Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton announced Wednesday that he’s launching a primary challenge to U.S. Sen. Ed Markey in the 2026 election cycle, casting Markey as part of a stale Democratic establishment that’s failing to fight back effectively against Republican President Donald Trump.
“[D]emocrats have failed to stop Donald Trump’s harmful, racist agenda,” Moulton says in a campaign kickoff video. “Our party has clung to the status quo, insisted on using the same old playbook, and isn’t fighting hard enough. The next generation will keep paying the costs if we don’t change course.
“We’re in a crisis, and with everything we learned last election, I just don’t believe Senator Markey should be running for another six-year term at 80 years old,” Moulton adds. “Even more, I don’t think someone’s who’s been in Congress for half a century is the right person to meet this moment and win the future. Senator Markey’s a good man, but it’s time for a new generation of leadership.”
A recent poll conducted for the Fiscal Alliance Foundation showed Moulton, who represents much of the North Shore, leading Markey in a then-hypothetical matchup, with 43% support among likely voters to Markey’s 21%. Among Democrats only, however, Moulton’s margin was narrower: he led Markey 38% to 30%.
Five years ago, Markey faced a primary challenge from then-Rep. Joe Kennedy III. Markey seemed energized by the contest and ultimately dispatched Kennedy in the primary election, 55% to 45%, buoyed in part by an unexpected wave of young supporters.
Moulton was criticized for comments he made last year about the Democratic Party’s approach to transgender issues. He argued, in the wake of Donald Trump’s election, that Democrats shutting down debate on finding a “a reasonable, rational position” on trans issues was actually paving the way for Republican attacks, including Trump’s early assertion in a presidential executive order that only two immutable genders exist.
In 2018, Moulton led an unsuccessful push to keep then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from serving another term in that role, using language that resembled his current critiques of Markey.
Moulton also briefly ran for president in the 2020 election cycle, but dropped out and endorsed eventual nominee Joe Biden in August 2019.
