Ed Markey, 80 years old and nothing to show for it

Happy 80th birthday, Sen. Ed Markey!

I know, it’s not officially until tomorrow, but at Birthday Boy’s advanced age, when he’s not even buying green bananas anymore, why wait until the arrival of the actual big day?

So many memories of Ed Markey, The Man That Time Forgot.

If only the rest of us could forget as easily…

Every St. Patrick’s Day he used to go to Senate President Billy Bulger’s time at Halitosis Hall. He was so petrified of the legislature’s ability to redistrict him out of his seat that every year he’d show up to grovel to the State House bosses.

“Ed Markey,” Billy Bulger would intone, as he stumbled towards the stage. “To a battle of wits, he comes unarmed.”

Another time, at a different St. Patrick’s Day event in Everett, Markey was mumbling about how he got no respect from anyone.

“Why doesn’t anybody like me?” Markey complained to then-House speaker George Keverian, trying to make a joke of it.

“Why doesn’t anyone like you Eddie?” Keverian repeated. “Because you’re a (seven-letter word that begins with a).”

And now the bodily orifice is 80 years old. He’s been in Washington for a half century, and no one can remember a single accomplishment since his arrival.

It was 1976. Markey’s Congressman had died, and there was a special election, in the middle of the term. What that meant was that Markey could run, and not risk his seat in the Massachusetts House, which was unthinkable because if he lost and didn’t have his snout in the public trough, he’d have to get a real job.

And all his life, all 80 years, he’s only had that one real job, and that was 60-plus years ago.

Driving the Mr. Frosty soft ice-cream truck in Malden. With jimmies!

Back then, the Kennedys were still America’ First Family. All the ambitious young Democrat pols in Massachusetts tried to mimic them. Longish hair combed over the forehead, fake Harvard-North Shore accents etc.

K-Mart Kennedys, we called the impostors. Ed Markey was the K-Martiest of the K-Mart Kennedys.

In the legislature, he was a complete non-entity, just as he has been all these years on Capitol Hill. The only thing that he accomplished at the State House was being such a bodily orifice that his desk was finally moved into the basement, next to a boiler.

Mr. Frosty made his eviction into a TV ad for Congress: “They can tell Ed Markey where to sit, but they can’t tell him where to stand.”

He got elected, and for the last half-century, in Washington, he’s been sitting and standing wherever “they” have told him to, from Tip O’Neill to Nancy Pelosi to Chuck Schumer.

Here’s the thing about that first Congressional election. Because it was an open seat, a free shot, seven candidates jumped in. Markey won in a landslide, with 22 percent of the vote.

Landslide Eddie was on his way.

In 1979, post-Chappaquiddick, Ted Kennedy was running for president. A network TV crew was shadowing Teddy for a day-in-the-life piece. Ted’s aide Rick Burke called Markey’s office and got him on the line.

There was only one problem. Teddy had no idea who Markey was.

“What’s his name” Teddy yelled at his aide. “What’s his name?”

“Markey,” said the aide.

“No, no, no,” Teddy slurred back. “What’s his first name?”

A few moments later, as Burke recalled later, “the Senator nodded, removed his hand from the mouthpiece and said in a syrupy tone, ‘Oh Ed, how are you?’”

The next evening, the entire exchange ran on Walter Cronkite’s newscast. Markey was humiliated, and not for the last time.

He tried to run for the U.S. Senate for the first time in 1984. But it wasn’t a special election. Markey was going to lose, so he crawled back to his House seat.

His then-girlfriend threw him out of a car at the Oak Square station in Malden.

He was humiliated on local TV news when he didn’t have a clue when asked the simplest of political questions. He had no idea who the prime minister of Israel was. He didn’t know which side the U.S. was supporting in Nicaragua.

In 2013, he finally made it to the Senate, after another special election to replace John Kerry. On his first vote, Markey cast a courageous, “Present!”

A few years later, he introduced the “landmark” Green New Deal bill. When the Republicans brought to the floor, he again voted, you guessed it, “Present.”

When the Pats won the Super Bowl in 2017, he went on the floor of the Senate to congratulate “the Boston Patriots.”

His finest moment in politics came in 2020. The original K-Mart Kennedy became the first pol in Massachusetts to defeat a real Kennedy, Rep. Joseph Kennedy III. In retrospect, it was less of a statement on Markey’s ascendancy than on the downfall of the Kennedy dynasty.

Now, at age 80, Markey pledges that this will be his last run for public office. As if we didn’t know. Thanks for nothing, Mr. Frosty.

His primary lead over the insufferable Seth Moulton is shrinking, but he should be able to hold on.

I spoke the other day with the GOP candidate, John Deaton. He’s going to make an issue of the fact that Markey hasn’t actually lived in Massachusetts since most of his constituents were born.

“He still owns his parents’ house,” Deaton said. “But he pays the absolute minimum water bill in Malden — the rate you pay if you don’t even use, say, the showers.”

His real residence is a mansion in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

“You know what the electric rate per kilowatt hour is in Maryland?” Deaton asked me. “It’s 16 cents. In Massachusetts, it’s 33 cents – more than double. And all Markey wants to talk about is Donald Trump.”

But for today, let’s just say, Many Happy Returns, Eddie!

To a battle of wits, after all these years, he still comes unarmed.