An increasingly nasty primary will decide whether an 80-year-old senator gets six more years

By Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN

Arlington, Massachusetts (CNN) — The Boston Tea Party wasn’t really about the tea, and it certainly wasn’t about the Mohawks though those were the costumes the colonists wore as they dumped the boxes overboard.

In Tuesday’s Democratic Senate primary in deep blue Massachusetts, longtime Sen. Ed Markey is harking back to those revolutionary roots as he pitches himself to voters as the anti-establishment candidate against Rep. Seth Moulton – despite arriving to Washington just three years after Joe Biden did in 1973.

Although the language of the left-wing insurgency surrounds the race, under the surface, the contest for many appears to be less about ideological issues or governing philosophies than a smash-up of ambition, efforts to secure Democratic power in the state in the future, and personal pique.

Markey, 80, in one corner, is vowing to keep fighting for left-wing ideals, which include some successes and some that he hasn’t passed in all his years in power so far. In the other, Moulton, the 47-year-old decorated Marine and six-term congressman who has frustrated Nancy Pelosi and many other Democrats by repeatedly challenging their leadership, has staked his campaign on generational change.

While the race has been cast as the last big existential Democratic primary of the midterms cycle, voters across Markey and Moulton events told CNN they struggle to make sense of where they fit into the great intraparty debate this contest has been made out to be, and even what the word “progressive” means anymore.

“I think for me it’s just like you’re committed to helping the working class, committed to lifting up underrepresented groups. I don’t have one issue that if you’re not committed to that, you’re not progressive,” said Northeastern law student Collin Rue, who stood with other university students as the backdrop for Markey’s Saturday rally at an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union hall in Dorchester. The event was headlined by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and senior Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

“I love being progressive,” said linguist Lisa Lavoie, who came to a Moulton-funded party on the Lynn, Massachusetts, common on Saturday afternoon, noting that the question reminded her of some of her struggles teaching English as a second language. “People who use the words get to define what they mean, just like Starbucks with their ‘Grande’ and ‘Venti’… I see it as moving past the established systems so that everyone has a reasonable chance.”

Backstage at the Markey rally where she was one of the marquee speakers, Warren — who in 2012 won her seat as the outsider progressive hero — told CNN her current definition: “Progressives are people who believe that government should play a role in expanding opportunity for everyone, not just helping funnel more resources to those at the top.”

Markey’s definition of progressivism to CNN was a list of ideas that he’s been pushing but so far hasn’t passed: “Medicare for All, Green New Deal, Trans Bill of Rights, taxing billionaires, cutting, slashing the defense budget, transferring the funding over to healthcare, education, environmental justice.”

Moulton’s answer: “In my view, it means actually making progress, and I think that’s a big difference, because there’s no question that Senator Markey is good at the press release, good at a perfectly worded statement that’s not going to offend everybody, but he hasn’t done much.”

The primary is dicey for Massachusetts’ Democratic leaders. Markey doesn’t inspire broad passion, and many assumed his 2020 victory — when then-Rep. Joe Kennedy III tried to take him out in the primary — would be his swan song, a career ending on his terms. Progressive stalwart Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York helped galvanize Markey’s campaign that year after he stood with her to introduce the Green New Deal.

In private conversations, state leaders say they’re stuck between feeling like the senator is going through the motions and a personal dislike for Moulton.

The potential of a Markey win is also being weighed through the prism of the possibility of both Senate seats and the governor’s office being open in the next few years. Warren will be 81 when her current term expires in 2031 and state Democrats suspect Gov. Maura Healey will want a job in a future presidential administration.

Eager younger Massachusetts Democrats aren’t too eager to rock a boat they may want to sail on themselves, and they’re not happy that Moulton, like Kennedy six years ago, is trying to jump the line.

Healey, like many of the state’s other better-known Democrats, stayed neutral. Asked on Sunday morning at a campaign event boosting the state Senate president pro tempore – who’s facing his own primary challenge – whether she’s landed on a decision in her own head, she hesitated slightly before saying she thinks so.

“What’s important to Massachusetts is that we have leadership in the federal delegation that’s going to get real results for people and that will be a partner with me as governor in doing the things that I want to see happen here,” Healey said. “People are so frustrated that DC seems so broken. It’s like, go get stuff done.”

As for Kennedy, he told CNN that while the experience that comes with incumbency can have benefits, there are times when it “calcifies power.” Democrats “would do well to examine the structures that perpetuate a status quo,” he said.

As of Sunday afternoon, he said he had not made up his mind who to vote for on Tuesday.

Markey tries to gin up 2020 energy in final days

At the Saturday rally, Markey talked about getting another six years in Washington as part of a Massachusetts tradition of revolution going back to 1775, but also spoke of the local roots of the abolitionist, suffragette, gay rights and healthcare movements.

“We are the revolutionaries. Thank you, revolutionaries, for joining us today,” he told the cheering crowd, and finished his speech by doing an extended bop to Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”

Markey, wearing a 1775 cap, spoke to a smaller gathering in Arlington the next afternoon about picking up the spirit of Paul Revere as he rode through the town warning of a king. Sitting at a picnic table in a park afterwards, Markey again invoked Revere’s famous ride as he claimed that his repeated primary challengers reflect “the genetic make-up” of the state.

