Generation Z officially has a seat in Congress.
Maxwell Alejandro Frost, a 25-year-old Democrat, won his election on Tuesday in Florida’s 10th Congressional District over Calvin Wimbish, a Republican, according to The Associated Press. Mr. Frost will represent the Orlando-area seat being vacated by Representative Val Demings, the Democratic nominee for senator.
His victory guarantees that the next Congress will include at least one member of Generation Z, whose oldest members were born in 1997 and are newly eligible for the House, which has a minimum age of 25. He could be joined by Karoline Leavitt, a Republican running in New Hampshire’s First Congressional District.
It is rare for 25-year-olds to be elected to Congress. Before Representative Madison Cawthorn, Republican of North Carolina, won in 2020, it hadn’t happened in more than 45 years.
Mr. Frost is a progressive Democrat whose campaign focused on issues of particular salience to many young voters: gun violence, climate change, abortion rights and Medicare for all. His background is in activism, including work with the student-led anti-gun-violence movement March for Our Lives.
In an interview with The New York Times in August, he argued that he brought a different perspective to politics because of the era he had come of age in: one of mass shootings, increasingly frequent natural disasters and broad social upheaval.
“I come from a generation that has gone through more mass-shooting drills than fire drills,” he said. “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.”
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
