It began with a bang — or rather, a bomber jacket.
On April 12, Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts tweeted a photo of himself decked out in a slick green jacket, Boston Red Sox facemask, and Nike high top sneakers captioned: “If you have to go outside, wear a mask.” The photo went viral, amassing over 13,000 likes and fashioning the senator into an unlikely style icon. Young people flooded the replies with comments like “When’s this album dropping??,” “the fit slaps ed,” and “ADOPT ME PLEASE.” Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz, writing for The Cut, dubbed the outfit “a sick fit.”
But the outfit itself is less important than what its popularity signifies. Markey, a 73-year-old incumbent, is in the thick of a high-profile, hotly contested Democratic senate primary. His opponent? 39-year-old Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy III. In a sea of young, progressive Democrats and Democratic Socialists launching primary challenges against establishment incumbents across the U.S., this particular race is a bit of an anomaly. While both candidates have laid claim to the mantle of progressivism, Markey is widely considered to be one of the most progressive members of the U.S. Senate.
Young people are paying attention.
Meet the Markey Stans
Enter: The Markey Stans. Over the past months,while the rest of us stared in horror at cake videos and downloaded, deleted, and re-downloaded Tik-Tok, a different social media subculture began taking shape.
It started with just a few accounts: Ed Markey’s Reply Guys (@edsreplyguys) and Students For Markey (@students4markey), populated by high school and college-aged organizers invested in both Massachusetts state politics and memes. As time went on, the number of Markey-related accounts grew in number while also narrowing in scope. The accounts “Gingers for Markey” (@gingers4markey), “MA-04 for Markey” (@ma04for), and “Has Joe Kennedy Given a Good Reason for Running?” (@whyisjoerunning) gained prominence over time, and the various accounts grew their audience by interacting with one another.
And then, in the words of @gingers4markey, came “the second Cambrian explosion.”
Theater kids for markey. Hot girls for markey. Dogs for Ed Markey. Moms4Markey. Bisexuals for ed markey. Astrology girls 4 ed. Cowboys for ed markey. PupsForEd. Indie Girls For Markey. Barbz for ed markey. Lesbians for Markey. Clowns for ed markey. Ed markey for ed markey. Joe kennedy for ed markey. The accounts, with varying norms of capitalization in their titles, multiply with each passing day.
With each new account comes a new set of niche memes fine-tuned to its title. “Plants for Ed Markey” tweets support from the perspective of “photosynthetic eukaryotes.” “Quabbin Reservoir residents for Ed Markey” does so from the perspective of the fish that live in the Quabbin Reservoir. Thanks to “Bald Gingers for Markey,” there are now two separate accounts for redheads at varying stages of hair growth or loss. One account is just a sentient bottle of ketchup tweeting in support of Ed Markey. Welcome to the #markeyverse.
Grassroots Beginnings
When Emerson Toomey created the “Ed Markey’s Reply Guys,” she did not expect it to blow up the way it did.
“I initially made a tweet back in — oh my gosh, when was it? Maybe in March?” she said. “I made a joke tweet about the ‘Ed Markey Reply Guys Caucus’ and 20 people liked it almost immediately, and I was kind of like: ‘What, is this a thing that I should actually do?”
In a matter of months, the self-described group of “guys, gals, & non-binary pals hyping up @edmarkey one tweet at a time,” amassed over 2,000 followers. Toomey, who is a third-year political science major at Northeastern University, became familiar with Ed Markey while working with Sunrise Boston and Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu. She runs the account (which is not affiliated with the Markey campaign) with five other college students and recent graduates, posting dozens of tweets a day that run the gamut from straightforward to celebratory to a little bit bizarre.
“Most of the tweets that we’ve been making are very stream of consciousness,” she said. “Whatever we think of we just tweet it.” The account is popular for its around-the-clock delivery of memes, jokes, and sincere words of encouragement directed at Ed Markey, Markey supporters, and others who pop up on its radar. One Reply Guy tweeted “Good Night @EdMarkey” throughout the months of April and May. Another Reply Guy penned a parody of Wheatus’ “Teenage Dirtbag” that inspired the band Wheatus to perform at a virtual event in support of Ed Markey. Most recently, the Reply Guys collaborated with Gracie’s Ice Cream in Somerville, MA to create the flavor “Ed Markey’s Green New Deal With It Mint Chip.”
