Ed Markey, through the mists of time

Veteran political reporter Peter Lucas reminds us of a great anecdote involving a young state rep named Ed Markey and Massachusetts House Speaker Tom McGee, who died last week. Lucas writes in The Sun of Lowell:

In the middle of his second term in 1975, Markey opposed McGee on a bill dealing with the abolition of part-time district court judges in Massachusetts. As a result, so the story goes, an angry McGee threw Markey, a lawyer, off the Judiciary Committee, and had him and his desk moved out of the committee offices into the hallway.

A year later, a congressional seat opened up, and Markey ran under the slogan “They may tell me where to sit, but nobody tells me where to stand.” It was “boffo,” Lucas writes, and Markey won.

Now, as Markey gears up for a Senate campaign, he’ll have to convince voters that he’s done or said anything as memorable as that in the intervening 38 years.