FILE PHOTO: U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) addresses family members and advocates as they gather inside the Lutheran Church of the Reformation near the U.S. Supreme Court after justices supported a Republican-backed ban in Tennessee on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, during a rally in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 18, 2025. REUTERS/Annabelle Gordon/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) descends down the House entrance stairs following the Friends of Ireland reception on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 12, 2020. REUTERS/Tom Brenner/File Photo

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. He also joined a group of House Democrats who pushed for then-Democratic leader U.S. Representative Nancy Pelosi to step down from leadership.

Pelosi, 85, and her leadership team — Representatives Steny Hoyer, 86, of Maryland and Jim Clyburn, 85, of South Carolina — stepped aside after the 2022 midterm election but continue to serve in Congress.

Moulton told The New York Times after the 2024 election that his party spends too much time trying to be inoffensive instead of "brutally honest." He told the newspaper he did not want his two daughters to get 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."

Republicans hold a 53-47 Senate majority and are favored to retain a majority in the chamber in next year's midterm election. Control of the House of Representatives will also be up for grabs and is expected to be a close contest.

The retirements of Senators Dick Durbin of Illinois, Gary Peters of Michigan, Tina Smith of Minnesota and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire have opened the door for younger contenders to run for statewide office. Unlike in Massachusetts, the races for those seats are expected to be highly competitive in the general election, raising the stakes for the party primary contests in which Democrats will choose new faces to represent them in Washington.

The openings have attracted a field of largely millennial and Generation X center-left and progressive candidates, including five U.S. representatives, two lieutenant governors, a state senator and a Senator Bernie Sanders-endorsed former county health official.

Democrats must also 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. McCaskill; Editing by Scott Malone, Peter Graff and Daniel Wallis)