Seth Moulton’s anti-trans shape-shifting ends in a humiliating blowout in Massachusetts

Rep. Seth Moulton went looking for a promotion and found the exit.

Massachusetts Democrats overwhelmingly rejected the congressman’s bid for U.S. Senate on Tuesday, renominating Sen. Ed Markey after a campaign that turned Moulton’s attacks on transgender athletes into a test of whether a Democrat could betray part of the party’s coalition and call it courage.

It was not close.

Markey received 556,865 votes, or 64.88 percent, compared with Moulton’s 301,372 votes, or 35.12 percent, according to Decision Desk HQ. With 91 percent of the estimated vote reported Wednesday morning, Markey led by 255,493 votes — a nearly 30-point demolition.

Related: Seth Moulton’s anti-trans rhetoric comes back to haunt him in Senate debate with Ed Markey

Moulton, 47, had built his campaign around the proposition that Markey, 80, represented a Democratic Party too old and too comfortable to meet the moment. But the novelty of a politician is not the same as the novelty of their politics. In perhaps the race’s sharpest contrast, the older candidate ran unapologetically in defense of transgender people. The younger one spent much of the campaign explaining why he had not.

“Tonight, anti-trans politics lost,” Tyler Hack, executive director of the Christopher Street Project, said after Markey’s victory. “Massachusetts rejected the idea that attacking transgender people is a shortcut to political power.”

Moulton’s transformation began after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election. The congressman had compiled a long record of supporting LGBTQ+ legislation. Then, as some Democrats searched for a conveniently powerless constituency to blame, Moulton told The New York Times that he did not want his daughters “getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete.”

Related: Pro-trans rival draws cheers after Rep. Seth Moulton booed at Boston No Kings rally

The remark borrowed the right’s preferred fiction: that transgender girls are not girls but dangerous male bodies invading spaces where they do not belong. Moulton presented his willingness to repeat that framing as evidence that he was prepared to have difficult conversations other Democrats supposedly feared.

In a subsequent exclusive interview with The Advocate, Moulton insisted that his intentions were protective. Republicans, he said, had run “hateful but effective ads,” and Democrats risked surrendering the debate if they refused to engage.

Yet Moulton’s legislative record never fit neatly with his rhetoric. He voted against a Republican bill barring transgender students from girls’ and women’s sports. He supported the Equality Act and the Transgender Bill of Rights. He also helped lead a bipartisan effort to save the LGBTQ+ youth service within the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Moulton wanted voters to view those positions as compatible with his attacks on transgender athletes. Many transgender people instead saw an ally looking for the exit the moment allyship appeared politically costly.

The contradiction followed him into the Senate campaign. At Boston’s No Kings rally in October 2025, Moulton was met with boos. Markey appeared draped in a transgender Pride flag and drew loud applause when he declared that “trans rights are human rights.”

By an August debate, Moulton was trying to shape-shift again.

“I deeply recognize your trauma, and I’m sorry if my comments hurt you,” he said, delivering a qualified apology before reciting his LGBTQ+ credentials. Markey replied that Moulton had taken Trump’s playbook and thrown transgender children “under the political bus.” The exchange dragged the comments Moulton wanted to contextualize back into the center of the race.

The Associated Press identified transgender rights as perhaps the campaign’s defining issue. Moulton also attacked Markey’s age, knowledge of artificial intelligence and decades in Washington. But he could never establish that changing generations required abandoning progressive principles — or that a politician offering older prejudices in a younger package constituted progress.

Related: Democrat Seth Moulton defends comments on trans athletes amid backlash (exclusive)

U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, one of Markey’s most prominent surrogates, said Massachusetts had selected a senator who “gives a damn” and “has never wavered in his commitment to workers and families.”

“With Trump and Republicans moving with malice and enacting widespread harm, Massachusetts sent a clear message: We want Democrats who will defend our communities and never back down,” Pressley said in a statement.

The National Federation of Stonewall Democrats issued a similar warning to candidates who view LGBTQ+ rights as negotiable. “Our safety and our dignity are not bargaining chips, and any candidate who treats them that way should expect to lose our support,” federation President Jeremy Comeau said in a statement. “Candidates who stand up for trans kids and defend the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans can win, and win decisively.”

Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson pointed to Markey’s consistency.

“He knows why equality matters,” Robinson said in a statement from HRC’s political action committee. “He’s stood with us no matter what.”

At Markey’s victory celebration, Hack argued that the result carried a lesson beyond Massachusetts.

“We don’t accept a younger politician with older politics,” Hack said. “Equality cannot be something Democrats believe in only when it is easy. Civil rights cannot depend on a focus group.”

Moulton conceded Tuesday night and pledged to support Markey against Republican John Deaton in November. “We didn’t achieve our goal tonight, but I am confident others will be inspired to buck the system when they’re told to wait their turn,” he told supporters.

Moulton gave up his House seat to pursue the Senate, meaning his failed bid is also expected to end his congressional career in January.