Socialist Joe Tache On General Election Against Ed Markey: "A Vote for Ed Markey Is a Vote for the Status Quo"

Ed Markey is the Democratic nominee. Joe Tache, running as a third party candidate with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, will be challenging him this November 3rd. He is on the path to the general election having raised $270,995.84 with no corporate money and no PAC money — and polling at 7%, with 73% of voters saying they still don't know his name. Starting this month, that changes.

[Boston, MA] — Ed Markey won the Democratic primary last night, hoping to extend a congressional career that began in 1976 — and with it the Democratic Party's standing promise that change is one more election away. At a time when voters in Massachusetts are leaving both the Democratic and Republican parties in record numbers, socialist candidate Joe Tache is running a different kind of campaign: one that builds the movement it’ll take to break the two-party system and end the rule of the billionaires.

"Ed Markey has won a lot of elections," said Tache. "But how much closer are we to universal healthcare and a Green New Deal than we were fifty years ago? I've spent this year knocking on doors across Massachusetts, and what I hear is people who can't afford their premiums. I know what the summers feel like now. Fifty years hasn't changed either one."

The Green New Deal, his signature policy, was introduced in 2019 and has never received a real vote in the seven years since.

"The Democrats don't have solutions to the problems we're living through," said Tache, "because they're funded by the people who create those problems. The war profiteers, the insurers, the private equity firms buying up hospitals — those are the Democratic Party donors. They are who the Democratic Party represents. A vote for Ed Markey is a vote for the status quo."

Tache was the first candidate to get on the general election ballot. His campaign collected over 20,000 signatures in 15 days with no paid canvassers. He has raised $270,995.84 in individual contributions, surpassing the requirement set by GBH and Boston 25 to participate in their general election debate this fall. 

The first public poll ever to name him, released by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center on August 26, put Tache at 7% — with 73% of voters saying they didn't know enough about him to have an opinion. Under Massachusetts law, a political designation whose candidate wins 3% of the vote statewide becomes an officially recognized political party with a ballot line through 2028. "Socialism and Liberation" has never held that status, and the only public poll of this race puts Tache at more than twice the threshold.

Beginning this month, the campaign will go on the radio, on billboards and on streaming for the first time, alongside the social and search advertising it has run to date.

"I'm not an establishment politician making empty promises," said Tache. "I'm not asking anyone in Massachusetts to settle. A vote for me is a commitment – it says you're in on the movement it's going to take to end the rule of billionaires and guarantee housing, healthcare, education and a dignified life for all of us."