Rep. Moulton challenges Sen. Markey in Massachusetts, calls for new generation of Democratic leaders

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BOSTON (AP) — U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, a moderate Massachusetts Democrat, said Wednesday that he will challenge U.S. Sen. Edward Markey for the Democratic nomination in next year’s Senate race, arguing it's time for the party to embrace a new generation of leadership.

The announcement makes the race one of the most anticipated primary contests in the country and pits two of the heavily Democratic state’s top politicians against one another. Markey, who fended off a challenge in 2020 from Rep. Joe Kennedy III in the Senate primary, would be 80 before his third six-year term would begin.

In a video accompanying his announcement, Moulton, 46, said the Democratic Party was stuck in the “status quo” and “isn’t fighting hard enough.”

“I get as many questions about the failures of our own party as I do about the failures of the Trump administration,” Moulton said in an interview Wednesday. “Because Democrats, certainly across Massachusetts, believe that a lot of people are not fighting hard enough.”

Without naming former President Joe Biden in his launch video, Moulton referenced the 2024 presidential election, when worries about Biden's age and ability led to his departure from the race months before Election Day. The move — and Republican Donald Trump's subsequent victory — reignited concerns among Democrats that the party's leaders were too old and no longer best positioned to win.

“We’re in crisis, and with everything we learned last election, I just don’t believe Sen. Markey should be running for another six-year term at 80 years old,” Moulton said in the video. “Even more, I don’t think someone who’s been in Congress for half a century is the right person to meet this moment and win the future.”

Moulton, who enlisted in the Marines after the Sept. 11 attacks and served four tours of duty 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 be focusing his campaign on issues including 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 assassinated at a Utah university campus last month, as an example of standing up for his principles. He joined dozens of other Democrats in voting against it, he says, "after party leaders told me to vote for it just to make it go away.”

“But personally, I believe doing what’s right matters more than doing what’s politically convenient," Moulton said. “And I wish more Democrats — more Democratic leaders, I should say — felt the same way.”

After Democrats lost the White House and both houses of Congress last year, Moulton caught flak from some members of his party for saying he didn’t want his daughters playing in sports against transgender girls. Critics said Moulton echoed Trump’s talking points against allowing transgender athletes in girls' and women's sports.

“My intent wasn’t to hurt anyone,” Moulton said in the interview. “My intent was to point out that, as a party, we need to be willing to have difficult conversations. And if we’re too afraid to have this debate, conservative Republicans will be the only ones doing so.”

Markey, for his part, has been here before. He faced a hard-fought challenge from Kennedy in 2020. He turned to his progressive allies to overcome a challenge from a younger rival from America’s most famous political family.

During that race, Markey appealed to voters in the deeply Democratic state by positioning himself as aligned with the liberal wing of the party. He teamed up with a leading progressive, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, on the Green New Deal climate change initiative — and at one point labeled Kennedy “a progressive in name only.”

Markey, who was first elected to Congress in 1976, said in an interview last year on WCVB-TV that he was the "most energized" he had ever been and said he would run again. He argued that it wasn't his age but the age of his ideas, adding that “I've always been the youngest guy in the room.”