U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton was on the agenda for a Lynn Business Partnership meeting Wednesday morning to talk about the current state of affairs in Washington, D.C., but with a published report that Moulton is considering a primary run against U.S. Sen. Ed Markey next year, that became the prime topic of discussion.
“I am taking a serious look at it,” Moulton said. “There are obviously a lot of people thinking it’s time for a change in the Democratic party. The old establishment hasn’t been successful. The track record hasn’t been great and the stakes are incredibly high.”
Moulton said there is no deadline for him to make a decision on whether to challenge Markey, a two-term incumbent who will be 80 when the 2026 primary is held. Markey served 37 years in the U.S. House of Representatives before being elected to the Senate in a special election in June 2013.
The story was first reported by the Boston Globe.
Moulton, a 46-year-old Marblehead native who lives in Salem, said he is not the only one contemplating taking on Markey.
“There are several other people who are looking at this or who have looked at this,” he told the group of Lynn business executives. “It’s all been pretty behind the scenes … It’s something I think a number of us are looking at. I know of at least two people outside the regular political system who are looking at it in addition to other elected officials.”
Moulton declined to name the others.
A Marine veteran who served in Iraq, Moulton gained a seat in Congress when he defeated incumbent U.S. Rep. John Tierney in the 6th District primary in 2014 and Republican Richard Tisei in the general election. He admitted the experience of Rep. Joseph Kennedy III, whom he called a “mentor” in Congress, will weigh on his decision whether to oppose Markey. Kennedy was a sitting Congressman when he ran against Markey in 2020, losing the primary by 10 points, 55 to 45 percent.
“Joe Kennedy’s experience is certainly a cautionary tale and I have a lot of respect for Ed Markey,” said Moulton. “I’ve learned a lot from Joe. We’ve always been good friends and I’ve talked to him about the tradeoffs of getting in this race. I love the job that I have. I love the influence I’ve been able to gain in the House. Obviously this is a tough decision and one I want to take seriously.”
Moulton firmly believes Democrats nationwide need to change course when it comes to welcoming opposing points of view, especially on major issues.
“Anyone who says the Democratic party doesn’t need reform apparently doesn’t want to win,” he said. “We’ve got to win; the stakes are too high. We have to be a more inclusive party if we’re going to do that. Not compromise on our values, but be willing to listen to people with different opinions and encourage that discussion and debate. That’s been a real problem for our party and something that’s turned off a lot of Americans. It’s one of the reasons we’ve been losing elections.”
The intolerance to dissension came into clear focus for Moulton last year when, after Donald Trump had been elected president, he offered an opinion on the issue of transgenders playing competitive sports that resulted in backlash from his own party. Moulton said he would be concerned about his daughters “getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete.”
His campaign manager resigned reportedly in protest and there were demonstrations outside his district office in Salem, despite the fact that Moulton was expressing an opinion apparently shared by a majority of Americans. A Pew Research Center survey released in February found that 66 percent of U.S. adults favor or strongly favor laws and policies that require transgender athletes to compete on teams that match their sex assigned at birth. In an NBC News poll in April, 75 percent of American adults said they do not believe trans women should be permitted to participate in female sports.
That is one issue, but Moulton believes it is emblematic of the current political climate in the country and that Trump being twice elected president should be sufficient reason for Democrats to wake up.
“A lot of Americans don’t love Trump but think even less of the Democratic party,” he said, “and that’s not a good recipe for winning. We have to show the American people we’re willing to change. In the midterms … we can hopefully put forward a new generation of leadership in the party that actually gets people to vote for us for a change, since our approval ratings are lower than they have ever been in recorded history. Trump has low approval ratings, but the only ones below him are Democrats.”
Moulton said it is not enough to simply oppose Trump and his policies.
“We can’t just be a party that lays over and plays dead and just plans to win purely on opposition to Trump whenever he screws up,” he said. “We need to have a real forward-looking agenda that’s not just opposing Trump. In a time of crisis, which America is definitely in right now, we need leadership to show the way forward. ‘There’s a better way of doing this, come follow me.’”
Moulton has taken on the Democrat establishment before, in addition to running in a primary against an incumbent. In 2019, he led an unsuccessful attempt to have then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi replaced as the leader of the caucus. Later that year, he announced his candidacy for president in 2020, but was one of the first to drop out of the race.
