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

The Slatest Tonight’s big Senate primary is scrambling a national trend. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Adobe Stock, Samuel Corum/Getty Images and Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images. This story is adapted from the Slatest newsletter. You can sign up here to get it in your inbox every day. 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. Is Moulton’s anti-gerontocracy message breaking through? 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. (Moulton made a campaign stop at my local grocery store yesterday.) So Massachusetts Democrats are just going to roll the dice on another octogenarian incumbent? They seem to be willing to risk it. Markey would be 86 at the end of his next term—the same age Biden would’ve been if he’d been a two-term president. On the other hand, as even the Globe editorial endorsing Moulton acknowledged, Markey still seems like “the picture of sharpness and vigor.” Moulton has tried to imply that Markey is a fuddy-duddy; his campaign made hay of a debate exchange last month in which the senator was asked whether he uses artificial intelligence and awkwardly answered, “I use whatever is inside my iPhone or my iPad, whatever comes up.” But pushed to choose, most Massachusetts Democrats seem to prefer a candidate who aligns with them on policy over one who’s younger. “From my perspective, it’s not your age, it is the age of your ideas,” Markey recently told reporters. “And I’ve always been the youngest guy in the world when it comes to ideas.” OK, but he could still lose this time, right? It’s certainly possible. Primary polling of other races this year has been all over the map, sometimes overstating support for progressive Democrats. In the Michigan Senate and Wisconsin governor races last month, preelection surveys showed yawning leads for Abdul El-Sayed and Francesca Hong over their more centrist rivals—only for El-Sayed to win by a hair and Hong to lose. If earlier polling errors repeat themselves, Markey could have a race on his hands. Is this the only Massachusetts race tonight where age and ideology are factors? As a matter of fact, no. Rep. Stephen Lynch, 71, is running for a 14th term in a congressional district that zigzags through part of Boston and its southern suburbs (and also happens to be the district where I live). Lynch and Markey have history; they served together in the House and competed in the 2013 special election that sent Markey to the Senate. But this year, their two races have opposite ideological valences. Lynch is a relative moderate who voted against the Affordable Care Act in 2010 and last year became the only Massachusetts lawmaker to support the Laken Riley Act, which made it easier to detain noncitizens accused of certain crimes. His challenger is Patrick Roath, a 39-year-old lawyer who supports universal healthcare, abolishing ICE, and term limits for members of Congress. Roath has mounted a “future-oriented” campaign with support from prominent progressive activists. Million-dollar question: Who’s going to win? A Markey win and a Lynch loss tonight wouldn’t surprise me. But the suspense will be short-lived. We’ll likely know the results in a few hours, and we’ll be back in your inbox tomorrow to explain what they mean. Tolga Akdoğan I’m a politics nerd who will be watching tonight’s election returns in real time, but I sincerely hope you won’t feel compelled to do the same. 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On Monday, a jury found Duane Keith Davis guilty of first-degree murder for orchestrating the 1996 drive-by shooting. Joel Anderson, host of Slow Burn: Biggie and Tupac, argues that Tupac’s murder was never a whodunit. He explains why a conviction took so long anyway. Log off TikTok for the night: Do you remember the last time you had a good time online? The truth is, social media just isn’t as fun as it used to be. On the latest episode of ICYMI, host Kate Lindsay discusses why TikTok is starting to feel like Twitter in the worst way. OK, that’s it from me. Enjoy your (TikTok-free?) night!