Alex Rikleen of Acton says his bid for the Senate is driven by frustration – frustration that establishment Democrats aren’t acting with urgency to counter the increasing authoritarianism of President Donald Trump and frustration that grassroots Democratic activists have been slighted by leaders.
“Democrats in Washington have been playing it safe. And when - I'm a former history teacher, when an opposition party plays it safe, that is how you lose a democracy," said Rikleen. "And we were seeing organizing on the ground, we were seeing people with national platforms calling for Democrats to do more. The only thing that I felt we were missing was people challenging their jobs because Democrats were ignoring the protests. They were ignoring the national calls to do more.”
Congressman Seth Moulton of the 6th Massachusetts District has launched his own bid to unseat Markey – who, if re-elected, would be 86 at the end of his third term – as a campaign of generational change. Rikleen says Moulton, as a sitting member of an opposition party he considers delinquent, doesn’t offer a real change to Massachusetts voters. He is calling for bold action like using senatorial procedure to disrupt the Trump administration’s appointments.
“Any senator can place a hold on a nominee before their committee," said the candidate. "Senator Markey did that during Trump's first term, and he still hasn't done that during this term. He says that this term is worse. He's upped his language, but he's actually taken a step back in terms of actual action. Other things that one individual Senator can do, all by themselves, is deny unanimous consent and force quorum calls. Those are things that any senator can do to slow down this this administration, and they're not doing it.”
Rikleen describes himself as a progressive, and isn’t framing his challenge to Markey as an ideological one.
“I agree with Senator Markey on most policy positions, but I think that the reality of our current situation is that Democrats are lying to someone," he said. "I don't know if it's to themselves or to their voters, but they're lying to someone when they go out and campaign on these lofty policy positions without addressing the structural issues that are holding back progress."
The candidate highlights three structures he thinks need reform in the United States government, starting with the Supreme Court.
“The Supreme Court is a captured partisan court," said Rikleen. "They issue rulings that contradict themselves to achieve their own partisan objectives in the moment, and you have other members of the court and district judges across the country calling out the ways in which they are making decisions that are not based on law and not based on precedent. That's judge-speak for running around screaming through the town square saying, we are in a crisis.”
The second is the outsized role of money in politics.
“You have a situation where one person, the richest person in the world, paid for, depending on how you calculate it, between a third and half of the winning presidential campaign last cycle," said Rikleen. "That is a totally broken system if that is allowed, and as a result, we spent the first six months of [Trump's] presidency with Elon Musk having way too much control and way too much power over what was happening in this administration.”
The third concerns voting systems. Rikleen says ranked choice voting and nonpartisan primaries would force politicians to tailor policy to wider swaths of the public.
“The reality is, in Massachusetts, almost every election is won by a Democrat, and in a primary you get what, 16% turnout? So, in Massachusetts, the winner of most elections is whoever can get 9% of Democrats to vote," he said. "That's what Massachusetts leaders are currently - they all know that math, that's what they are incentivized to govern towards.”
As an outsider, Rikleen admits he faces a long shot to either fend off Moulton or successfully defeat Markey, who defended his seat against Joe Kennedy III in the 2020 primary. But, in a world where democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani set establishment Democrats ablaze with his historic victory in the New York City mayoral race, Rikleen says he sees a path forward despite the odds.
“Mamdani was at 6% in the polls about six months before his primary date," he said. "There was a poll that came out about a month ago that had me at 6% - that's 11 months before the primary. So yes, obviously I'm a long shot, but I'm tracking ahead of where he was. It is doable.”
The 2026 Democratic primary in Massachusetts is set for September 1st.
The Moulton campaign defended the congressman's efforts to push back against the Trump administration, citing his calls to prosecute ICE agents who break the law while carrying out the president's deportation campaign, the release of the Epstein files, and transparency around strikes on alleged narcotics smugglers in the Caribbean.
The Markey campaign did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
