At first glance, the 2020 Senate race between two Massachusetts Democratic titans resembles an ancient feud out of Edwin O’Connor’s classic novel of Boston politics. In the Last Hurrah, an old, rogue politician named Frank Skiffington runs for mayor one last time and surrounds himself with pals. He stumps at taverns and rallies, and kneels at the casket at every wake. He loses to an earnest young reform candidate.
It’s tempting to reprise history with 73-year old Markey playing the elderly pol, and the 38-year old Kennedy as the fresh-faced hopeful. Boston College guy Markey against the Stanford and Harvard educated Kennedy, the pol with the golden surname.
But it’s not the middle of the 20th Century. Besides his age, there isn’t a whole lot in Markey’s record that should make him vulnerable in a cobalt-blue state. He’s been a leader on telecommunications, consumer protection and environmental matters. He has a staunch liberal record; the left-leaning Americans for Democratic Action gave Markey’s voting record a 95 percent rating; Kennedy’s was 85 percent. He’s co-sponsored climate change measures with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has endorsed him.
Markey isn’t facing ethics challenges and has been attentive to home-state needs. Yours truly bumped into the senator at a Red Sox spring training game in Florida this season on the day a University of Massachusetts alumni group was holding an event at Jet Blue Park.
First elected to the House in 1976, Markey served a long apprenticeship there before running successfully for the Senate in when John Kerry left the seat to become secretary of state during the second Obama Administration. He comfortably won a full term in 2014.
Yet the early polls show Kennedy with a lead. He won House election in 2012, and attracted attention from his first day in office. Kennedy represents a gerrymandered district carved for his predecessor, Barney Frank. It runs from the liberal white-collar Boston suburbs of Brookline and Newton down to the faded ethnic textile cities of Taunton and Fall River. He has been helpful to colleagues, leveraging his famous surname to help raise Democratic campaign money.
He, too, has been accessible to constituents. In 2018, he delivered from a factory floor in Fall River the Democratic response to President Trump’s State of the Union. He was unopposed for reelection that year.
So far, the differences have mostly been on emphasis. Kennedy pushes his family’s advocacy of working-class economics, such as health care and support for organized labor. A crucial element will be where unions come down.
Kennedy is the grandson of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the son of a congressman. He seems to have none of the habits that have soiled other members of America’s most prominent Democratic dynasty; he doesn’t drink and there have no reports of womanizing.
This campaign has already gotten chippy. Markey and Kennedy are fighting over who is tougher on taking campaign money from corporate political action committees. The Democratic donor class isn’t happy about this campaign because it will drain millions that could be used in other states where the party could flip Republican seats. “So I’m supposed to get Joe Kennedy elected to beat my friend Ed Markey,” groused a top lobbyist and fund-raiser who doesn’t want to be identified, as he left a Providence watering hole Thursday evening. “It’s a waste of money.”
Kennedy needs to make this about more than ambition. Markey must show he’s still up to the job and win over the lunch-bucket liberals of organized labor.
Polls show Kennedy harvesting support from young voters and baby-boomers, those who remember precisely where they were on November 22, 1963.
Some of those remember when Joe Kennedy’s 30-year old uncle Ted Kennedy, when had never held any public office, ran in a Democratic U.S. Senate primary in 1962 against state Attorney General Edward McCormack, the favorite nephew of U.S. House Speaker John McCormack.
That year Kennedy –whose full name was Edward Moore Kennedy-was taunted by McCormack in a televised debate. “If your name was Eddie Moore, your candidacy would be a joke,” McCormack said.
Kennedy won the primary with 69 percent of the vote.
Jennifer Duffy of the non-partisan Cook Political Report says this contest may boil down to a topic that hasn’t been much mentioned in the media. “What support do you still get from having the last name Kennedy.”
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