Rep. Seth Moulton Launches Senate Challenge To Ed Markey: Democrats ‘In Crisis’ | EUROtoday

BOSTON (AP) — U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, a reasonable Massachusetts Democrat, stated Wednesday that he’ll problem U.S. Sen. Edward Markey for the Democratic nomination in subsequent yr’s Senate race, arguing it’s time for the social gathering to embrace a brand new technology of management.

The announcement makes the race one of the vital anticipated major contests within the nation and pits two of the closely Democratic state’s prime politicians in opposition to each other. Markey, who fended off a problem in 2020 from Rep. Joe Kennedy III within the Senate major, can be 80 earlier than his third six-year time period would start.

In a video accompanying his announcement, Moulton, 46, stated the Democratic Party was caught within the “status quo” and “isn’t fighting hard enough.”

Without naming former President Joe Biden, Moulton referenced the 2024 presidential election, when worries about Biden’s age and talent led to his departure from the race months earlier than Election Day. The transfer — and Donald Trump’s subsequent victory — reignited issues amongst Democrats that the social gathering’s leaders have been too outdated and not finest positioned to win.

“We’re in crisis, and with everything we learned last election, I just don’t believe Sen. Markey should be running for another six-year term at 80 years old,” Moulton stated within the video. “Even more, I don’t think someone who’s been in Congress for half a century is the right person to meet this moment and win the future.”

Moulton, who enlisted within the Marines after the 9/11 assaults and served 4 excursions of responsibility in Iraq, was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2014. Last yr, he ran unopposed. In his announcement, Moulton stated he can be focusing his marketing campaign on points starting from affordability, well being care, banning assault weapons and defending democracy.

“The next generation will keep paying the cost if we don’t change course,” he stated. “This isn’t a fight we can put off for another six years. The future we all believe in is on the line.”

After Democrats misplaced the White House and each homes of Congress final yr, Moulton caught flak from some members of his social gathering for saying he didn’t need his daughters enjoying in sports activities in opposition to transgender women.

Critics stated Moulton echoed Trump’s speaking factors in opposition to permitting transgender athletes in women’ and ladies’s sports activities.

“I think that Republicans have a hateful position on trans issues,” Moulton instructed The Associated Press final yr, however he insisted that Democrats nonetheless lose voters due to the social gathering’s “attitude.”

Markey, for his half, has been right here earlier than. He confronted a hard-fought problem from Kennedy in 2020. He turned to his progressive allies to beat a problem from a youthful rival from America’s most well-known political household.

During that race, Markey appealed to voters within the deeply Democratic state by positioning himself as aligned with the liberal wing of the social gathering. He teamed up with a number one progressive, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, on the Green New Deal local weather change initiative — and at one level labeled Kennedy “a progressive in name only.”

Markey, who was first elected to Congress in 1976, stated in an interview final yr on WCVB-TV that he was “this most energized” he has ever been and stated he would run once more. He argued that it wasn’t his age however the age of his concepts, including that “I’ve always been the youngest guy in the room.”