By Nolan D. McCaskill
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, a Democrat who has sometimes bucked his party’s leadership, said he is considering a possible run for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts next year, setting up what could be a high-profile intra-party midterm contest against Senator Ed Markey.
A move by Moulton, 46, to challenge Markey, who has served in Congress for a half-century, would be the latest example of a push for generational change within the Democratic Party, where aging leaders have been criticized for being unwilling to make way for the next generation.
“While I continue to look at the best options to represent Massachusetts moving forward,” Moulton, a Marine Corps veteran first elected to Congress in 2014, said in a statement, “I have not yet made a decision about running for U.S. Senate.”
It would not be the first time Moulton has bucked party orthodoxy. He was one of the first few elected Democrats last year to call on Democrat Joe Biden to end his re-election campaign after a disastrous debate performance against now-President Donald Trump.
Republicans hold a 53-47 Senate majority and are favored to retain a majority in the chamber in next year’s midterm election. Four incumbent Democrats ranging in age from 66 to 80 have announced their retirements, including Senator Gary Peters in Michigan, a state Trump won.
Democrats also must defend Senator Jon Ossoff in Georgia, which Trump won, and would need to win states such as North Carolina and Maine and a pair of strongly Republican states such as Ohio and Texas to reclaim the majority.
Markey was elected to the House of Representatives in a 1976 special election. He has served in the upper chamber since winning a 2013 special election to complete the remainder of Secretary of State John Kerry’s Senate term.
(Reporting by Nolan D. McCaskillEditing by Scott Malone and Peter Graff)
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