Two days before voters decide whether to send him back to Washington, Ed Markey was in Scarborough, Maine, using a fireside chat to argue that President Trump has "declared war on the New England economy." The 80-year-old senator said the answer will require "someone who is a climate champion," a "great working-class warrior," and a "champion to take on billionaires."
He was not talking about himself. He was talking around Troy Jackson, the Maine Democratic Senate nominee, and the message fit the event around him on Sunday: a campaign stop in a banquet hall in a beachside community in Southern Maine, with Jackson's banner calling for Medicare for All and a fight against corporate power. Jackson is running against Republican incumbent Susan Collins, and Markey's appearance gave his campaign a national sheen at a moment when every Senate race is being watched for what it might mean in Washington, D.C.
The visit also showed how Markey is choosing to spend the final stretch of his own race. A Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll last month found him leading John Deaton by nearly 30 percentage points, giving him room to spend time outside Massachusetts even as his name remains on the ballot. That same freedom has made him more visible on the Democratic Party's left wing, where he has backed like-minded candidates in recent months and used his profile to try to help shape the chamber after Election Day.
That role has not always come naturally to him. Markey has historically been viewed as less of a kingmaker than Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and one of his own rivals, Seth Moulton, criticized him for not doing enough to help Democrats nationwide. But Markey's defenders say he has found his lane. He did a fund-raiser for Peggy Flanagan during her primary, took part in an event in Washington, D.C., and a virtual rally for Sherrod Brown in September, and joined a virtual volunteer call for Abdul El-Sayed last week. Mark Horan said those moves help "amplify the fact that he's a leader of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party," and added that Markey "sees a fire burning on issues that he's been working on all his life and wants to go and stoke the fire because there's a chance for a pretty big victory here — both for Democrats and also for progressives."
Markey has said that if elected, his next term would be his last, which makes the question less about whether he is building a future national operation than about how he wants to spend his final chapter. On Sunday, he answered it in plain sight: by standing with Jackson, speaking for the progressive cause, and leaving the voters in Massachusetts to decide whether they want one more term from a senator who is already acting as if the fight is bigger than his own race.