“Our stuff that does the best is typically the [Tweets] that don’t make a lot of sense,” said Toomey. “One time, I think someone tweeted ‘ed markey is ed markey, and it got, like, 50 likes.”
“It’s like the Virginia Woolf of the modern political world,” said Jenny Chen, referring to the Reply Guys’ stream of consciousness style. Chen, a sophomore at Providence College, is well acquainted with the ins and outs of the Ed Markey Twittersphere. She could not vote in 2016, but still felt like the presidential election was a wake-up call, and she got to work. Today, she is the youth vote strategist for the grassroots group Students For Markey. Her responsibilities as a member of the group’s leadership team include editing its blog,The Markey Times. In her previous role, which focused on digital outreach, she produced a policy-themed podcast,The Markey, and organized content for the group’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tik-Tok accounts. Another early player in the Ed Markey Twitter game, Students For Markey tweets more than its fair share of memes while also recruiting volunteers and organizing phonebanks.
“It’s a universal language because it’s humorous, it’s uplifting, it’s funny, it’s wholesome, and it gets people’s attention,” Chen said of Markey-themed memes. “We draw them in and we tell them about all the things behind the candidate that’s on the meme, and it’s a really good way to build community at a time when that’s really hard.” Chen likens “campaign Twitter” to “a giant Slack” where kids on the internet who are passionate about progressive politics are able to share jokes and information rapidly. She says that this encourages people not only to laugh, but to connect with candidates and learn more about the issues they care about.
“We want to create the space for people to tell their stories and I think, as leaders, we recognize that this was never about us or about Ed Markey,” she said. “It was about the hopes, the dreams and aspirations of people across the country and their personal stories of why they’re here at all.”
“A Perfect Storm”
It was on a Students for Markey organizing call that Chloe, a resident of Brookline, got the idea for her account: “MA-04 for Markey” (@ma04for). Someone mentioned that Ed Markey was popular in Brookline, which is part of Massachusetts’ Fourth Congressional District, represented by none other than Joe Kennedy III. Chloe thought: “There should be somewhere for Massachusetts’ Fourth for Markey. And I was like, well, this doesn’t exist. Why don’t I do it?”
Her account is in keeping with a format popularized by @gingers4markey, an account that purports to advocate on behalf of redheads who support the “non-redheaded junior senator for Massachusetts.” The accounts are two of several that highlight support for Markey from those who, for reasons both satirical and serious, may otherwise be compelled to vote for Kennedy. One of the Gingers “4” Markey account’s earliest tweets reads: “it’s so easy to be a redhead and *not* run a reactionary pro-establishment primary campaign against one of the strongest progressives in the senate. the owners of this account are doing it right now!”
“Has Joe Kennedy given a good reason for running?” (@whyisjoerunning) draws attention to a different question at the center of this congressional primary: Why is Kennedy primarying Markey in the first place? Most days, the account tweets an update (i.e. “July 29 Update: no.”). The answer has yet to change.
“On Twitter, there are accounts called, like: ‘Has Jeff Bezos Solved World Hunger Yet?’ and it’s one of those things where it just tweets every day: ‘No,’” said the Boston-area college student who runs the @whyisjoerunning account. “Its kind of a bot, almost, but I didn’t want to just be a bot in that way. I want to be interactive with the whole Kennedy-Markey senate race. So I thought it would be fun.”
While not initially familiar with the accounts that had already formed around the race, @whyisjoerunning was quickly indoctrinated into the fast-growing community. The Markey stans were not the only ones who noticed. The account, which is a bit more snarky than many of its counterparts, has gotten the attention of none other than Joe Kennedy III’s communications director Emily Kaufman. The two had a brief back-and-forth on May 21 regarding Ed Markey’s voting history on reproductive freedom.
“I actually got [Kaufman] to respond to me, which I think is funny because you would think that a communications director would have more things to do,” they said. “I have no leverage. I’m just a Twitter account.”
