U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton is challenging U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, arguing for a new generation of leadership in the Democratic Party.
In a campaign video released Wednesday morning, Moulton said his party “has clung to the status quo,” and it’s time to “change course.”
Moulton, a U.S. Marine veteran who currently represents communities north of Boston in the House, is 46; Markey, now 79, would turn 86 at the end of a next Senate term.
“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.
Moulton called Markey a “good man,” but said he doesn’t think someone who’s been in Congress for half a century is the right person to meet the moment.
In a statement to WBUR, Markey’s campaign manager Cam Charbonnier criticized Moulton for launching his campaign amid a government shutdown.
“While Congressman Moulton is launching a political campaign during a government shutdown, Senator Markey is doing his job — voting against Trump’s extremist agenda and working to stop the MAGA attacks on health care so that we can reopen the government,” Charbonnier said in a statement. “That’s what leadership looks like and what the residents of Massachusetts expect from their Senator.”
Markey, who was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1976 and then the Senate in 2013, often says, “It’s not your age that matters, it’s the age of your ideas.”
Over the course of his Senate career, he’s become a leader of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Following last year’s presidential election, he promised to push back forcefully against President Trump’s agenda, telling WBUR, “We’re going to fight him every single step of the way.”
Markey is already running hard to win his third full term in the U.S. Senate. To show he’s energetic and up for the fight, he regularly takes to Facebook to report on his Fitbit stats: “I’m up to 6,144 steps and another 4,000 or so to go before the day is over here in the United States Senate,” Markey said in a recent post.
This isn’t the first time he’s faced a generational fight: In 2020, he fought off a primary a challenge from young Rep. Joseph Kennedy III, and formed a close alliance with New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — one of the party’s most prominent figures — with whom he pushed a number of progressive causes, including the Green New Deal.
“As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, I am the generational change which this country needs, and I’m going to run on all those issues,” he told WBUR during his last primary campaign in which he defeated Kennedy.
The Moulton-Markey race is one of a number of congressional contests emerging across the country that will be fought along generational lines — and there’s a lot riding on the outcome. Following their resounding defeat in the last election, Democrats are desperate to find their way out of the political wilderness, and people like Moulton say younger leaders have the map.
Amanda Litman, who leads Run For Something, a group encouraging younger Democrats to seek office, said people should be pressuring older politicians like Markey to retire because “voters want younger Democrats.”
“We have seen this in all kinds of different polling,” Litman said. “They want Democrats who generationally understand how to fight Republicans in this moment.”
Markey has already rounded up a number of endorsements from his Massachusetts Democratic colleagues, including House Whip Katherine Clark and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who called him “a progressive champion who knows how to fight.”
Both Moulton and Markey identify as progressives. In his campaign video, Moulton promised to fight for policies to help working people, such as universal health care. In addition, he said he would respond to climate change, ban assault weapons and protect democracy.
But he’s also has run afoul of liberal orthodoxy. After last fall’s presidential election, for instance, he criticized his own party’s position on transgender athletes, saying he doesn’t want 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.” He came under fire by many in his party, and his campaign manager resigned.
“The backlash proved my point,” Moulton told WBUR in January. “I knew it would happen — that we can’t even have these debates in our party.”
Last year, Moulton was among the first Congressional leaders to call on President Joe Biden to end his reelection campaign to allow for “a new generation of Democratic leaders.”
Moulton’s political career began by challenging the party establishment. In his first race to represent Massachusetts’ 6th Congressional District in 2014, he defeated John Tierney, a nine-term Democratic incumbent. But in 2019, his effort to oppose Nancy Pelosi’s return as Speaker of the House failed, as did a brief presidential bid that same year.
Now, he’s hoping his call for generational change will take down the state’s oldest member of Congress.
This story was originally published by WBUR and updated 4:29 p.m. on October 15, 2025.
