Seth Moulton

When he’s out on the trail, U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton talks — a lot — about the need for generational change on Capitol Hill.

In fact, Moulton, D-6th District, has made it the animating principle of his primary campaign against veteran U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass.

“A lot of people in Massachusetts right now feel like they don’t have a voice in our politics. And they need a fighter,” Moulton, of Salem, said during an unusual televised face-off last month against Republican John Deaton, who will face the winner of the intra-party contest in November’s general election.

“They need someone who’s going to change the playbook, bring in a new generation of leadership and start making Democrats win again. That’s exactly why I’m in this race,” Moulton said.

But to hear Markey tell it, Moulton isn’t the new blood he claims to be. In fact, he’s playing the oldest insider’s game there is: He’s gotten rich off the very companies he’s supposed to be regulating.

The issue boiled over when the two Democratic pols faced each other in their first debate at WWLP-TV in Chicopee last week.

And to say that things got chippy is putting it mildly.

“That’s just plain wrong. It should be illegal, and he should divest those investments,” Markey said.

Moulton’s holdings in the smart-ring company Oura, as well as a 3-D printing company with a federal contract and an AI firm that has partnered with the U.S. Army, were first reported by WBUR-FM last month.

Moulton sits on the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, which has oversight of the Pentagon and defense-related issues.

Moulton’s holdings in Oura were valued between $100,001 and $250,000 in 2021, according to financial disclosure filings.

By 2024, they had grown to between $1 million and $5 million, according to another financial disclosure filing.

Moulton’s holdings in Divergent Technologies, the 3-D printing firm, were valued between $50,001 and $100,000, according to that same 2024 disclosure form.

Moulton’s campaign said last month that he was moving those investments into a blind trust, meaning he won’t know what’s happening with them or have any control over them.

The issue is a politically potent one: Polling shows voters aren’t fans of lawmakers using their lofty perches to get a leg up financially. It also has played out in races nationwide.

The larger question is whether voters will be inclined to punish politicians they believe are gaming the system.

Or, if in the age of President Donald Trump, who’s gotten significantly wealthier since returning to the White House in 2025, they believe it’s a part of the cost of doing business.

The short answer? It depends.

Voters may be less focused on the issue in a general election, where broader concerns like partisan control of Congress tend to dominate.

But in a party primary — where candidates share a base of engaged voters and bright-line distinctions are harder to draw — the issue could make a significant difference, UMass Amherst political science professor Ray La Raja said.

“These are primary voters they’re paying a bit more attention, and they’re more engaged,” he said. “And because it’s so hard to distinguish between candidates in one party, sometimes they look for one or two things that distinguish them. So this could be it.”

Markey’s decision to “(point) out Moulton’s successful financial investments is a strategically smart tactic, but this does not resonate with voters the way it once did,” veteran Western Massachusetts political consultant Tony Cignoli said. “Voters have become used to this and even frustrated to accept it as the norm.”

Nonetheless, some are still definitely looking for an angle of attack.

Commonwealth Together PAC, a pro-Markey group, launched a new attack ad last week highlighting a series of votes by Moulton that it says are bad for the state.

That includes the Salem lawmaker’s “long history of siding with private equity, banks and crypto companies at the expense of protecting consumers,” the PAC said in a statement.

It specifically pointed to Moulton’s “yes” vote last year on legislation that eased private fund rules and raised crowdfunding thresholds, according to one analysis.

A battery of labor groups opposed the bill, arguing that it advanced the goals of the conservative governing blueprint known as “Project 2025.”

Moulton, meanwhile, has attacked what he’s described as Markey’s lack of transparency regarding his family’s personal finances, arguing that Markey’s net worth had ballooned by 876% over his five decades on Capitol Hill and that he had become a multimillionaire while in office.

The Malden Democrat released his 2025 tax return last month, reporting $250,263 in income — the largest portion of which came from U.S. Senate salary — last year. He also reported donating $8,850 to charity.

The tax documents notably do not include any financial information about his wife, Susan Blumenthal, who is a doctor and a former U.S. assistant surgeon general.

Markey’s 2025 financial disclosure forms show that Blumenthal draws a salary from her position at the Global Health Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland. But the form does not provide a specific dollar amount.

She also receives a pension, again of an undisclosed amount, from the U.S. Public Health Service, the same document shows.

The disclosure forms also detail a range of investments for both Markey and Blumenthal as well as a pair of mortgages. The most recent, dated 2021, is a 30-year note valued at between $250,001 and $500,000, and financed at 2.875%.

Markey accused Moulton last week of drawing a false equivalency between his investment portfolio and his priary rival’s.

“What Congressman Moulton was talking about is my investment in mutual funds,” He said.

“Anyone watching this debate can invest in mutual funds. Those are public. That’s all I’ve ever invested in. There’s a big difference between that and what Congressman Moulton has been doing. He has been given opportunities by private equity to invest in companies that appear before his Armed Services Committee. No one watching this debate has been given that opportunity.”

Moulton, who had requested an extension to file his returns, reported an adjusted gross income of $956,286 and total federal tax payments of $274,366. He and his wife, Liz, donated $6,500 to charity, according to published reports.

Despite his jabs at Markey’s wealth, Moulton and his wife recently purchased a $3.1 million, five-bedroom, seven-bathroom house in Moulton’s hometown of Marblehead.

At last week’s debate, Moulton parried Markey’s accusations about his wealth, arguing that “this is what Donald Trump does. He attacks people for doing things that he’s actually doing himself.”

“I’ve been completely transparent about all my family’s finances. Everything is disclosed. And the people of Massachusetts can look at that,” he said. “We followed every law. But I’ve gone beyond that because I cosponsored three congressional stock-trading bans. I’ve refused money from groups like the (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) that I disagree with."

The debate is unlikely to go away as the Sept. 1 primary draws ever closer, Cignoli said.