Senior Congressman and Newcomer Win Senate Nods in Massachusetts

Representative Edward J. Markey, who has spent almost four decades in the House, has cleared the first hurdle in his drive to become a United States senator, easily defeating a fellow congressman, Stephen F. Lynch, in Massachusetts’s Democratic primary. On the Republican side, Gabriel E. Gomez, a former member of the Navy SEALs and a newcomer to politics, won a three-way primary.

He and Rep Markey will face off in a special general election on June 25 to fill the Senate seat left vacant by John Kerry, a Democrat who resigned this year to become President Obama’s secretary of state. Given the Democrats’ strength in Massachusetts, Rep Markey would have to be considered the early favorite. The Senate race offers voters a choice between Mr. Markey’s decades of experience in Washington — he was first elected to Congress in 1976 — and Gomez’s compelling life story. The son of Colombian immigrants, he became a Navy pilot and a member of the SEALs, attended Harvard Business School and is now a private equity investor. Rep Markey, 66, who has one of the most liberal voting records in Congress, has promised to continue his fight for gun control, a clean environment, abortion rights and Mr. Obama’s health care law.