On the Ballot: Markey-Moulton match-up underlines competing visions for change in Democratic Party 

Rep. Seth Moulton and Sen. Ed Markey are squaring off for Massachusetts’s Democratic Senate nod next week in the latest primary to spotlight young challengers vying to push out the party’s old guard.  

Moulton, a 47-year-old who’s been in the House for six terms, is mounting a long-shot bid to unseat Markey, who at 80 has served on Capitol Hill for five decades, including 20 terms in the House.   

The younger challenger has framed the race around generational change and questioned Markey’s progressive bona fides, while the incumbent has touted his long record in Congress, his progressive ethos and support from juggernauts like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). 

The campaigns offer dueling visions of “what constitutes change,” according to Jesse Rhodes, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and co-director of the UMass Poll. 

“There’s the symbolism around age and a shift to a new generation, and that is, for Moulton and his supporters, the key dimension of change that they envision,” Rhodes added.  

“But I think Markey and his supporters have countered with the argument that what really is needed is a vigorous progressive Democratic Party,” he continued.

Markey maintains the edge in polling ahead of Tuesday’s primary, but momentum has nevertheless built around Moulton in what’s one of this primary season’s last major tests of Democratic appetite for younger Senate hopefuls.   

Moulton has made the generational conversation a key part of his campaign since launching his challenge last year — in a cycle marked by the passing of multiple Capitol Hill Democrats in office, renewed talk of age and term limits, as well as the fallout from former President Biden’s decision to end his 2024 campaign amid age and health concerns.   

“I’m running against the senator’s decision after 50 years in Washington, to run for another term at age 80,” the congressman said in a final debate last week, where he voiced support for age limits in Congress. “I believe in a new generation of leadership. I believe we can do better than the status quo.”  

The Boston Globe endorsed Moulton over Markey last week, suggesting that the younger candidate “can bring new vision and vigor to an aging, ailing, and deeply unpopular Democratic Party.”  

Markey, though, argued at the recent debate that it’s Moulton who has had “a hard time keeping up” with the incumbent on the campaign trail, pledging that he’s “more energized than ever before.”   

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) backed Markey last week, lauding the incumbent’s record.  

The primary is one of several this cycle in which younger challengers have taken aim at longtime lawmakers. But in many of the races, the challengers were also running clearly to the left of the incumbents. 

Democratic Reps. Diana DeGette (Colo.), Shri Thanedar (Mich.) and Adriano Espaillat (N.Y.) — aged 69, 71 and 71, respectively — all lost to younger challengers backed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Colorado’s Melat Kiros, Michigan’s Donavan McKinney and New York’s Darializa Avila Chevalier are 29, 34 and 32, respectively.  

In the Massachusetts race, it’s the longtime incumbent who’s rallied progressive support, while his challenger is seen as more moderate.   

“The Markey-Moulton primary is a little bit of an outlier, because the positions are kind of reversed in interesting ways: that the challenger Moulton is younger, but he’s also more moderate,” said Rhodes.   

But Jennifer Holdsworth, a former Moulton adviser and Democratic strategist, pushed back against the popular framing of the race, calling it “unfortunate tribalism” and arguing that Moulton has called for a number of “very progressive” platforms.   

“It’s not easy to place him in an ideological clan of the party, and I think that’s actually what voters are looking for moving forward. They’re tired of the left, right, center debate. Voters themselves don’t see themselves that way,” Holdsworth said of Moulton.  

“It really is a question about whether someone in their 80s is simply too old to weigh in on the biggest policy........

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