“This is a very clear race between two candidates who are nothing alike,” Tyler Hack, a trans rights organizer and the founder of Christopher Street Project, told the Globe on Sunday. “Had this been a race between Ed Markey and Ed Markey a little bit younger, I don’t know how it would be going. But it’s not.”
By Kelly Garrity | September 1, 2026
Across the country, a surge of candidates has successfully run on calls for generational change. That may crash into a blue wall known as Massachusetts.
A handful of septuagenarian or octogenarian incumbents up and down the Massachusetts ballot are locked in primaries with younger challengers in Tuesday’s primary, each leaning into the playbook that’s helped boost candidates in other states, such as Connecticut.
But if the polls and political prognosticators are right, most of the incumbents here could ultimately survive Tuesday — even if some may have to sweat it out.
That dynamic may be the most obvious at the top of the Democratic ticket, where US Representative Seth Moulton, 47, has hinged his campaign against US Senator Ed Markey on calls for new, younger leadership in the Senate — and the argument that Markey, 80, is too old to serve another six-year term.
But any hangover Democratic voters in Massachusetts might feel from former President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance and subsequent exit from the 2024 race doesn’t seem to be sticking to Markey. Polls have repeatedly shown that Markey’s age plays little role in many voters’ consideration of whether to back him over Moulton — even as Moulton has tried to capitalize on Markey’s answer to a debate question about artificial intelligence.
Notably, the dynamics in this race are slightly different than those in other generational contests around the country. In Massachusetts, Moulton is the more moderate alternative to Markey, who has leaned hard into the uber-liberal label to win over the Democratic diehards that make up much of the primary electorate.
“This is a very clear race between two candidates who are nothing alike,” Tyler Hack, a trans rights organizer and the founder of Christopher Street Project, told the Globe on Sunday. “Had this been a race between Ed Markey and Ed Markey a little bit younger, I don’t know how it would be going. But it’s not.”
In western Massachusetts, US Representative Richard Neal, 77, is facing a spirited primary challenge from Jeromie Whalen, a 39-year-old high school journalism teacher running to Neal’s left. But Whalen has struggled to match Neal’s fundraising, and as a first-time candidate with no previous elected office, he doesn’t have the incumbent’s built-in base — or much of the institutional support that comes with it.
“In politics, you’ve got to tell folks what you’ve done for them and what you’re going to do for them, and Neal has a big track record and can point to a lot of accomplishments in bringing bacon back home,” said Tony Cignoli, a Springfield-based Democratic strategist.
In the Boston area, US Representative Stephen Lynch seems to be locked in a closer race. Patrick Roath, a 39-year-old attorney and voting rights advocate, is similarly running to Lynch’s left — but unlike Whalen, he’s outraised Lynch and attracted support from outside groups, including Leaders We Deserve, the organization founded by gun control advocate David Hogg that’s spending big to help challengers oust incumbents. Internal polling commissioned by the group, which has spent at least $470,000 on Roath’s behalf, showed Lynch leading Roath by a single-digit margin.
As he dodged pre-rush hour traffic at one of Boston’s busiest intersections Monday, Lynch, 71, acknowledged the dynamic that’s come for some of his colleagues.
“Look, that’s the strategy I used when I first ran: Give a young guy a chance. So it’s not new,” Lynch said while supporters held signs for him near Kosciuszko Circle. “But I do have a really good connection with the people in my district.
“The press seems to like the narrative of the young person running against the older person, so they’re going with it,” he added. “But I think maybe they overplay it. I don’t think it fits every circumstance. So we’ll just have to wait to see.”
The dynamic is also playing out further down-ballot, where Daniel Lander — a 35-year-old former aide to Boston Mayor Michelle Wu — is trying to unseat one of the state Senate’s top Democrats in William Brownsberger, a 69-year-old Belmont Democrat who’s held his seat since 2012.
“We have the opportunity to send a very loud message to Senate leadership that the status quo is broken, and that we are tired of waiting,” Lander — flanked by Wu and Hogg (Leaders We Deserve is also backing the Fenway Democrat) — told a crowd of more than two dozen supporters huddled in a Brighton park just before dusk Monday.
There’s no shortage of other baggage in that race. Lander launched his campaign after Brownsberger opposed the property tax legislation that Wu repeatedly tried to push through Beacon Hill, and the mayor’s presence — and her long-running fight with Beacon Hill — has loomed over the campaign.
But Lander has sought to make the broader anti-status quo argument his own, casting the race as a test of whether business as usual on Beacon Hill is working, alongside a rare collection of labor groups willing to break with an incumbent to back his bid. Brownsberger has touted his experience, backing from Governor Maura Healey, and the ability to “to get a lot done.”
“This race,” Hogg said, “can send a shockwave through one of the least productive state legislatures in the country.”
The outcome of Massachusetts’s Democratic Senate primary, which winds to a close on Tuesday, may hinge on whether it’s hit with a late injection of something the race has so far lacked. Urgency.
“I was just walking around Wakefield,” Moulton said. “I couldn’t take 10 steps without someone coming up to me and saying, ‘Hey, thanks for being here, and thanks for running.’” Here’s how Markey and Moulton spent their final days on the campaign trail.
