EASTON, Mass. Its a revolution either way. The question is whether Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey can keep it.

The Green New Deal s elder statesman ostensibly came here Sunday night to defend his record on his signature issue in what was supposed to be a debate with his three primary opponents. But the only one who showed up, star labor lawyer Shannon Liss-Riordan, all but endorsed the fight Markeys been waging for much of the past year, offering little contrast with the incumbent.

This needs to be a revolution, said Liss-Riordan, famous for suing ride-hailing giants Uber and Lyft on behalf of underpaid drivers. But this revolution hasnt started yet.

That was news to Markey and his supporters. The senator repeatedly cited Virginia Democrats historic victory last week running on a Green New Deal. And he brought people to back him up. More than two dozen marched through the cold, eerily silent campus at Stonehill College, a private Catholic liberal arts school roughly 45 minutes south of Boston, in support of an incumbent whos transformed himself in 2019 as a climate revolutionary.

We can break the back of the fossil fuel industry, Markey said to an auditorium filled with campaign volunteers. The time has arrived for this political revolution that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and I have introduced into the political dynamic.

It was hard to believe Markey is in any way an underdog in the race. Liss-Riordan, despite attracting a small group of advocates who sang the union hymn Solidarity Forever ahead of the debate, likely wont even be on the ballot, said one Markey supporter. Markeys other challenger, businessman Steve Pemberton, dropped out last month. But Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy III, a rising star in Washington and heir to the states great political dynasty, seemed confident enough in the threat he posed to skip the debate altogether.

This particular debate should be held in a frontline community most impacted by our countrys climate failures, Emily Kaufman, a Kennedy spokesperson, said by email, adding that a 2020 date will ensure better voter attention on this critical issue, rather than the middle of Veterans Day weekend.

The incumbent bet big on the Green New Deal earlier this year, sponsoring a resolution that outlined the core tenets of an industrial plan to transform the federal government in ways unseen since Markey, 73, was in diapers. In doing so, he lent the credibility of his four-decade career in Congress to a movement led by his partys insurgent left wing.

Now Markey is counting on the grassroots activists who propelled the Green New Deal into the political mainstream, many of them teenagers and 20-somethings, to help him fend off Kennedys message of a fresh face without serious policy distinction. So far, theyre behind him. On Sunday night, Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler, the newly elected socialist candidate to the Cambridge city council, endorsed Markey in an interview with HuffPost.

Hes been the champion of the Green New Deal, Sobrinho-Wheeler said in an interview in Cambridge. You dont have to be a member of the squad or a new insurgent to fight for big, bold ideas. If you do, groups on the left are going to notice that.

In September, Kennedy held a 14-point lead over Markey 42% to the incumbents 28% in a Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll that surveyed a head-to-head race between the two Democrats. But another 29% were undecided. The Kennedy name is beloved by Bay State voters, so much so that a fictional member of the clan received high favorability ratings in a 2011 poll testing a hypothetical run.