GOP chair blasts Markey over refusing more debates
Massachusetts GOP Chairman Jim Lyons is accusing U.S. Sen. Edward Markey of “playing dodgeball” by refusing to debate Republican challenger Kevin O’Connor more than once before Election Day.
“Sen. Markey begged and pleaded for at least a half-dozen debates when he was being challenged in the primary by a Kennedy, and now he’s afraid of extending the same courtesy to Kevin,” Lyons said in a statement Thursday, backing O’Connor’s calls for more debates just days after the Senate rivals clashed in their sole contest before the Nov. 3 election.
“He’s hiding in the basement of his Chevy Chase mansion playing dodgeball,” Lyons added, rehashing the recurring jab at Markey’s Maryland digs.
O’Connor has repeatedly challenged Markey to more debates — calling for seven, the same number the incumbent participated in against Democratic primary challenger U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy III, including one on the senator’s signature policy, the Green New Deal.
Markey has routinely declined to take the bait, even after their lone contest fell just minutes after a coronavirus-stricken President Trump was released from Walter Reed military hospital on Monday and aired against a rescheduled Patriots game.
“The beauty of debates like this is that they’re online,” Markey said after the debate.
“I do believe that we did go through a very substantial cross-section of all of the major issues to give people a good idea as to who they should vote for. The bottom line is, he’s clearly a big Trump supporter and I clearly am a big Biden supporter and all of the issues, for the most part, subdivide along those lines,” Markey said.
Markey’s campaign declined to comment Thursday.
Lyons went on to slam Markey’s co-authorship of the Green New Deal with U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez of New York and his call to grant statehood to Washington, D.C., as “a progressive power grab.”
“It’s clear to me that Ed Markey would rather hunker down and duck questions because his radical policies are indefensible,” Lyons said.
Markey and O’Connor tangled over the federal response to the coronavirus crisis, the Supreme Court and health care from separate studios on Monday, a safety protocol GBH announced less than two hours before the debate in which Markey attacked O’Connor as a “Donald Trump Republican” and O’Connor derided Markey’s progressive proposals as “outside the mainstream of his own party.”