Mass. voters go to polls to elect senator

BOSTON -- Longtime Democratic Rep. Edward Markey has won a special election in Massachusetts to succeed John Kerry in the U.S. Senate.

The 66-year-old Markey on Tuesday beat Republican challenger Gabriel Gomez, a former Navy SEAL and political newcomer.

The race did not draw the deep interest of the 2010 special election between Republican former Sen. Scott Brown and Democratic state Attorney General Martha Coakley. Brown pulled out a surprise victory that year, though he lost the seat to Democrat Elizabeth Warren in November.

Markey vowed to avoid a repeat, bringing in President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton to campaign with him.

Gomez is a 47-year-old businessman. He was never able to raise the money he needed to beat Markey.

Kerry left the Senate to become U.S. secretary of state.

Both candidates made a series of stops in the campaigns' final hours, culminating with election eve rallies Monday night, while their staffers cranked up their all-important ground games designed to get as many of their voters to the polls as possible.

On Tuesday, both men voted and reflected briefly on the shortened campaign season.

Markey voted with his wife in his hometown of Malden. Gomez, a political newcomer who worked for a Boston-based private equity firm before jumping into the race, voted in Cohasset, where he lives with his wife and four children. He said he was humbled and proud of the opportunity to vote for himself, saying the election was about choosing the future over the past.

Markey held a fundraising advantage throughout the campaign, having spent more $8.6 million on the race through the end of the last reporting period June 5, compared with $2.3 million by Gomez, according to Federal Election Commission records.