While this may have been true at one point, things have changed. On July 16, Playbill’s announcement of a Joe Kennedy III fundraiser featuring Sara Bareilles, Rita Moreno, and a slate of other Broadway stars provoked a massive social media response from a litany of Markey supporters, fan accounts, and some celebrities, too.
“If you live in MA please vote for Ed Markey, please,” tweeted comedian Joel Kim in response to the event. Others flooded the announced participants’ replies, after which artists Kelli O’Hara, Solea Pfeiffer, Andrew Barth Feldman, and more chose to pull out of the line-up. O’Hara and Pfeiffer tweeted out their appreciation for the young people that reached out to challenge them on their choice to participate. On July 19, Playbill announced that the fundraiser would be postponed indefinitely.
“We are heartbroken by the cyber-bullying so many of our event participants were subjected to,” reads a statement from the Kennedy campaign. “The toxic nature of political Twitter is nothing new, but the level of vitriol Senator Markey and his supporters have unleashed during this campaign is unprecedented.” Many Markey supporters shrugged off the accusation.
That the Kennedy campaign acknowledged them at all suggests that the influence of the Markey fan accounts extends far beyond their timelines. When the COVID-19 pandemic put a stop to traditional, door-to-door campaigning, it made online organizing more important than ever before, and Markey campaign fever is catching the attention of more than just young people on Twitter.
“It’s attracted a lot of attention from people in D.C. and people who work on campaigns,” said Toomey of the Reply Guys account. She is not convinced, however, that the atmosphere of the Markey accounts is transferrable.
“I think people are looking for ways to replicate it,” she said. “But also I think that it’s something that was more of a perfect storm of events and of conditions than anything else.”
The [Green New] Deal
Memes aside, many are still wondering why all of these young people are so excited about re-electing 73-year-old Markey in the first place. If you ask them, it has less to do with the memes and more to do with Markey’s legislative contributions.
“Yeah, he has the coolest sneakers and is great at basketball, but also he wants us to be able to live on a planet without Massachusetts falling into the water. He wants us to have breathable air and drinkable water,” said Chen. “And he’s not going to be here a hundred years, but some of us might be and our children will be.”
Chen is referring to the Green New Deal, a proposed package of climate legislation Markey co-authored with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Of the five students interviewed for this piece, each one cited climate change as a major issue compelling themselves and other young people to support Markey.
“I’m not a single issue voter,” said the person behind @whyisjoerunning. “But one of the most important issues to me is climate change.” Chloe of “MA-04 for Markey” called him the “Father of the Green New Deal,” and Toomey, along with another Reply Guy, shouted-out his commitment to climate legislation. One of the more recent, absurdist Twitter accounts made is titled “Emissions for Ed Markey,” in which greenhouse gases pledge their support for Ed Markey in the hopes that the Green New Deal will give them a break.
“My hope is that this doesn’t sound like ‘I’m so smart,’ but I wasn’t surprised,” said Paul Bologna, digital and creative director for the Ed Markey campaign. “I was familiar with the fact that Ed was leading on the issues that matter most to young people.”
While he is only affiliated with Ed Markey’s official accounts, Bologna considers it part of his job to interact with Markey’s growing online fan base. “Ed twitter is completely out of control,” Bologna tweeted on July 29, when over 15 Markey-themed accounts were created in a single 24-hour period. With so much frenzy surrounding the memes and the accounts, it is easy to forget about the person who inspires them.
That first viral photo of Markey, the “sick fit,” feels lightyears away from what exists now. “Nobody asked him to wear that jacket, right? Nobody asked him to wear those sneakers,” said Bologna. “It’s just who he is. He’s just a regular person who lives in Malden.”
And perhaps it is this air of authenticity that, alongside the sneakers, the memes, and the legislative record, is drawing young people to campaign for Markey with a never-before-seen level of enthusiasm and creativity.
The Markey stans gave campaigning a 21st century makeover such that, whether or not Markey wins, it will be difficult to forget.
Image Credit: Senator Ed Markey by Victoria Pickering is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
