidential election in his introductory video, when concerns about Biden’s age and abilities led him to drop out of the race months before Election Day. The move — and Republican Donald Trump’s subsequent victory — renewed concerns among Democrats that the party’s leaders were too senior and no longer in the best position to win.
“We are in a crisis, and after everything we learned in the last election, I simply do not believe that Senator Markey, at 80 years old, should be running for another six-year term,” Moulton said in the video. “More than that, I don’t think someone who has been in Congress for half a century is the right person to meet this moment and win the future.”
Moulton, who joined the Marines after the Sept. 11 attacks and served four tours in Iraq, was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2014. Last year he ran unopposed. In his announcement, Moulton said he would focus his campaign on issues such as affordability, health care, banning assault weapons and protecting democracy.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Moulton pointed to his recent vote against a resolution honoring conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was murdered on a university campus in Utah last month, as an example of standing up for his principles. He voted against it along with dozens of other Democrats, he says, “after party leaders told me to vote for it, just to have it go away.”
“But I personally believe that doing what is right is more important than doing what is politically expedient,” Moulton said. “And I wish more Democrats — more Democratic leaders, I should say — would feel the same way.”
After Democrats lost the White House and both chambers of Congress last year, Moulton drew criticism from some members of his party who said he didn’t want his daughters playing sports against transgender girls. Critics said Moulton echoed Trump’s arguments against allowing transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports.
“My intention was not to hurt anyone,” Moulton said in the interview. “I wanted to point out that as a party we have to be willing to have difficult conversations. And if we’re too afraid of this debate, conservative Republicans will be the only ones doing it.”
Markey, for his part, has been here before. In 2020, he faced a hard-fought challenge from Kennedy. He turned to his progressive allies to meet the challenge from a younger rival from America’s most renowned political family.
During that race, Markey appealed to voters in the deeply Democratic state by positioning himself as a supporter of the party’s liberal wing. He teamed up with a leading progressive, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, on the Green New Deal climate initiative — and once described Kennedy as “a progressive in name only.”
Markey, who was first elected to Congress in 1976, said in an interview on WCVB-TV last year that he was the “most energetic” person he had ever been and said he would run again. He argued that it was not his age but the age of his ideas, adding: “I was always the youngest in the room.”
