Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, an Iraq War veteran who came to Congress after defeating a nine-term incumbent in a primary, is challenging another fellow Democrat in 2026: Sen. Edward J. Markey.
In a campaign kick-off video released Wednesday, Moulton, 46, framed his race against Markey, who will be 80 next year, as a call for generational change.
“We’re in a 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. “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.”
Markey is currently the longest-serving Democrat in Congress. He was first elected to the House in 1976 and moved on to the Senate in 2013 after winning a special election for the seat of Democrat John Kerry.
“Sen. Markey is a good man, but it’s time for a new generation of leadership, and that’s why I’m running for U.S. Senate.” Moulton said in his video.
The primary contest in deep-blue Massachusetts is likely to be bitter and expensive. Over the past few months, as news of a possible Moulton challenge emerged, Markey rolled out endorsements from key Bay State Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, House Minority Whip Katherine M. Clark and Reps. Richard E. Neal, Jim McGovern, William Keating and Lori Trahan.
Another member of the state’s all-Democratic House delegation, Rep. Jake Auchincloss, passed on a Senate run last month, while Rep. Ayanna Pressley has not ruled out a bid. Both have yet to endorse in the Senate contest.
The race between Moulton and Markey upends the national narrative of the young, progressive Democrat taking on an entrenched moderate. Markey occupies a lane on the party’s left flank: He joined with New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to push for legislation addressing climate change and has pitched himself as an advocate for other liberal causes. Warren, in a video endorsing her fellow Massachusetts senator, called him “a progressive champion who knows how to fight back.”
And Markey has been here before. In 2020, he faced a challenge from another fellow Democrat who pushed generational change – former Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III – and wound up winning the primary decisively, handing a member of the Kennedy family its first electoral defeat in Massachusetts.
Moulton emphasized key progressive policy priorities in his launch video, including universal health care, gun violence prevention legislation and addressing the climate crisis. But he drew criticism last year after he said support for policies allowing transgender athletes to participate in girls sports hurt Democrats in the 2024 elections.
Moulton was first elected to the House in 2014 after ousting nine-term Rep. John F. Tierney by 11 points in the Democratic primary. In Congress, Moulton has honed a reputation as a Democrat willing to take on the party establishment. In 2018, he joined an ultimately unsuccessful effort to block Nancy Pelosi from becoming speaker. He was also one of the first Democrats to call on former President Joe Biden to drop his reelection bid following his disastrous debate performance last year. And he told The Boston Globe in an interview published Wednesday that he would not back Charles E. Schumer for majority leader.
Moulton, who mounted a short-lived run for president during the 2020 cycle, also founded the political action committee Serve America, which is dedicated to electing Democrats with service backgrounds.
Moulton’s decision to run for Senate is likely to set off a fierce battle among Democrats for Massachusetts’ 6th District, which stretches along the coast from Boston’s northern suburbs to the New Hampshire border. He was already facing a primary challenge from software engineer Beth Andres-Beck.
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