Senator Markey: Pass The Torch
It’s time to make way for a new generation of leadership
by James Nichols-Worley and Milan Singh
Had Joe Bidenwon re-election, he would have been 86 years and two months old at the end of his term. That is four months younger than Sen. Ed Markey would be at the end of the new six-year term he plans to seek next year.
Sen. Ed Markey, in Franklin Park in Dorchester, making a get-out-the-vote pitch on the day before Election Day in 2020. (Photo by Michael Jonas)
Five years ago, we were too young to vote, but both of us supported Sen. Markey in his 2020 Democratic primary race against Rep. Joe Kennedy III. We felt that, since both candidates agreed on all of the big issues, there was no good reason other than ambition driving Kennedy’s challenge, especially since many at the time thought that this would be Sen. Markey’s final campaign.
We appreciate the senator’s work over his decades in public service, particularly his advocacy on environmental issues. But five years later, it’s time for him to pass the torch to a new generation.
Our Commonwealth and our country face great challenges over the coming years: a cost-of-living crisis that is pricing young people out of our state; an increasingly violent and unstable world; and new technologies that will reshape our society, for good and for ill. These are difficult problems without simple solutions. We should be making way for younger leaders to help shape the future that they, and those even younger than them, will be contending with long after today’s oldest elected officials are gone.
Several other Senate Democrats have chosen retirement in recent years. Maryland’s Ben Cardin (80), Delaware’s Tom Carper (77), and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin (77) all declined to run again last year. Already this year, four more announced they would not seek re-election in 2026: Illinois’s Dick Durbin (80), New Hampshire’s Jeanne Shaheen (78), Minnesota’s Tina Smith (67), and Michigan’s Gary Peters (66). Sen. Markey is older than all but two of them. In fact, he’s the oldest Democratic senator seeking reelection next year.
Judging our elected officials solely by their age does have its limits. Take former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, now 85, who is still playing an influential role in California and national politics as a member of Congress after relinquishing her role as the leader of House Democrats. Sen. Markey, for his part, has parried criticism with an oft-repeated rejoinder: “It’s not your age, it’s the age of your ideas,” which has become something of a campaign mantra.
This line of thinking resonated with us and many other young people in 2020, who admired Sen. Markey’s bold politics, but it has run its course. Although the senator gave a vigorous speech at the Democratic State Convention earlier this month in Springfield and seems, by all accounts, in good health, his steadfast determination to run for reelection papers over the immense uncertainty surrounding his age and betrays a lack of confidence in his potential successors.
According to actuarial data collected by the Social Security Administration, an American male aged 87 has about a one in eight chance of dying in the following year. An 82-year-old male — the age Sen. Markey would be at the start of his next six-year term — has a life expectancy of just seven years. One-third of Americans over the age of 85 suffer from some form of dementia.
As we’ve seen all too often in recent years, there are real risks when public officials remain in office well into old age. Just this year, three House Democrats have died in office. Towards the end of her career, the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who died while still in office at age 90, was reported to be “bewildered or disengaged” and suffering from diminished capabilities. And in the case that put the issue front and center for all Americans to see, the Joe Biden of six years ago is unrecognizable compared to the one we saw in the disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump last summer.
We’re not alone in holding these concerns. A poll from the University of New Hampshire found that 55 percent of Massachusetts voters — including 57 percent of Democrats, 51 percent of independent voters, and 55 percent of Republicans — are concerned about Senator Markey’s age. The same poll found that 43 percent of Massachusetts voters do not think that Sen. Markey deserves reelection, compared with 33 percent who think he does and 25 percent who are unsure.
Even among those who think Sen. Markey deserves to be reelected, nearly half — 48 percent — are concerned about his age. A recent poll of voters under 30 found that two of the top three (out of 31) best-testing democracy reform proposals were term limits for Congress and an age limit of 75 for elected officials generally.
Despite this, Sen. Markey has managed to trot out endorsements from across the state, and his campaign has sent half a dozen emails asking volunteers to “personally endorse Senator Ed Markey.” Before meetings with Sen. Markey earlier this year, volunteers and activists were asked to appear in videos for the campaign endorsing him. One of us was contacted personally to participate in such a video.
Sen. Markey’s insistence on running again — despite clear concern from voters about his age — is essentially a statement that he alone is the only Democrat who can serve the people of Massachusetts. With all due respect, we just don’t think that’s true.
Massachusetts has a deep bench of would-be candidates who share Sen. Markey’s commitment to the Democratic Party’s values — standing up for regular people, trying to pass laws that make our lives just a little bit easier, and fighting against the abuses of the Trump administration.
Not waiting for the seat to open up, Rep. Seth Moulton is reportedly considering challenging Sen. Markey in next year’s Democratic primary. Among other potential Senate candidates who share Sen. Markey’s core commitments, some, like Rep. Ayanna Pressley, adhere to the senator’s particular brand of progressivism; others, like Rep. Jake Auchincloss, have embraced newer ideas like the Abundance agenda.
Sen. Markey has had a long and honorable career in public service. But we believe that it is time for him to step aside. Nothing could do more to invigorate the Massachusetts Democratic Party at this challenging time for our country than to give voters a chance to choose a nominee – and hopefully their next senator — in a competitive, open primary election.
James Nichols-Worley represents the Young Democrats of Massachusetts on the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee and is a junior at Georgetown University (the views represented here are his own). Milan Singh was born and raised in Cambridge, worked on message testing for the 2024 presidential election, and is a senior at Yale University.
Commonwealth News Service