Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed Sen. Ed Markey in the Massachusetts Democratic Senate primary, rallying behind the 80-year-old progressive incumbent just two weeks before voters decide whether to replace him with a younger, more moderate challenger.
Markey's campaign released the endorsement statement from the New York congresswoman ahead of the September 1 primary, where the longtime senator faces Rep. Seth Moulton, a 47-year-old Democrat who has positioned himself as a generational-change candidate. Early voting opens August 22 and runs through August 28, giving the endorsement a narrow window to shape the race.
The move is a repeat for Ocasio-Cortez, who backed Markey during his last primary cycle as well, a 2020 race in which the senator defeated Joe Kennedy III with roughly 54 percent of the vote, marking the first time a Kennedy had ever lost a congressional race in Massachusetts.
Ocasio-Cortez framed her support around the Green New Deal, the sweeping climate and economic proposal she and Markey co-introduced in February 2019. That resolution failed a Senate procedural vote 57, 0, a fact that did not stop either lawmaker from making it the centerpiece of their shared political identity.
Ocasio-Cortez, in the statement released by Markey's campaign, cast the race as a fight against corporate influence.
"At a time when powerful special interests are making life harder for everyday Americans, Massachusetts working families need a champion in the U.S. Senate to stand up for them and fight corporate greed. Ed Markey has spent his career doing exactly that, from our partnership on the Green New Deal to running his campaign without accepting a dime of corporate PAC money."
That "corporate PAC money" claim is a campaign assertion, not an independently verified fact. And the claim has drawn scrutiny before. During the 2020 primary, Kennedy accused Markey of refusing to sign the same anti-outside-money pledge Kennedy had signed, and charged that Markey "already allowed dark money to infiltrate this race." Billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer, who had poured more than $26 million into his own super PAC, NextGen Climate Action, endorsed Markey in that cycle.
Markey returned the praise in his own statement, calling Ocasio-Cortez one of the "most inspiring leaders" in the party's toughest fights.
"We introduced the Green New Deal to tackle the climate crisis, lower costs, and build an economy that works for working people, not corporations and billionaires. I am incredibly proud to have her endorsement and look forward to continuing to fight alongside her for the livable future we deserve."
The mutual admiration society between the two progressives has been on display for years. As recently as February 2024, Markey and Ocasio-Cortez held a joint press conference at the U.S. Capitol celebrating the five-year anniversary of the Green New Deal. In September 2023, they appeared together at a news conference promoting the American Climate Corps.
Moulton, who has served in the House since 2015, represents a sharply different wing of the Democratic Party. August polling showed Markey leading Moulton by 28 points, with other surveys placing the gap between 5 and 17 points. Moulton has not responded publicly to the Ocasio-Cortez endorsement, at least not in any statement captured in the reporting.
The age gap alone tells a story. Markey turned 80 this year. He has served in the Senate since mid-July 2013 and spent more than 36 years in the House before that, a combined tenure in Congress that stretches back to the Carter administration. Moulton is 47 and will turn 48 in October.
The race has also been shaped by a debate over transgender athletes, with Moulton drawing national attention for comments about his daughters competing against transgender athletes, a topic that has cut across party lines and put progressive orthodoxy on defense in races across the country. Moulton has positioned himself as a more centrist, generational-change candidate, a posture that puts him at odds with the Ocasio-Cortez wing of the party.
That ideological fault line is familiar territory. Insurgent left-wing Democrats have captured key primaries in recent cycles, pulling the party further from the center and leaving moderate incumbents scrambling to hold ground.
Ocasio-Cortez's endorsement carries real currency among progressive voters and small-dollar donors. Her backing of Markey in 2020 helped the senator overcome a well-funded Kennedy challenge, and her social media reach gives any endorsement an outsized amplifier effect.
But the endorsement also ties Markey more tightly to the most progressive faction of the Democratic Party at a moment when that faction's national standing is contested. Ocasio-Cortez has faced questions about her own political future, including whether she will pursue a 2028 presidential bid, a prospect that has divided even her own ideological allies.
The 2020 Markey-Kennedy primary exposed similar tensions. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi endorsed Kennedy, prompting Ocasio-Cortez to accuse Pelosi of hypocrisy. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had previously blacklisted firms that worked with left-wing candidates challenging Democratic incumbents. When Pelosi backed a challenger to a progressive incumbent, Ocasio-Cortez fired back on social media: "No one gets to complain about primary challenges again."
That episode underscored a pattern: Ocasio-Cortez uses endorsements not just to support candidates but to enforce progressive discipline within the party. Her backing of Markey is less about Massachusetts and more about signaling that the left's policy agenda, the Green New Deal, corporate PAC bans, climate spending, remains the litmus test for acceptable Democratic politics.
Within the broader progressive movement, Democratic Socialists have rallied behind Ocasio-Cortez as a standard-bearer, though even that coalition has shown cracks over how far left the party should move.
The July 8 debate between Markey and Moulton at a western Massachusetts television station offered voters a direct comparison. But with Markey holding double-digit leads across multiple polls, the endorsement from Ocasio-Cortez may function less as a decisive intervention and more as a consolidation play, locking down the progressive base ahead of early voting.
Fox News Digital reported the endorsement alongside an embedded video segment featuring Laura Ingraham discussing Ocasio-Cortez, though the segment's full content was not detailed beyond its title.
For Moulton, the math is bleak. He is outpolled, outflanked on the left, and now faces the added headwind of the progressive movement's most prominent endorser rallying behind his opponent. Whether the party's internal ideological battles eventually catch up with candidates like Markey remains an open question, but not one that September 1 is likely to answer.
When a party's idea of fresh energy is an 80-year-old senator endorsed by the same congresswoman who backed him last time, on the strength of the same proposal that got zero Senate votes, voters can draw their own conclusions about where the ideas have gone.
