“Gen Z and millennials make up a third of our country, but we are nowhere near a third of government, and I think we need a government that looks like the people,” Maxwell Alejandro Frost commented following his election to Congress on Nov. 8. After defeating 72-year-old Republican Calvin Wimbish by 19 percentage points, Frost, a 25-year-old activist and Democrat, became the newly elected representative for Florida’s 10th Congressional District. More notably, he became the first member of Gen Z to join the Congress. “History was made tonight,” Frost tweeted following his victory.
The U.S. Constitution states that only citizens above the age of 25 are eligible to serve in the House of Representatives, meaning that the midterm elections of 2022 were the first year where members of Generation Z — those born between 1997 and 2012 — were eligible to run for any of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives.
According to the Pew Research Center, Gen Z is the “most diverse” and “best-educated” generation in American history. Compared to generations before them, more belong to racial and ethnic minorities, have grown up using electronics, and have decided to pursue higher education. But how would the environment they grew up in impact their political ideologies? How are they planning to lead?
During the 2022 midterm elections, a few passionate Gen Z candidates campaigned against those who were much older and more experienced. With younger age, higher aspirations, agendas more extreme than their contenders’, and the aim to represent younger voices, they became the focus of the media, drawing support and attention while also eliciting skepticism regarding how far they could go.
How does this younger and more diverse generation view American politics? These Gen Z candidates searched for an answer by pushing from the opposing party. “Are we remaining stagnant by trying the same things or are we going to move forward and try to build a better coalition and actually put up a fight against Republicans in the district?” Ray Reed commented on the work of Trish Gunby, his Democratic primary opponent. Only 25 years old, Reed, a St. Louis native, ran to represent the 2nd Congressional District of Missouri.
“How do we break through that mold? It’s by electing young people to office that can resonate with these voters, have a platform at the national stage, that can show them ideas, policies, values that they’re not hearing elsewhere at all,” said 25-year-old Karoline Leavitt, Republican candidate for the 1st Congressional District of New Hampshire, a toss-up district that the Republicans were hoping to gain.
Reed and Leavitt are among the few Gen Zers who ran for seats in the House of Representatives, yet they represented the opposite of the political spectrum. Reed advocated for restricting firearms, codifying Roe v. Wade into federal law, and curbing student debt. On the other hand, Leavitt — who once worked as assistant press secretary during the Trump administration — called for “less government and more freedom” and believed that the 2020 election was stolen.
“No one is really a moderate,” commented Elena Moore in the National Public Radio podcast. Her colleague Kristen Soltis Anderson later added, “The frame has shifted from, I’m going to bring about that change by being someone who looks for opportunities to work across the aisle, and more, I’m going to disrupt the institutions and systems that are allowing the other side to continue to prevail.”
Yet it seems that at least 59% of the voters in Florida’s 10th Congressional District agreed with Frost, his activism, and support for gun control, affordable housing, and universal health care. “I come from a generation that has gone through more mass-shooting drills than fire drills,” Frost said in an interview with the New York Times in August. “This is something that my generation has had to face head-on: being scared to go to school, being scared to go to church, being scared to be in your community. That gives me a sense of urgency.” It is arguably his passion for activism and social issues as such that helped him defeat nine other Democrats in his primary election in August and his Republican opponent in November.
History has indeed been made as this 25-year-old prepares to enter Congress. As of 2021, the median age of members of the Congress was roughly 65, while that of the House was just under 59. The 117th Congress is dominated by those born between 1946 and 1980. Even the millennials — born between 1981 and 1996 — took up only 7% of Congress. Frost, on the other hand, was born in 1997 and is not even half of the average age of the chamber he joins. He not only represents Florida’s 10th Congressional District but also serves as a voice for over 68 million Gen Z Americans, approximately 21% of the U.S. population. Frost pushes forward the tide of the younger generation entering politics, as he mentioned in his victory speech, “I’m the first. But I definitely won’t be the last.”
Among Reed, Frost, and Leavitt, only Frost made it to Congress. On Aug. 2, Ray Reed lost his campaign in the Democratic match-up of his district. His opponent Trish Gunby, roughly 40 years his senior, secured the district’s Democratic primary with 85.2% of the votes. Karoline Leavitt, on the other hand, won the Republican primary of New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District on Sept. 13 with 33.4% of the votes. Yet facing incumbent Democrat Chris Pappas, Leavitt lost by eight percentage points.
After his loss in August, Reed stated on Twitter that he would take a break but did not want to “stay away for long.” A temporary defeat does not seem to dim his ambition, yet the future remains uncertain: Will time wear off their ambition and smoothen their relatively extreme agendas?
Perhaps history may be a guide. Immediately following President Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, a series of young and ambitious Democrats were sworn into office in 1975 hoping to reform a Congress centered on seniority and conservatism. Joe Biden, then 30 years old, was sworn into office just two years before as a senator from Delaware — the youngest age possible for the Senate. He shared similar visions as those “Watergate babies,” advocating for the environment, civil rights, and a withdrawal from the Vietnam war. Yet 50 years later, he is now considered moderate by his party and often accused of not addressing pressing issues nationwide.
Will the same happen to the Gen Z candidates in the future? Perhaps they will remain adamant about changing the world or even grow more radical. Or perhaps, as older generations have suggested, their ambitions will wear off in the decades to come, while a future generation will push for more changes. As the 2022 midterm elections have mostly settled down, the focus is currently on how Frost and other young activists can represent the voices of young America. Yet in the future to come, it may shift to how well they can hold onto their youthful ambitions.
Image by Sushil Nash is licensed under the Unsplash License.
