Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Martha’s Vineyard, was never going to run for the Senate this year.

She couldn’t afford to risk her Congressional grift, I mean, seat. It’d be like killing the golden goose. She’s already parlayed her race-baiting brand into millions of dollars, including that new mansion of hers in Edgartown, despite having no college degree and a jailbird husband.

Besides, when it comes to legal graft, it doesn’t much matter whether you’re in the House or Senate. Either way, you end up as a one-percenter, and behind that comes the pension.

Also, consider how much more cash her thug husband’s company, Conan Harris & Associates, will be raking in if the Democrats regain control of the House next year. Forget Martha’s Vineyard, poor oppressed victim Ayanna be scooping up Nantucket beachfront.

At least if she remains in Congress, which sets up Conan with that “consulting” gig.

Everyone paying attention understood she’d never take a chance on losing a racket as lucrative as her current con. That’s why I didn’t bother to write about her alleged Senate run, although on my radio show I repeatedly mentioned the fact that she would never run, often with a knowing chuckle.

Feel free to pull the tape if you doubt me.

What all politicians dream of is the “free shot.” That’s a political race where you’re not risking your own phony-baloney office, where you’re not confronting the bleak prospect of giving up that no-heavy-lifting sinecure, with lobbyists and aides you can shake down, free parking, a huge campaign war chest that the toothless watchdog agencies will never seriously check up on, etc. etc.

A political office, any office, beats working, although the concept of real work is not something Ayanna is familiar with, at least not first-hand.

Remember how in 2018, she won her current seat by defeating tired incumbent Mike Capuano.

She was already on the do-nothing Boston City Council, and didn’t have to run for reelection until the following year. So she had that most fabulous of political opportunities… a free shot.

She had nothing to lose, and she didn’t.

Since ousting the honky, Ayanna and her ex-con husband (10 years for drug trafficking) have been laughing all the way to the bank, as well as to assorted Registries of Deeds, as they accumulate ever more property, vacation and rental both.

Ironically, if she had run for the Senate, Ayanna would have been facing off against Sen. Ed Markey. And his entire half-century career-plus in the hackerama has been built around a succession of “free shots.”

He was first elected to Congress during the presidency of Gerald Ford. The congressman in his district, a classmate of JFK’s at Harvard, had died, and there was a special election, otherwise known as a free shot.

In a primary field of 12 candidates, Ed Markey romped to victory with 21.6% of the vote. It was a landslide.

In 1984, Sen. Paul Tsongas did not seek reelection. The seat was open, but it was not a free shot, not if you were in the House. It was, however, a free shot for the preening lieutenant governor, John Forbes Kerry. Win or lose the Senate fight, he’d keep his State House job until 1986.

One Congressman assessed his prospects and quickly decided to stay put. But Markey and another lackluster young hack, James “Lumpy” Shannon, decided to take the plunge.

But then Markey began to have the usual doubts of an unemployable hack. If he lost, what would become of him?

Considering that the only job Markey had ever had was operating a summer ice cream truck, his future employment prospects looked bleak. From “Mr. Chairman” back to “Mr. Frosty” – nah, he couldn’t risk it.

His brief 1984 Senate campaign was a disaster. In a TV interview, he couldn’t answer the simplest of questions about any issues. He got into a domestic squabble with his then-girlfriend that ended with her tossing him out of her car at the Oak Grove T station in Malden.

Hilarity ensued.

A few days later, Ed Markey pulled the plug. So what if a bunch of state legislators had already given up their seats on Beacon Hill to run for his seat on Capitol Hill? He didn’t care. He elbowed them all aside — anything to avoid returning to his Mr. Frosty gig.

The day Markey quit, he stopped by Ch. 7, where I worked at the time, to make a videotape of his withdrawal. After he finished, I handed him one of his “Markey for Senate” fliers and asked him to autograph it for me, as a memento.

At the time, I had a second part-time job, as a political columnist for Boston Magazine, back when it was a real magazine.

Markey took the flier and scrawled on it something like: “Howie, someday I hope to have two jobs just like you.”

Meaning, that he could run for a different office and not have to worry about losing the only thing standing between himself and a return to Mr. Frosty. A free shot, in other words.

And that’s how I knew Ayanna Pressley would never run for the Senate seat, not if it meant she might lose her slot at the trough. If possible, she may be even more unemployable than Mr. Frosty.

Ironically, of course, Ed Markey did eventually get to the Senate, although he had to wait for another 29 years. In 2013, John Kerry resigned to become Secretary of State, which meant an open seat, and a free shot, for Ed Markey.

He finally made it. On his first roll call in the Senate, he voted “present.” Of course he did! You can take Mr. Frosty out of the ice cream truck, but you can’t take the ice cream truck out of Mr. Frosty.

So farewell then, Ayanna Pressley. Maybe Rep. Seth Moulton can do to Ed Markey what then-Rep. Joe Kennedy III couldn’t do in 2020 – namely, make the electorate finally realize what an empty suit he is.

When you come across as an inconsequential twit at age 35, it’s hard to suddenly develop gravitas at age 80. Plus, his comb-over looks even more dated now than it did six years ago, when he was a spry 74.

I suppose Ayanna will always wonder whether she should have taken the not-so-free shot. That’s the bad news.

The good news is, she’ll get to keep doing her musing from the porch of her new mansion on Martha’s Vineyard.

(Order Howie’s new book, “Mass Corruption: Vol. 1: The Cops” at amazon.com or howiecarrshow.com/store.)