The Massachusetts Democratic Senate primary is not only testing the party’s desire for generational change but also the appetite to relitigate a subject that hurt Democrats last election cycle: transgender rights.
The issue has generated some of the most contentious moments between 80-year-old Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and his younger challenger, 47-year-old Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), who voters see as more centrist.
Moulton, who launched his bid in October 2025, has tried to run his campaign based on generational issues, a factor that took down 78-year-old Rep. John Larson (D-CT) down the road in Connecticut in his primary last week.
But the race has instead centered on the controversial issue and punctuated by Moulton’s challenge to Democrats following the 2024 election losses, in which he said that he fears his daughters “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.”
The comments came in the wake of the Trump campaign’s famous ad alleging “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you,” which the campaign aired frequently during NFL and college football games during the fall of 2024. The ad’s content stems from an interview in which former Vice President Kamala Harris, then a candidate for president in 2020, said she supported sex changes for prison inmates.
“He just took the whole playbook of MAGA and Trump, and he blamed those kids for the loss,” Markey said during a recent primary debate. “He threw them under the political bus.”
Having abandoned his previous take that Democrats need to rethink how they approach transgender policies, Moulton apologized to the transgender community and vowed to “always have your back.”
“To the trans community, feeling the weight and the pain of the Trump administration policies, I deeply recognize your trauma, and I’m sorry if my comments hurt you,” he said. “That was not my intention.”
But with transgender issues having become part of the broader strategy for each candidate to flex his progressive chops to liberal primary voters in a deep-blue state, there’s a concern among some Democrats that the intraparty debate could hurt more centrist candidates in battleground races that will determine control of the House and Senate. In Virginia, for example, Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-VA) has faced profanity-laced backlash from transgender activists over his voting record.
“Ed Markey is not doing the Democratic Party any favors, because I’m working on a lot of races right now where every Democrat is living in fear of getting hit from Republicans with a trans attack,” said a national Democratic operative who works with congressional candidates across the country and was given anonymity to speak candidly. “We have a House to flip, we have a Senate to flip, and then Markey’s putting himself out there taking the most extreme position possible, and that’s not helpful to other Democrats.”
Jeremy Comeau, co-chairman of the LGBT activist group Bay State Stonewall Democrats and a member of Markey’s LGBT advisory council, accused Moulton of offering an insincere apology during the debate. Between Massachusetts having some of the most pro-transgender rights laws in the country and few major policy differences between the candidates, it’s perhaps not surprising that the subject has received the most attention of any Democratic Senate race in the country.
“I don’t disagree that we shouldn’t have these difficult discussions. It’s all in how we frame them and how we actually communicate the message,” Comeau said. “How we deliver our message is important, and we can’t throw different communities under the bus, whatever community it might be, simply because we feel it’s going to earn us more votes.”
The Washington Examiner has reached out to both campaigns.
President Donald Trump has used executive orders and government directives to restrict transgender medical procedures, particularly for minors, pushed to prohibit biological males from female sports, and the federal government now solely recognizes two unchangeable sexes that are assigned at birth based on biology.
Markey has been a lead ally in the Senate for the transgender community and is the author of the “Transgender Bill of Rights” that would “protect and codify the rights of transgender and nonbinary people under the law and ensure their access to medical care, shelter, safety, and economic security.” Moulton also supports the proposal.
Markey and Moulton’s final debate is Thursday ahead of the Sept. 1 primary. But recent polling suggests the race is anything but a nail-biter, despite the candidates acting as though the contest is neck and neck.
GENERATIONAL FIGHT IN BUDDING MASSACHUSETTS DEMOCRATIC SENATE PRIMARY
The latest survey, released this week, showed Markey with a 28-point lead. Others conducted in recent months showed Moulton trailing from 5 to 17 points. But past polling suggests debates over transgender policies do little to influence primary voters.
“I want to have a discussion in the Democratic Party about how we advance protections for trans people when they’re facing losing their healthcare, facing losing jobs. But too often in this Congress, all we’ve done is respond to the Trump agenda, the hateful Trump agenda,” Moulton told reporters following last week’s debate. “But I do want people to know in that community that if I hurt you, I’m sorry, because that was not my intention.”