Fortune favors the bold. Conversely, most high-risk bets don’t pay off.
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) will meet one of those contrasting political fates if, as expected, he launches a 2026 primary challenge against Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA). A Moulton Senate Democratic primary bid in Massachusetts, tantamount to victory in the deep blue state, would come amid growing voter concern about a growing political gerontocracy. Moulton, 46, is more than a generation younger than Markey, 79, who first joined Congress at the end of Gerald Ford’s presidency.
Moulton is openly talking up a potential challenge to Markey in the Sept. 1, 2026, primary by invoking a reviled figure among Massachusetts and most other Democrats: President Donald Trump.
“Democrats are not satisfied with the status quo,” Moulton said in a Sept. 28 appearance on CNN’s Inside Politics Sunday, suggesting not so subtly that Markey’s time has passed. Markey entered the House in November 1976 and moved across the Capitol to the Senate nearly 37 years later, after winning a July 2013 special election.
“Everyone knows we are opposed to Trump, but what are we going to do differently?” Moulton said in a test run of campaign themes if he does enter the Democratic primary fray.
Markey-Moulton differences more attitudinal than policy-based
Whether Markey wins reelection or Moulton ousts him in the Democratic Senate primary, Massachusettsans wouldn’t see much difference in their voting records. Each routinely backs the Democratic Party line in their respective chambers of Congress.
That’s not particularly surprising, given that Massachusetts is one of the nation’s bluest states. In 2024, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, the sitting vice president, beat now-President Donald Trump 61%-36%.
Democrats so dominate the Massachusetts electoral landscape that it’s become a social media parlor game of sorts among political junkies to see if it’s even demographically possible for a Republican-leaning House district to be drawn in Massachusetts. The consensus, such as it is, focuses on a putative district in the state’s lower tier, stretching from the working-class city of Wrentham, near the Rhode Island state line, to fishing-heavy communities in and around the city of New Bedford.
Still, differences between Moulton and Markey are clear, though more attitudinal than policy-based.
Moulton, first elected to the House in 2014 by ousting a scandal-tarred incumbent in the Democratic primary, has recently become an outspoken critic of his party’s “woke” tendencies. Representing a North Shore House district, Moulton expressed opposition to transgender athletes in girls’ sports.
“Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face,” Moulton said in November 2024, immediately after Trump won a second, nonconsecutive term over Harris.
“I have two little girls; I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete,” Moulton said. “But as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”
The angry reaction among some Democrats seemed to prove his point. Moulton’s campaign manager resigned in protest. And criticism came in hot and heavy from local elected officials in his northeastern Massachusetts district.
Still, that approach could play well in a statewide Democratic primary that would force candidates to appeal beyond the Cambridge-liberal set. Moulton might still have some appeal there, having earned a bachelor’s and two master’s degrees from Harvard University, sandwiched around Marine Corps service in Iraq, where he earned two Bronze Stars and other military commendations.
Markey’s nearly 50 years in office
Markey, though, is no slouch when it comes to navigating the often rocky and factional political shoals of Bay State Democratic politics. He’s been a progressive leader for decades on healthcare, foreign policy, telecommunications, climate change, and a range of other issues from his early congressional days representing a House district taking in most of Boston’s northern suburbs, through his current Senate role.
While associated with left-wing causes such as the Green New Deal, Markey can also talk up his working-class roots. The product of Catholic schools, Markey, as a young man, was the driver and salesperson for an ice cream truck in Lexington, Massachusetts. He used the proceeds to pay his Boston College tuition for undergraduate and law school, and a long political career followed, starting with a four-year Beacon Hill stint as a state legislator and then a congressional run approaching 50 years.
How vulnerable Markey might be to charges that he’s too old and politically past his peak is an open question. Moulton would have to go directly at the issue, in challenging a long-tenured lawmaker who could be his father. Moreover, Markey would likely paint the primary challenge against him as motivated only by raw political ambition, not public policy and legislative acumen. Moulton, after all, briefly sought the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. He quit the race in August 2019 after four months, having failed to qualify for televised Democratic primary debates.
Moulton’s Senate primary rationale, stated or otherwise, rests on the enduring public image of former President Joe Biden, who withdrew from his 2024 reelection bid after a disastrous debate against Trump revealed limitations of being in office at age 82 and beyond. Subsequent congressional investigations, post-campaign books, and news stories have only hardened public opinion that, with his mental acuity faltering and physical stamina limited, Biden should have stepped aside after a single term.
The issue, though, may play differently in a Senate race. No matter how prominent senators are, they’re not in the public eye like a president. The late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, spent her final years in a state of mental and physical decline. Feinstein did face enough public scrutiny that fellow Senate Democrats pushed her out of key committee positions, but she largely did her job quietly before her Sept. 29, 2023, death at age 90. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is the oldest member of the chamber at 92, followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) at age 84.
And Markey has defeated whippersnapper-type political foes before. In 2020, Markey easily won reelection over Joe Kennedy, who was finishing up eight years in the House and sports one of the two most famous names in American politics, along with the Bushes, in the Democratic primary. Kennedy, a grandson of Attorney General and New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and a grandnephew of President John F. Kennedy, had trouble articulating any real policy differences with the Senate incumbent. Markey won easily, 55.4%-45.6%.
At least one other possible Markey 2026 Democratic Senate primary rival stood down from challenging him. Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) has been raising his public profile beyond his congressional district, covering western Boston suburbs and Bristol County.
POLITICAL VIOLENCE ON THE RISE IN THE US: A TIMELINE OF KEY INCIDENTS
Auchincloss, 37, was widely viewed as a possible Markey Democratic Senate rival, even younger than Moulton and similarly hypercredentialed: a bachelor’s degree from Harvard, master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, plus service in the Marines in Afghanistan, commanding infantry in Helmand Province and leading combat patrols through villages contested by the Taliban. Back stateside, Auchincloss did a stint on the Newton City Council, in an immediate Boston suburb brimming with professional types in law, the sciences, academia, business, and other realms. In 2020, Auchincloss won a crowded Democratic primary race to replace Kennedy in Massachusetts’s 4th Congressional District and cruised to victory in the general election.
Auchincloss, though, demurred from challenging Markey in the 2026 election cycle. Moulton would be making a different political bet if he ran in the Massachusetts Senate Democratic primary — one with a big payoff but still likely long odds.