Rep. Seth Moulton talks Senate campaign and science policy
Moulton, 47, is primarying the 79-year-old Ed Markey, who was elected to Congress nearly 50 years ago
Photo courtesy of Seth Moulton's campaign
Representative Seth Moulton, Democrat from Massachusetts, is vying for his party’s nomination for the Senate in September against incumbent Senator Ed Markey with a campaign largely focused around age. Moulton, 47, is primarying the 79-year-old Markey, who was elected to Congress nearly 50 years ago.
This is not the first time Moulton has jostled with incumbents in his party. His entry to Washington in 2015 came shortly after he defeated former congressman John Tierney in a primary, despite the latter’s rapport with the Democratic establishment.
This is also not the first time Markey has faced a younger primary challenger either. Six years ago, Markey successfully warded off then-Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III, who similarly targeted the Senator’s age. If Markey wins again this time, he will serve until age 86.
In this primary, Markey appears to have most of the Democratic establishment’s support, with endorsements from Senator Elizabeth Warren and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu. Meanwhile, Moulton has occasionally veered away from his party’s playbook: in 2024, Moulton was criticized by others in his party for suggesting that transgender athletes should not compete in women’s sports.
Moulton, who represents Massachusetts’s sixth congressional district, which covers the northeastern corner of the state, previously served as a Captain in the U.S. Marine Corps and completed four tours in Iraq. He was born in Salem, MA, and holds a bachelor’s degree in physics and master’s degrees in business administration and public policy from Harvard.
On Sunday, March 1, The Tech conducted an in-person interview with the Massachusetts congressman on his campaign, platform, and positions.
The following has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
The Tech: A big part of your campaign is the age issue: your opponent Senator Markey is 79 and you’re 47. Why is this something that young people should care enough about to go and take the time to vote for you in the primary?
Moulton: Because this is a time in America when change can’t wait. The same old playbook in the Democratic Party has gotten us a second term from Trump, and he’s hurting a lot of people all across America. So this isn’t a time when we’re knocking it out of the park as Democrats. It’s time when we need to change.
There’s a new generation of leaders who are stepping up in the party all across the country and right here in Massachusetts, who want to take us forward, who are not just going to fight for the next five years, but for the next generation. I think that’s the kind of leadership we need right now.
TT: Other than age, are there policy positions that you and Senator Markey clash on? Can you also elaborate more on your plans for bettering affordability and housing — Massachusetts is not a cheap state, especially for college students.
Moulton: I have the most progressive and aggressive affordability agenda of any elected official today, because people in Massachusetts are really hurting. It plants the flag at the ground. It says that housing, healthcare and education should be human rights. I think those should be our “3 for 30” in response to Republicans’ Project 2025. If we show that kind of leadership on the issues, as opposed to just opposition to Trump, then we can win a lot more elections and get a lot more voters to our side.
But there are a lot of other differences between myself and Senator Markey as well. I’m not going to vote for Senator [Chuck] Schumer. I think we need new leadership from the top on down in the Senate. I founded Serve America, an organization that’s helped flip 24 seats from red to blue all across America, and we brought amazing new leaders to Congress as a result of that. So I don’t think it’s enough just to get yourself reelected. You should fight to build the whole Democratic team.
And I’m also not going to vote for Marco Rubio to be Secretary of State. You know, I’m not going to vote to go to war in Iraq like the Senator did. That was a huge mistake, naively believing the lies of the Bush administration.
TT: A lot of folks at MIT are worried about the scientific funding cuts under the current administration. You come from a STEM background. If you’re elected to the Senate, what will you try to do about this? And have you done anything in this vein to promote science and research during your time in the House?
Moulton: Yeah, I’ve done a lot, because there aren’t many scientists or people with a science degree, even in Washington. We need to invest more heavily in scientific research, especially basic scientific research. There’s a lot of push for just, okay, the private sector can do this. But they’re not going to afford the risky, cutting edge scientific research that really drives innovation, and, frankly, drives our economy, all across the board. So we need to keep up that funding.
There are opportunities to [invest] in a bipartisan way so that [the funding] doesn’t get cut when a Republican president comes into office. And that’s something that I’ve been working on, too. The Armed Services Committee actually funds a fair bit of scientific research funding, and so that’s something I support there.
TT: Many immigrants and international students come to Massachusetts because of its research ecosystem. But now they’re worried about some of the federal policy changes. Do you think it’s important that America remains open to foreign talent?
Moulton: Immigration is our secret sauce — that’s what makes America so competitive across the world. What Trump is doing by persecuting immigrants is not just un-American, against our values, and against our laws. It’s also really harmful to our innovation agenda. I mean, you look at so many top companies and they were founded by immigrants. It’s an unbelievably shortsighted, politically expedient program, and I think you got to make that case a bit more broadly.
Democrats like to talk about how immoral [persecuting immigrants] is, but we need to talk also about how it hurts our economy and how it hurts information, and lift up stories of immigrants who are such a part of America’s leadership and science and technology.
TT: Secretary Hegseth announced recently that the Pentagon is cutting academic ties with MIT, Harvard, and other top universities due to them being “woke.” You went to Harvard, and you’ve served in the military. What do you make of that decision?
Moulton: I’ve really encouraged my alma mater Harvard and other universities as well to fight. Don’t just take this lying down. Let’s be clear: he’s preventing officers in the military from going to institutions that they applied to. You know, the military is not forcing them to go to Harvard. It’s individual officers who say, I want to go to that school, right? So they’re the ones who are applying. And Hegseth thinks he’s smarter than all the rest of them, but actually I think he’s really dumb.
TT: You served in Iraq and you’ve made statements condemning the Iran strikes by drawing parallels. Can you elaborate on your position and what these foreign policy developments might mean for young Americans?
Moulton: What they could mean is another endless war. There are two foundational problems with the Iraq War. One is that it was based on a lie about nuclear weapons. Similarly, Trump is obviously lying about Iran’s nuclear program, because he said he obliterated it. Yet now, just months later, we’re going back to attacking again. And number two, there is clearly no plan in Iraq for the day after: what comes next.
Hope is not a strategy. All we’re getting from Trump right now is bombs and bluster. And that’s not guaranteeing regime change or no nuclear weapons program or anything else. So we need to see a plan and a strategy for this war, and there’s no one who deserves that more than our troops. They’re our troops who are asked to risk their lives for something that we don’t even understand.
TT: You went from STEM to politics. Has studying physics in college helped you think about your day to day in Congress differently?
Moulton: Absolutely, because I think we do make a lot of decisions about science-based things. And to have so many people in Washington who have backgrounds as lawyers or social scientists or just students of politics, as opposed to actual people who studied science and math, that’s a problem. I think we need more people in Washington who understand science and math to bring a more rational [instead of] political decision making calculus.