So we have another year with a Senate election here in Massachusetts, filling the seat vacated by John Kerry when he became Secretary of State (which comes up for re-election next year, making it five straight years in which we'll have voted for a US Senator; Elizabeth Warren better keep a wary eye out during 2015). The election is tomorrow, so it's apparently time for another Blogalicious endorsement.

On the Democratic side we have US Rep Ed Markey, who's been serving in Congress for the last 37 years. He's pretty much what you'd expect from a Massachusetts Democrat, a lefty who's provided solid if generally unremarkable service to his constituents. On the Republican side we have newcomer Gabriel Gomez, a former Navy SEAL who has made a pile in the financial sector.

The race itself has been similarly unremarkable. Both have runs ads you'd expect for the candidates - Markey touting his experience while trying to paint Gomez as a 1 percenter, Gomez talking about his service and being a "new" Republican while trying to make Markey the poster boy for Congressional partisanship - and their three debates have done little to inject any spark into the race. There have been some third party ads (Gomez refused the "People's Pledge" to keep third party money out, as he needed that money to keep from having to self-fund his campaign), which have been as witless and partisan as you'd expect (though it did introduce us to the comically named Americans for Progressive Action).

So what we have is a standard Massachusetts Democrat versus a weaponized version of Mitt Romney.  Neither is particularly exciting, and neither candidate seems primed to change the Washington culture. Markey is taking his one best shot at moving up from the House, while Gomez's "new ideas" include linking Congressional pay raises to balanced budgets and term limits, which were fresh ideas during the Reagan administration.

And that might be my biggest problem with Gomez. He's trying to run the Scott Brown playbook by painting himself as an independent Republican, and he's tried to work the Romney pivot a little from his positions in the Republican primary. It's not working particularly well in this case, either, as his remarks pretty much place him in the current GOP mainstream. So while I'm not over the moon about him, in this race, Blogalicious endorses Ed Markey. Let's hope he uses his brief term to find an identity.