He brushed off mentions of his age as fair game but ultimately insignificant. Markey likewise dismissed the Boston Globe’s complaint in its endorsement of Moulton that he hasn’t delivered on the promises made in the Kennedy race, arguing that the critique was not reflective of all the legislation he’s put together and signed onto.

“From my perspective, it’s not your age, it is the age of your ideas, and I’ve always been the youngest guy in the world when it comes to ideas. So, I look ahead, I lead the way, and I challenge the establishment, not only from the Republican Party, but from the Democratic Party as well,” Markey said.

Ocasio-Cortez endorsed him much later this cycle than in 2020, and without the verve or presence by his side this time around. An aide did not answer CNN when asked how to read the congresswoman’s decision not to join the rally with Sanders on Saturday.

Still, Markey’s campaign has been trying to drum up energy on the left, whether through pulling in Sanders at the end, the email blast to college Democratic groups offering students free seats behind the political icon as he spoke, or leaning into collaborations with influencers. Campaign shirts are bright pink, with the word “AGONIZE” crossed out on the back and “ORGANIZE” written under. Signs are printed in what one staffer handing them out called “Rainbow Ed” or “Ed, White and Blue.” As he advocates for the Green New Deal, Markey has a line about cutting tax breaks for oil companies —“Give us some of that socialism!” — that he knows to work into his speeches for reliable cheers from his crowds.

He ripped repeatedly into Moulton, sneering, “after being in the House of Representatives for 12 years and accomplishing very little, that all of a sudden he’ll be superstar if he goes to the Senate. I just don’t think the evidence is there in order to, in any way, defend that erroneous premise.”

Markey has promised this will be his last term and says he has no concerns about his ability to do it capably.

After spending the year backing an extensive list of challengers to incumbents, in this race, Sanders on Saturday summoned the familiar finger pointing and reddening of the race for Markey, a man who over a decade ago was described along with his wife in a Washington Post write-up of his first Senate swearing in party as “regulars on the charity gala/cocktail party circuit for more than two decades.”

“Ed understands what Republicans don’t and too many Democrats don’t: That status quo politics and status quo policies are not working for working families,” Sanders said.

Moulton, Democratic leaders in Washington and Massachusetts tend to say privately, hasn’t done himself any favors with an approach some find standoffish and self-righteous. So, though he’s racked up some legislative wins, like helping create the national 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, Moulton knew that if he waited for an open seat, he’d never be the one party leaders turned to.

That’s also meant he, unlike Kennedy, came into the race more comfortable with knowing he was going to get some hate.

Looking out from a gazebo on the greenway in the Boston suburb of Lynn at a bouncy house and free ice cream truck meant to encourage voters to stop by, Moulton on Saturday afternoon ticked through the problems identified in a Boston Globe survey that showed one in four Massachusetts residents saying they considered leaving the state.

“When I say Seth, you say service!” a campaign worker shouted, trying to get a call-and-response going.

Sitting on a bench in the shade as the crowd dissipated afterwards, Moulton said the efforts to paint him as a moderate or corporate shill are hypocritical and disingenuous.

He said there’s been “a level of lying that I did not expect.” He tagged the Markey campaign with a “culture of negativity,” recounting how many staffers and volunteers he says refused to shake his hand when he went over to greet them before their debates. He rolled his eyes at hearing Markey compare his reelection campaign to a new revolution. He got exasperated to hear how much Markey and allies have attacked him over saying in 2024 that he wasn’t in favor of trans kids playing girls’ sports – a stance he’s somewhat backtracked on.

“He decries Trump for weaponizing these people for political purposes,” Moulton said. “What is he doing?”

Moulton’s case against Markey is straightforward: “I respect your work, and I’ve supported much of it myself. But you’ve got to admit it hasn’t been enough. How can you say you’re proud of your energy policy when our electric bills are twice the national average? How can say that you’re proud of your work on affordable housing when people can’t afford to live here?”

As Moulton made his case, his five-year-old daughter came by to show him how she’d been turned into a kitty cat by the face painter at the fair.

The perspective of being a father, he said, helped push him into the argument he’s been making on the trail.

“My horizon used to be maybe 50 years out. Now it’s like 100 years,” Moulton said.

In the context of this race, that’s more than just a general feeling, Moulton explained, bringing up his other daughter and connecting it to a moment in an August debate when Markey seemed to struggle when asked about using artificial intelligence.

“Six years from now, my 7-year-old will be 13, getting on social media probably within the next few years when we know it hurts kids because the guy who’s now 86 doesn’t even understand AI and gave free rein to big tech to deregulate social media,” Moulton said. “There’s a lot of selfish reasons people want an ineffective Senate.”

While not claiming to represent a revolution, Moulton said his win would have a more immediate ripple effect in the general election.

“It’s going to be hard for independent voters in Ohio or Texas to vote for a Democrat if they think he or she represents a party of 80-year-olds,” Moulton argued. “You might love (Texas Democratic Senate nominee) James Talarico, but there’s a big difference between saying he’s going to go to Washington and be a part of a group like Ed Markey versus a next generation leader.”

Whatever happens, this may be the last time Massachusetts does a race like this: one of the questions on the ballot in November would eliminate primaries in favor of a non-partisan, top-two system like that of California.

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