Markey Wins Massachusetts Senate Seat

As expected, Congressman Ed Markey easily defeated businessman and former Navy SEAL Gabriel Gomez to become the next Senator from Massachusetts:

Ed Markey has won the Massachusetts special Senate election, keeping both Bay State Senate seats in Democratic hands and denying Republican Gabriel Gomez’s bid to repeat of Scott Brown’s stunning upset of 2010.

Markey led by 10 percentage points, 55 percent to 45 percent, with 99 percent of precincts reporting.

His victory in the deep-blue state was almost universally expected: Gomez a former Navy SEAL and investor, never caught fire despite his attempt to portray himself as a new kind of moderate Republican. And Democrats went all out to avoid another GOP upset, pouring in millions of dollars and sending some of the party’s top surrogates to the state to campaign for Markey, including President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton

Markey has held a solid lead in this race for quite some time, and Gomez never showed any signs of being able to launch the kind of insurgent campaign that Scott Brown did in 2010, so it’s not entirely surprising that this happened. Senator-Elect Markey will enter the Senate a freshman, but thanks to his time in Congress he’ll have more Washington experience than many members of the Senate who’ve been there since the Reagan Administration. It will be interesting to see what impact that has on his role in the body.

Now, the nation’s attention when it comes to Special Elections will switch to New Jersey.

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Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. edmondo says:

    Ed Markey got his gold watch.

    How exciting — not.

  2. al-Ameda says:

    Gomez a former Navy SEAL and investor, never caught fire despite his attempt to portray himself as a new kind of moderate Republican.

    By branding himself a RINO he managed to get 45% of the vote – that’s not bad. Imagine if he’d embraced new Republicanism – what do you think, 27%?

  3. CSK says:

    @al-Ameda:

    Well, if he’d run around the state screeching about the evils of abortion, contraception, and gay marriage, he MIGHT have garnered a hefty 15% of the vote.