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DEDHAM — Two Massachusetts political heavyweights came to proverbial blows during a debate Monday night in the runup to the U.S. Senate Democratic primary.
Incumbent Sen. Ed Markey and U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton traded barbs on finances and discussed topics ranging from affordability to the federal mass deportation campaign to high speed rail to healthcare reform.
The often testy exchange marked a significant escalation in tensions between the two from the first debate on July 8 in Chicopee.
The most notable moment came just past the halfway point when debate moderators Kerry Kavanaugh of Boston 25 and Adam Reilly of GBH News gave the candidates a chance to ask the other a question. Moulton’s question appeared to catch Markey by surprise.
“In the newly released Epstein files, your name appears repeatedly,” Moulton said to the senator. “Why would you even take a meeting with a lobbyist on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein?”
Markey, who has served in the U.S. Congress since 1977, seemed caught off guard.
“What you are doing right now is absolutely reprehensible,” Markey responded on stage. “I have never met Jeffrey Epstein. I have never had any relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. I had no business with him.
“What you’re doing is the worst kind of character assassination,” he added.
The communications in question involved a 2015 email from Bob Crowe, a lobbyist working for Epstein, who was hired to lobby for the release of Karim Wade, the son of former Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, imprisoned at the time on charges of illicit enrichment, according to a news release Tuesday morning from the Moulton campaign.
In that email, Crowe said he had “an initial briefing” with Markey on the matter, but there is no further mention of the senator in the publicly available files related to the matter. The remainder of Markey’s mentions in the files come from newsletters and general email blast invites to fundraising events. No information in the publicly available files demonstrated that Markey was aware of Epstein’s involvement.
In a news release after the debate, it was Markey’s turn to wage accusations. He pointed out that Moulton had received three donations totaling $2,000 from Crowe between 2015 and 2020.
Markey called the move an attempt to distract from questions around investments made by the congressman into companies such as Divergent, Oura, and WebAI that he oversees as a member of the House Armed Services Committee. The investments have since grown to be worth at least $1 million. Moulton said in June that he will recuse himself from voting on anything that might benefit the three companies.
“It is a desperate attempt to distract from a new report that revealed how he is making millions of dollars off investments with defense companies before his congressional committee,” Markey said in the email. “Let’s be clear: Seth Moulton used sexual assault and human trafficking victims to score cheap political points tonight. I stand with victims of sexual assault and human trafficking.”
John Deaton, the only person vying for the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate seat, took advantage of the discord on stage to issue a news release the next day.
“What we witnessed was not a contest of ideas or a serious discussion of the problems facing working families in this state,” Deaton said. “It was two career politicians arguing over which one is more corrupt than the other.”
Immigration
During the debate, both Markey and Moulton emphasized their bona fides in efforts to resist the policies of the Trump administration and its attempts to further centralize power in the hands of the president.
Chief among those issues is their shared opposition to the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. Both have called for the abolition of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the primary federal agency charged with carrying out the campaign that has seen more than 600,000 booked into ICE detention centers and 23 detainees die in their custody this year.
“I could see its authoritarian personality in its creation,” said Markey, who voted against the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which created ICE. “The correct way to move is to have a pathway to citizenship.
“We need to enforce immigration laws with constitutional protections.”
Markey, who has received the endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Rep. Bill Keating, and New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell for the seat, previously told The Light he supported increasing the judicial independence of the Executive Office for Immigration Review to preserve due process protections.
Moulton largely echoed those sentiments, focusing on a three-point plan that would abolish ICE and prosecute agents who violated the law in the course of their jobs, incentivize legal immigration while disincentivizing illegal immigration, and create a viable path to citizenship for immigrants already living in the U.S.
He also said he supported moving immigration enforcement from the Department of Homeland Security to the Department of Justice, which had authority over immigration until 2003.
“The Washington establishment failed to resolve the issue,” he said. “That allowed Trump to weaponize the issue.”
‘I’m sorry if my comments hurt you’
For weeks, Moulton faced attacks for comments he made in 2024 that blamed the Democrats electoral defeat on “trying not to offend anyone” and seemed to emphasize Democrats’ advocacy for transgender athletes.
In those comments, he told The New York Times, “I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete. But as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”
Moulton made a bid to apologize Monday night.
“To the trans community, feeling the weight and the pain of Trump administration policies, I feel your trauma,” he said, looking into the camera. “And I’m sorry if my comments hurt you. That was not my intention.”
Markey responded by emphasizing the effects of Moulton’s comments.
“[Moulton] blamed the Democratic Party’s defense of trans kids as the reason we lost,” he said. “He threw them under the political bus.”
“We should have been loving those kids,” he added.
Reilly, the GBH News moderator, further pressed Moulton on the matter, asking whether he still feared his daughters would get run over by a trans-male athlete.
“My kids are young,” he said. “They play coed sports.”
The age factor
Much of Moulton’s campaign has focused on contrasting the relative youth of the 47-year-old congressman to Markey’s 80 years, almost 50 of which he has spent in Congress. Moulton repeatedly stressed that he wished to oust Sen. Chuck Schumer from leadership and install a new generation in the party’s vanguard.
“The first vote I take in the U.S. Senate will be not for Senator Schumer,” he said. “Because we need new leadership up top. … There comes a time to pass the torch to the next generation,” he said.
Markey continued, as he has throughout the campaign, to insist on his capacity to continue to serve. The octogenarian has promised that should he win, this would be his last term in office.
In fending off the line of attack, he chose to focus on the future, but said he would step down if he found himself unable to serve in office.
“Any public official should step down if they cannot serve. That is a responsibility,” he said.
The Middle East and affordability
The two men linked the ongoing war in Iran with the ongoing affordability crisis facing the state.
“We have to end the war in Iran, which has resulted in skyrocketing energy prices,” Markey said. “We have to end the war in Iran that’s cascading energy prices onto the tables of Massachusetts.”
The senator emphasized his support for the Green New Deal, which he sponsored alongside U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, as a measure to make Americans’ lives more affordable. He also pointed to his idea for climate banks, later included in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act as a $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to finance projects that mitigate climate risks and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress rescinded its funding in 2025.
Moulton repeatedly went after Markey for his vote in support of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, in which the congressman served as a Marine. Moulton emphasized a need to focus on economic incentives that would generate more electricity within Massachusetts as a way to make the state more affordable.
“We should not vote for more wars in the Middle East like the senator did when he was a congressman,” he said, saying that would improve affordability. The congressman also emphasized a need to incentivize greater wind and solar energy production in Massachusetts.
“It’s a real serious commitment to bringing down prices,” he said.
Reilly asked the candidates whether they believed Israel committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip since 2023.
“Yes, Israel committed war crimes in Gaza,” Markey said. “It is an absolute atrocity. … It is a crime against the laws of the U.S.”
“It is an absolute moral travesty what is going on in Gaza,” Moulton said. “Even in response to the heinous attacks of October 7.”
After the debate, The Light asked Moulton to clarify his comments, and Moulton said he agreed Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza.
Onstage, Moulton touted his recent vote to strike $3.3 billion in military and security aid to Israel from a State Department appropriations bill. The measure failed in the full House.
The third and final debate before the Sept. 1 primary is scheduled for Aug. 20 and will be hosted live on television by WCVB from 8 to 9 p.m. The Boston Globe and WBUR, which will also air the event live on the radio, will co-sponsor.
Kevin G. Andrade can be contacted at kandrade@newbedfordlight.org