Could that be? Healey’s sister and top aide attended a rival GOP candidate’s event, posed for selfie by Samantha J. Gross, The Boston Globe: Tara Healey, the governor’s younger sister, confidante, and longtime political adviser, attended GOP candidate Michael Minogue’s campaign event Sunday on Plum Island, where Minogue’s staff snapped a photo of the two and later posted it Monday to his social media account — albeit without identifying Tara Healey or indicating that Minogue knew he had posed with one of his chief rival’s top campaign staff members.
Minogue is vying for the GOP nomination, and the chance to face Healey in November, against Brian Shortsleeve in Tuesday’s primary.
Why is former Republican governor Charlie Baker backing Democratic state Representative Christopher Markey over his Republican opponent in the open Bristol County district attorney’s race?
Markey, Baker told the Globe’s Joan Vennochi in an email, “is just a good human being. … He treated the [lieutenant governor], me, and members of our administration with kindness and good will from the moment we took office. He didn’t need to do any of that. He just did. And the people I knew and got to know from the Southcoast said he treated me the same way he treats everybody.”
The federal races aren’t the only ones to watch Tuesday. Here’s a geographic tour around the region’s other hot contests:
In addition to Lander, Nick Collins is facing a Wu-backed challenge from Dorchester’s Latoya Gayle. (Another Democrat, Juwan Skeens, is also running). Both contests have drawn plenty of attention as a proxy battle of sorts between the mayor and sitting Democratic legislators she’s feuded with.
There’s a third Boston-area primary worth watching, too: state Senator Mike Rush is facing Persis Yu, a Hyde Park attorney running to his left. Wu, notably, has endorsed the incumbent in that race.
Just outside the city, state Representative John Lawn is enmeshed in what’s been an occasionally acrimonious race with Newton City Councilor Alison Leary. The two faced off in a debate late in July where things got heated, according to The Newton Beacon.
In the Cambridge/Somerville, there’s a bit of musical chairs underway, along with a redux of one of last cycle’s most closely watched races.
State Senator Patricia Jehlen’s impending retirement drew a crowded Democratic field: state Representatives Erika Uyterhoeven and Christine Barber, Somerville City Councilor Matt McLaughlin and Cambridge City Councilor Burhan Azeem are all vying for her seat, which covers all of Somerville and parts of Cambridge, Medford, and Winchester. Jehlen is backing Barber in a race where the candidates are all some shade of progressive.
That race has also opened up competition down-ballot. Three Democrats — Somerville City Councilor Will Mbah, software engineer Paul Ruseau, and Chris Oates, founder of data-analysis startup Legislata — are competing to replace Barber, while Somerville City Councilor Ben Ewen-Campen and Olivia Gilligan-Corsetti, a former staffer for Healey, are facing off for Uyterhoeven’s seat.
Meanwhile, state Representative Marjorie Decker is facing a rematch with Democratic Socialists of America-backed Evan MacKay, who she narrowly defeated in 2024, in another of the state’s uber-liberal districts.
State Senator Jason Lewis’s impending departure in Boston’s northern suburbs has set off a scramble between three Democrats: state Representative Kate Lipper-Garabedian, who Healey endorsed; Malden City Councilor Carey McDonald, who’s getting a boost from the Working Families Party; and Malden City Councilor Ryan O’Malley, who has the backing of the Massachusetts Teachers Association.
Voters in Methuen and Lawrence will have a chance to weigh in on state Representative Francisco Paulino’s political fate after he was arrested last week for allegedly scheming to steal more than $700,000 in federal pandemic relief funds. Paulino, who has pleaded not guilty, is facing Lawrence City Councilor Celina Reyes in Tuesday’s primary.
Among the House’s newest members, state Representative Dru Tarr — who won a special election to fill the seat formerly held by his late boss, former state Representative Ann-Margaret Ferrante — is facing a primary challenge from Sarah Wilkinson, who is backed by state Auditor Diana DiZoglio.
To the south, Republican Mark Townsend, chair of the Carver Select Board, is looking to unseat first-term GOP state Representative John Gaskey, one of the Legislature’s most conservative members.
And in Springfield, public school teacher Johnnie McKnight is spoiling for a rematch with state Representative Bud Williams after Williams beat him by 245 votes in the 2024 primary. Nicole Coakley, a mental health clinician, is also running in the Democratic primary. We’ll have the results of State House races here after polls close at 8 p.m.
Competitive primaries for district attorney also abound this year.
In Suffolk County, Kevin Hayden is heading into a winner-take-all September Democratic primary against Rachael Rollins, the former district attorney who resigned from her subsequent job as US attorney amid scandal three years ago, and Linda Champion, who’s backed by the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association.
Norfolk County’s open district attorney’s race is a bigger free-for-all. Seven Democrats are competing for the nomination to replace outgoing District Attorney Michael W. Morrissey, whose long tenure has been eclipsed more recently by the high-profile Karen Read trial.
And in Middlesex County, David Solet, a former prosecutor who recently led the office’s cold case unit, is challenging District Attorney Marian Ryan, whom Solet served alongside and under for more than 20 years before he resigned last year to challenge her.
