Republican John Deaton, Democrat Seth Moulton to meet in WBZ pre-primary Massachusetts Senate debate without Ed Markey
The opinions expressed below are Jon Keller's, not those of WBZ-TV, CBS News or Paramount, a Skydance Corporation.
Senator Ed Markey is no pushover. Surviving and thriving during 50 years of bare-knuckle Massachusetts politics is proof of that.
But his endurance is about to be tested as never before. His challenger in the September 1 Democratic primary, Congressman Seth Moulton (D-Sixth District), and the presumptive Republican nominee who awaits the winner, Attorney John Deaton, are both poised to press the case that it's time for Markey to move on.
As the 47-year-old Moulton puts it in his campaign stump speech: "He's been in elective office for half a century. That's longer than I've been alive."
The case for Markey's retirement has been made before, by a Kennedy, no less (Congressman Joe Kennedy III in 2020), with a notable lack of success. "The people of Massachusetts don't need to make a choice," Markey said in a debate with Kennedy. "Because I represent experience and change at the same time."
But as Markey prepares to turn 80 - after a series of political fiascoes involving elderly figures who clung to power too long, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and President Joe Biden - Deaton and Moulton will surely press the case as never before when they meet in an unusual pre-primary inter-party debate Tuesday night, June 16 at 9 p.m. on TV38 (streaming on WBZ.com with simulcast on WBZ NewsRadio 1030).
"Ed Markey is MIA, rarely seen here and rarely delivering in Washington, a place he's called home since the '70s," says Deaton in a campaign video.
Adds Moulton in a stump speech: "I have tremendous respect for Senator Markey, but...we can't wait six years for more people to get hurt before we make a change."
Look for Moulton to zero in Tuesday night on another aging pol: 80-year-old President Donald Trump. "He was tired, he looked senile, and he sounded just totally detached from reality," Moulton said of Trump after a recent presidential speech on national TV.
And while Deaton, who has distanced himself from Trump in the past, can't afford to be quite so hard on the president, look for him to tie Moulton to an aging Democratic establishment presiding over an increasingly high-cost state. "Families here are struggling with home prices, energy costs and grocery bills as prices continue to rise," he says in a campaign video. "Our leaders should be doing their jobs to help Massachusetts families but they're all career politicians and they're failing."
Senator Markey declined an invitation to participate in this debate, but he will be joining us for an interview set to air Sunday morning, June 21 at 8:30 a.m. on the WBZ News Mornings. How he responds to the double-teaming he's in store for will give us a sense of what the run-up to the primary, and perhaps the general election after that, will look like.
