A Massachusetts U.S. Senate primary centered on whether 80-year-old Ed Markey is too old for another term produced a striking moment at a recent debate, when the Democratic incumbent appeared uncertain about his own use of artificial intelligence.

Asked whether he uses AI platforms such as Claude or ChatGPT in his work, Markey responded that he uses “whatever is inside of my iPhone or my iPad — whatever comes up” and added that he doesn’t know “what companies my iPad may be using.”

For Arsen Bagdassarian, an 18-year-old supporter of Markey’s challenger, 47-year-old U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, the answer reinforced the concern at the heart of Moulton’s campaign to unseat the incumbent in Tuesday’s party primary: that Markey, who would be 86 at the end of another term, is too old to represent a generation facing problems that did not exist when he entered Congress 50 years ago. Markey was first elected to the House in 1976 and has served in the Senate since a 2013 special election; Moulton, a Marine Corps veteran first elected to the House in 2014, has built his challenge around the argument that the party needs new leadership.

“To be frank, I didn’t expect him to be as clueless as he really was on that topic,” said Bagdassarian, an incoming freshman at Boston’s Northeastern University. Artificial intelligence is “a major concern,” he said, and the country needs leaders “who understand what they’re being asked to regulate.”

The 2026 midterms have featured a number of generational battles like the one Moulton is waging, with younger Democrats taking on — and in some cases unseating — longtime incumbents. There are signs that Democratic voters in particular are looking for change, and some young voters argue that older politicians cannot truly understand a world transformed by artificial intelligence, rising housing costs and student debt. The debate reflects a broader conversation in Washington about the advanced age of many senior lawmakers, which intensified after the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who was 90, died in office in 2023 amid public concern about her capacity to serve.

That sentiment, however, is not shared by all young people weighing in on the Senate nomination in a heavily Democratic state where the primary often decides who wins office. Markey retains a strong following among young supporters, some of whom say the internal party debate is more about policy than age. He has won the endorsements of the High School Democrats of America and the College Democrats of America, as well as the backing of prominent progressives including U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Among those supporters is Matt Kelly, president of the UMass Lowell College Democrats. Kelly does not dispute that Markey stumbled when asked about his AI use, saying, “I’ll admit it wasn’t a good answer.” But Kelly said he cares less about whether Markey knows how to use the latest technology than whether he understands how to govern it — and Moulton’s relative youth does not necessarily make his views more representative of young voters.

“Just because he has a younger face doesn’t mean that he has younger ideas,” Kelly said.

Many of Markey’s younger supporters turn Moulton’s critique of the senator’s 50-year political career on its head. To them, longevity provides a record to judge — one showing whether politicians held the same positions before those positions became popular with younger voters. One frequently cited example is Markey’s 2002 vote against the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which later led to the creation of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Milan van Dam, a 17-year-old who serves as national chair of the High School Democrats of America, said generational leadership is “less about an age on a Wikipedia page” than the ideas a candidate represents and their consistency over time. Abby Shadden, a 21-year-old Emmanuel College student, similarly pointed to Markey’s co-authorship of the Green New Deal and his early support for Medicare for All.

“There is this idea that younger people are just automatically more progressive when, in this case, it is very much not true,” she said.

For Kelly, the AI debate is playing out close to home. A proposed data center in Lowell, where he attends college, has drawn opposition from some residents over its potential impact on the community. Kelly said Markey’s push for greater regulation of data centers matters more to him than the senator’s awkward answer about AI. His generation, Kelly said, will graduate into an economy increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence while facing a cost of living that has made it harder to achieve the financial security of previous generations.

“Yes, Ed Markey’s answer rhetorically didn’t come off well, optically didn’t look well,” Kelly said. But when it comes to who will be good for “the group that’s graduating into this new economy,” Markey’s record matters more, he said.

Moulton seized on the debate answer, telling the senator: “Senator, if you don’t even know what you’re using on your phone or your iPad, like this is why we need a new generation of leaders to regulate these technologies.” He called Markey’s loose grasp of the technology “potentially disqualifying.”

Markey pushed back, saying, “It doesn’t make any difference whether it’s called Siri or it’s called Claude,” and emphasizing that familiarity with individual AI products was less important than putting safeguards around the technology. He pointed to legislation he has introduced to regulate AI’s effects on children, workers, civil rights and the environment. It is an argument that mirrors a long-running dispute in Congress over AI policy, where lawmakers have debated how to regulate a fast-moving technology that many of them acknowledge they do not personally use — even as proposals for data center regulation, algorithmic accountability and child-safety rules have circulated on Capitol Hill.

Throughout the race, Moulton has emphasized Markey’s age, calling for “generational change” and age limits for members of Congress. The Constitution sets minimum ages for federal office — 25 for the House, 30 for the Senate — but imposes no upper limit, and proposals for mandatory retirement ages have gained little traction despite recurring debate. For some of Moulton’s young supporters, however, the argument goes beyond the candidates’ ages.

Molly Blander, an 18-year-old incoming Tufts University freshman, pointed to artificial intelligence and social media as technologies that have reshaped life for her generation — including its mental health. She cited Moulton’s work to establish 988 as the national suicide and crisis lifeline as an example of the kind of response she wants to see.

“Social media has created a modern mental health problem, so we need modern solutions,” Blander said. “The world before AI is so different than it is now. I think what was hard to see and hard to understand is that my senator does not understand one of the challenges that we’ve been facing.”

Her generation’s political outlook has also been shaped by Republican President Donald Trump. “In my lifetime, I haven’t seen the Democratic Party and the Democratic establishment really make things much better,” she said, pointing to rising housing and energy costs and Trump’s rise and reelection. “And so I feel like the status quo and the establishment that we have now just isn’t working.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.