Voters Are Rejecting Elderly Politicians. So What’s This 80-Year-Old Senator’s Secret?

A politician in his 80s is running for another term, and his opponents keep trying to make the race about his age. If that sounds familiar, either you’re reliving the 2024 election or you’re a voter in Massachusetts headed to the polls today. Sen. Ed Markey, an 80-year-old progressive who has represented the state in Congress since Gerald Ford was president, faces a primary challenge from Rep. Seth Moulton, 47, a more moderate Marine veteran who argues that Markey is too old for another six-year term.

As elections go, Massachusetts hasn’t been the most suspenseful of places for a while now; whichever Democrat wins tonight is a virtual lock to win this fall. But it’s about to deliver another data point in the Democrats’ internal debate over gerontocracy, and is also the state where I happen to live, so grab your Dunkin’ and prepare to get wicked smaht.

Before we get into the stakes, can you tell me a little more about the candidates?

Markey is a Boston-accented two-term senator who has made climate change one of his main legislative focuses. When he was in the House, he co-authored an ultimately failed cap-and-trade bill to limit greenhouse gas emissions (legislation then known as the “Waxman-Markey” bill). In the Senate, he helped pass former President Joe Biden’s landmark climate bill.

Moulton, meanwhile, served four tours in Iraq and has repeatedly challenged the Democratic Party’s powers that be. He won his House seat after primarying an older lawmaker, backed efforts to unseat the then-septuagenarian Nancy Pelosi as the Democratic House leader, and even mounted a quixotic campaign for president in 2020 after calling for “a new generation of leadership.” Moulton’s Senate ads emphasize that he’s an energetic dad to young kids and his campaign slogan, “Our fight can’t wait,” reads like a not-very-subtle jab at Markey’s age. Although the candidates have staked out similar positions on most issues, Markey is clearly more progressive.

In some corners, yes. The Boston Globe’s editorial board, which backed both of Markey’s previous Senate elections, endorsed Moulton this year . It cited Moulton’s efforts to push Biden out of the 2024 race after a trainwreck debate performance and added, of Markey, that “voters should not be voting for someone who they might have to worry about finishing their term.”

But Markey isn’t Biden; recent polls of the Democratic primary electorate show him leading Moulton by double digits. In a University of Massachusetts Amherst survey last month, some voters even cited Markey’s long tenure as an asset; one respondent praised his “experience, understanding of what his constituents want and how to make it happen in a difficult political climate.” In another recent poll, conducted by Suffolk University and the Globe, only a third of primary voters said Markey’s age made them less likely to support him. When Biden was running for reelection, even most Democrats felt he was too old to seek another term. Anecdotally, I’ve seen just one Moulton sign in my neighborhood, which is in a more conservative part of Boston.