In one of the most-watched and latest Senate Democratic primaries of the cycle, 74-year-old Sen. Ed Markey, who has served in Congress since 1976, defeated 39-year-old Rep. Joe Kennedy III in Massachusetts. Markey was leading by about ten percentage points shortly after 10 p.m. when Kennedy called Markey to concede.
The win—which, even though an incumbent defeated a challenger, you can call an upset—caps a successful late-race comeback from Markey, who pulled off one of the more surprisingly skilled political reinventions in recent memory. Markey was crushing Kennedy in the well-off suburbs of Boston, including Kennedy’s own home town of Newton, and in college towns.
Kennedy’s entrance into the primary in the summer of 2019, and his corresponding withdrawal from the safe congressional seat he’d represented since 2013, left both Massachusetts and national political observers—including this publication—perplexed. He wouldn’t bring a starkly different ideological perspective to the Senate. He wouldn’t bring diversity to the Senate. His effort to take a seat from Ed Markey would be a costly distraction from the more pressing Democratic goal of taking a chamber from Mitch McConnell. What was the point?
But there was one compelling reason for Kennedy to challenge Markey: He believed he could win. For a young Kennedy in a hurry, taking on Markey, though it might have disturbed the wait-your-turn crowd, seemed to be a more likely opportunity for advancement than waiting for, say, Elizabeth Warren’s seat to open were she to either become the Democratic presidential nominee or get a job in the next administration. That would have left him facing off in an open primary against some combination of Rep. Seth Moulton, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Rep. Katherine Clark, or state Attorney General Maura Healey.
Better now, the Kennedy campaign thought, to take on Markey, whom they could portray as an ineffective lightweight. It’s true that Markey hasn’t achieved much since jumping to the Senate in 2013 following a 36-year career in the House. (Not that many Democratic senators have accomplished much in those years.) The Kennedy campaign argued that Markey wasn’t getting as much out of a Massachusetts Senate seat as he should have, that he’s a quiet, uninspiring afterthought compared to Massachusetts titans like Warren, John Kerry, or Ted Kennedy. He was someone who would introduce a bill that would go nowhere, fly up to Logan Airport to give a press conference in the terminal about his go-nowhere bill, and then fly back to his home in Maryland, where he spent most of his time.
Kennedy, by contrast, would bring youth, vigor, and a national profile to the seat. It was not an unreasonable bet. Kennedy had a polling lead for much of the contest, and there were questions early on about whether Markey should bow out to preserve his dignity.
But Markey, who had sensed that someone might be coming for him, had made a shrewd decision in early 2019: He jointly introduced the Green New Deal resolution with freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He was not new to climate change policy, having been a co-author of the most significant climate change legislation to pass the House, in 2009—even though it met a swift death-by-Senate thereafter. But the Green New Deal, and AOC’s subsequent endorsement of him, raised his profile among the left on the national scene, earning him the support of young activists and environmental groups.
Young progressives, bored and in need of a new cause following Bernie Sanders’ presidential primary defeats, became an online army for Markey—with all the pros and cons that brings. Markey’s own fashion choices, such as his tattered vintage Air Jordans, became an integral aspect of the Legend of Ed Markey. (We’re not sure he even understood this. He probably just didn’t have any newer shoes in the closet of his part-time Massachusetts home.) He made a cool ad that went viral.
The rap on Kennedy throughout the campaign was that he couldn’t give an adequate rationale for challenging a senator with whom he was, policy-wise, on mostly the same page. His campaign felt this line was a unique obsession of the media’s that actual voters didn’t care about. Kennedy was frustrated with the question because he felt his answer—there is more to being a senator than introducing messaging bills and showing up for votes—was straightforward.
It may have been an acceptable enough answer for your run-of-the-mill ambitious politician running against an aging, beatable incumbent. It wasn’t compelling enough for Kennedy, though, to disprove the widespread feeling that he was trying to take a seat to which he felt his last name entitled him.
Where once taking digs at the Kennedy family may have been a third rail in Massachusetts Democratic politics—and still was, at least, to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—Markey made a habit of it. His campaign went after the Kennedy family for bankrolling negative attacks. He emphasized his own working-class background as the son of a milkman, and joked “Welcome to the compound!” when a reporter met him at his modest Malden home. And he closed out that viral ad by inverting the most famous quote from the most famous Kennedy: “With all due respect, it’s time to start asking what your country can do for you.”
Markey’s self-portrait as a working-class populist against a spoiled, entitled dynast landed in a curious way that says too much about the Democratic Party of 2020 to capture in this modest election night recap. In addition to young voters—specifically 18-to-29-year-olds, who broke 70 percent to 30 percent for Markey according to one recent poll—Markey’s base was affluent white liberals. A UMass Lowell survey in August, for example, showed Markey and Kennedy effectively tied among those making less than $50,000 and non-white voters. Among whites with college degrees, Markey led by 27 points, and among those making $100,000 or more, he led by 24.
“For a progressive left that says that they care about these racial inequities, these structural inequities, economic inequities, health care inequities, the folks that are on the other side of that are overwhelmingly supporting me in this race,” an irritated Kennedy said in the waning days of the campaign. “Yet there seems to be a cognitive dissonance.”
You would be irritated, too, if you had suddenly gone from the most promising Kennedy in a couple of generations to someone, at 39, without a job come January or an identifiable political path forward. The primary challenge may have been Kennedy’s best opportunity for career advancement, and anyone who’s interacted with the aloof Ed Markey for five seconds would be forgiven for believing he’s eminently beatable. But after tonight, the Kennedy family has its first-ever loss in a Massachusetts election. Markey still doesn’t have his.
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