The Senate race in Massachusetts is blue on blue in a blue state so the seat will remain safely Democratic whatever the outcome in Tuesday’s primary. That’s little solace for Democrats torn apart by a race that forces them to choose between Joseph Kennedy III, a rising star in the party and heir to the storied Kennedy legacy, and incumbent Senator Ed Markey, a champion of progressive causes in the House and Senate for 47 years—longer than Kennedy, 39, has been alive.
Kennedy has struggled to explain why he’s running, other than that he’s a Kennedy and would “leverage” the power of a Senate seat better than the current occupant. Markey, 74, has the backing of fellow progressives Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He is a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal and is recognized as a leader on environmental issues.
The contest between Kennedy, whose family has never lost a political contest in the state, and Markey doesn’t break along any of the usual fault lines, ideological or generational. Markey hasn’t lost touch with his constituents and still maintains his residence in Malden, Massachusetts, in the house where he grew up, and where his father was a milkman.
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“They’re both fine, they both vote for the same things. Would Kennedy be a more effective senator? Maybe marginally, maybe not,” says Matt Bennett with Third Way, a moderate Democratic group. “It’s a big waste of resources that could be used against the right in the most important race of the millennium, maybe two millenniums.”
This race about nothing, or not very much, and costing some $30 million, last week prompted the intervention of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who endorsed Kennedy, a four-term House Democrat who she credits with helping return the party to power in 2018. He traveled to 18 states raising money for Democrats.
“For her to step into the middle of this is really surprising,” says John Kirk with Progressive Massachusetts, “given how aggressive she’s been going after anybody in the ecosystem if they work for challengers” to Democratic House incumbents.
Pelosi says she defends everyone in her caucus when they’re challenged, and when they run for another office. But Norm Ornstein, an expert on Congress with AEI, a conservative think tank, says he cannot come up with another example of a House Democrat challenging a sitting Democratic senator. It opens up a precedent that Pelosi could come to regret given how aggressive she’s been to head off primary challenges from the party’s insurgent left.
“No one gets to complain about primary challenges again,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.
People who know Pelosi say her endorsement of Kennedy is more about AOC than it is about Markey, who served with her in the House for decades and under her tutelage shepherded through a major piece of climate legislation. It is now a contest to see whose endorsement can produce a winner in a state where Kennedy supporters note Pelosi’s approval rating is higher than AOC’s. Pelosi is a liberal, not a progressive. Kennedy proved his loyalty when he backed her for Speaker after the 2018 election and rallied younger members behind her.
“She was aiming more at AOC than Ed,” says Ornstein. “Any way you look at it, it’s a really unfortunate thing. If Markey loses, you’re taking out one of their real stars, who knows how the process works and how to pass things and has built relationships. And if Kennedy loses, an amazing emerging career is damaged by it. It’s a shame this happened in the first place.”
A Kennedy backer in Boston, speaking to The Daily Beast on background, explains that Pelosi endorsed because “she felt Ed crossed the line when he began to denigrate the family” with an ad that closes with Markey declaring, “It’s now time to ask what the country can do for you,” a pointed twist on JFK’s signature line.
“Ed had it pretty safely in hand (before) Joe changed the dynamic in the last 10 days,” says the Kennedy backer.
What the ultimate outcome will be is unpredictable in a primary in the midst of a pandemic when the college vote could be decisive, and mail-in ballots will take time to count. Either way, the race has taken a decidedly ugly turn. In a tense debate on Aug. 11, Kennedy confronted Markey about tweets from his supporters saying that “Lee Harvey (Oswald) got the wrong Kennedy.”
Markey disavowed any involvement and condemned the tweets, but to the Kennedy camp, it had echoes of the Bernie Bros during 2016. At a debate last week, Kennedy renewed his complaint that there was “a line that was crossed that shouldn’t have been.”
On Monday, Kennedy’s campaign manager sent a letter to the Markey campaign calling the death threats and assassination references “beyond the pale,” adding that it’s the “petty and personal attacks” on Kennedy supporters that are the “most disheartening… Reasonable minds can disagree about who to support in this race, between two progressive candidates who undoubtedly share deep political values. But no matter what side you fall on, we should be able to agree that those who volunteer their time, talent, energy and passion to help drive the democratic process should be commended and celebrated — not disparaged, ridiculed, or attacked.”
Markey’s campaign called the complaints “crocodile tears” and a “stunt,” but when you’re dealing with a candidate whose family lost a president and a senator to assassination, there’s little margin for error in assessing potential threats.
A race that started out with Kennedy ahead by more than a dozen points and some expectation Markey might just bow out, stepping aside for a promising future presidential candidate, has turned into a surprisingly hard-fought contest. Markey consolidated environmentalists invigorated by AOC and a resurgent youth movement and emerged as the true progressive in the race while Kennedy never articulated his rationale for taking out a like-minded senator of the same party who was doing his job.
Maybe that doesn’t matter, or maybe it does; we’ll know soon enough. But this is how history is made and it isn’t all that complicated, says William Galston, a senior fellow in the governance program at the Brookings Institution. “Kennedy has failed to articulate a serious rationale for his candidacy,” Galston told the Daily Beast. “There is a family DNA of ambition, impatience and a sense of entitlement, and this is just the latest chapter.”
A trio of late-breaking polls showed Markey opening up a lead in the final days bolstered by an endorsement from former Vice President Al Gore and strong support from the Sunrise Movement, a progressive group representing young people who see Markey as the avatar for progressive change. In this test of strength, Camelot can wait.
