The Senate seat held by Sen. Ed Markey became one of the most watched seats in the country after Rep. Joe Kennedy III announced his intention to challenge Markey in the 2020 elections.
In his campaign video, Kennedy said he was running to bring “generational change” to the Senate, but some, like Miles Howard, the author of “The Early Voters: Millennials, in Their Own Words, on the Eve of a New America,'' said millennials may be more likely to throw their support behind Markey.
“It’s ideas and policies that drive [millennials] to the polls,” Howard said during an interview with Boston Public Radio on Wednesday. “I think that with Markey and Kennedy, you’re actually going to see more millennials rally around Markey at this point because he is the co-author of the Green New Deal, which is the most transformative piece of climate change legislation in American history.”
Stephanie Murray, a reporter for Politico and the author of the Massachusetts Politico Playbook, also said that while Kennedy is part of one of the most prominent American political dynasties in history, he also has to convince voters that he is more than just the heir to Robert F. Kennedy.
“We all know the Kennedy name, but it’s going to be his job over the next 12 months to kind of fill in the form to show what kind of Kennedy he actually is,” Murray said on Wednesday.
In 2018, more millennials were elected to Congress than any time in history. Many won their seats from incumbents, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who ousted a five-term incumbent to win her seat. Howard, however, said that the race between Kennedy and Markey is different. According to him, Kennedy’s large net worth and relatively moderate positioning on issues like climate change will make him less likely to garner support with millennials, who, he said, lean more towards the left.
“What we saw in 2018 was a lot of millennial insurgents from very humble backgrounds finding the audacity and the grassroots support to challenge incumbents quite often from the left on the idea that those incumbents were not working for ordinary people anymore,” Howard said. “Joe Kennedy, while a millennial himself, has been more lukewarm in supporting transformational policies.”
Murray also said the race is currently a toss-up. Though Kennedy is leading Markey in early polling, Murray said that much could change in the race between now and September 2020, and that both will have to overcome the obstacle of generating turnout for an election that isn’t happening the same day as a presidential contest.
“The Senate primary between Joe Kennedy and Ed Markey isn’t going to happen in November or on Super Tuesday. It’s going to be in September,” Murray said. “The challenge for them is to jack up turnout when Donald Trump is not specifically on the ballot.”
