On Tuesday, business executive Steve Pemberton announced that he would challenge Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey in the Democratic primary. Pemberton argued this week that, while he didn’t see himself as “fundamentally different” from Markey on most issues, his struggles growing up will give him a perspective and an urgency to fix problems that the incumbent doesn’t have. Pemberton declared, “I’m going to reflect the human toll of what happens when policies don’t work.”
The son of a black father and a white mother who both abandoned him at a young age, Pemberton grew up in foster care in the 1970s and 1980s, and he spent two years in an abusive household he described as “more like a prison.” Pemberton was eventually taken in by one of his high school teachers, and he went on to go to college and work for Monster.com and Walgreens. Pemberton went on to write a best-selling memoir called “A Chance in the World,” about his life, which was turned into a movie by the same name in 2017. Pemberton is now a senior official at the human resources software company Workhuman.
Pemberton joins prominent labor attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan, who has been running since May, in the Democratic primary. Like Pemberton, Liss-Riordan largely hasn’t taken issue with Markey’s decades-long voting record, but she’s argued that she’ll present a “fresh perspective” from the incumbent. Liss-Riordan also has declared that Congress needs more women to stand up to Republican attacks on abortion rights.
It only takes a simple plurality to win a primary in Massachusetts so Pemberton and Liss-Riordan may end up helping Markey by splitting the anti-incumbent vote amongst themselves. However, there’s no guarantee that both of them will be on the ballot thanks to an unusual state law. Democratic and Republican candidates for statewide office need to compete at a party convention that usually takes place in the late spring, and they have to win the support of at least 15% of the delegates to advance to the primary.
This rule has eliminated several candidates, including some credible contenders, in the recent past. In the 2014 race for governor, for example, five Democratic candidates arrived at the party convention, but two of them were knocked out of the race by the time the proceedings were done: Former Homeland Security official Juliette Kayyem took fourth place in the balloting with 12% of the delegates, while former health care executive Joe Avellone took only 7%. (Steve Grossman, the state treasurer at the time, edged out Martha Coakley, the state attorney general, 35-23 at the convention but lost the primary to her three months later by a 42-36 margin.)
Beating Markey will also be a very expensive proposition. The incumbent hauled in $1 million during the second quarter of the year, and he had over $4 million in the bank at the end of June. Liss-Riordan raised only $145,000 from donors during her first quarter in the race, but she self-funded another $1 million and had $992,000 to spend.
Want more great elections coverage like this? Sign up for our free daily newsletter, the Morning Digest.
