(CNN) — Senator Ed Markey on Tuesday overcame Rep. Joe Kennedy’s attempt to end his nearly 50 years in elected office, thus humiliating the Democratic Party family dynasty that had never lost an election in Massachusetts before.
The longtime legislator won the primaries campaigning as the most progressive person in the race, while emphasizing his roots as the son of a Malden milkman.
“We made it clear that we would rather lose fighting as hard as we could for what we believe than finding a middle ground,” Markey said in his victory speech. «The progressive movement knows how to fight. We will not give up.
About a year ago, when it became clear that the congressman would run, Markey visited his parents’ grave, considered what to do and what his parents would do, and concluded that he had to run for re-election, according to campaign manager John Walsh.
His decision could have been described as foolish. Kennedy, 39, led the polls from the start, launching a campaign focused on social and economic justice while offering a generational shift from Markey, 74, who has served in Congress for more than four decades.
But his critics attacked Kennedy for not articulating a reason to run other than his own ambition, and Markey deflected the brilliance of his opponent by projecting the power of some of the party’s brightest stars.
The two Democrats weren’t at great odds on politics, but Markey established himself early on as the first to embrace liberal causes, noting his co-authorship of the Green New Deal and his support for “Medicare for All.” Markey wore retro-modern Nike sneakers and sided with New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the party phenomenon, and the Sunrise Movement, a youth group focused on fighting climate change, to show that he was keeping up with the times. .
“When it comes to progressive leadership, it’s not your age that counts, it’s the age of your ideas,” Ocasio-Cortez said in an ad. And Ed Markey is the leader we need.
Markey suggested Kennedy was a legislative lightweight, while claiming that he himself has written hundreds of laws that bring affordable internet to schools and libraries, raise fuel economy standards for cars and trucks, raise billions of dollars for research Alzheimer’s disease and even discourage robocalls. He said he has led political revolutions since at least the 1980s, when he introduced the nuclear freeze resolution and nearly a million people gathered in New York’s Central Park to demand an end to the nuclear arms race.
Kennedy responded by pointing out holes in Markey’s long record, including his votes in favor of the Iraq War, NAFTA, the Patriot Act, and the 1994 crime bill.
Overall, Kennedy claimed that he would be a better senator, that he could fulfill his status and build the party across the country. He attacked Markey for spending less time at home in Massachusetts than any other member of the state congressional delegation, even as Senator Elizabeth Warren was running for president, citing an analysis by the Boston Globe.
But by the final month of the campaign, when voting by mail began, polls showed Markey had taken the lead. There were signs that Kennedy was frustrated. He told CNN in August that the coronavirus pandemic “definitely hampers a challenger” as it limited his ability to connect in person with people, which he considered one of his advantages in the race. Still, a Kennedy wearing a mask went on a whirlwind tour across the state and won the backing of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, who highlighted the congressman’s effort to tour the country in 2018 and win in the House.
As the pandemic progressed, Markey reversed former President John F. Kennedy’s famous call to action. “It is time to start asking what your country can do for you,” he said. In response, the Kennedy campaign finally explicitly described him as the offshoot of a legacy made up of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, former President Kennedy, and former Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, his grandfather, and great-uncles. The narrator of a television commercial said that the struggles for health care for all, employment and opportunity and racial justice were “in his blood.”
But on Tuesday, Markey blocked Kennedy’s path to the chamber where his ancestors once stood.
In his award speech, Kennedy said that his family had been “invoked much more often than he expected” and praised her for showing him the “example of what public service should be.”
Then he told his two sons, “If there’s a message from your dad tonight, it’s this: Always spend your life in the ring. It is worth fighting for.
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