Frost, Maxwell Alejandro

Subterms

    Latest story

    138 Shares149 Views

    Gen Z Problems: Maxwell Frost Is Struggling to Rent an Apartment

    by

    Other young adults, who have poor credit history and are frustrated with expensive rental application fees, can relate to the housing troubles of the first Gen Zer elected to Congress.WASHINGTON — At 25, Representative-elect Maxwell Frost will be youngest member of Congress. He’s also in debt, after maxing out credit cards to win Florida’s 10th Congressional District seat.He said he was upfront about his bad credit when he applied for a one-bedroom apartment in Washington, D.C., where he now has to live part-time for at least the next two years. A broker, he said, told him that was fine. He paid a $50 application fee and then was denied the apartment because of his poor credit history.Mr. Frost, the first Gen Zer elected to Congress and a Democrat, took to Twitter in early December to voice his frustration: “This ain’t meant for people who don’t already have money.”While most other Gen Zers haven’t accrued campaign debt, Mr. Frost’s housing woes have generated a wide range of commiserating among Gen Z Twitter users who have short credit histories and less capital to afford expensive deposits and application fees.Mr. Frost said he also lost hundreds of dollars last year when he was searching for housing in his home district in Orlando.“Application fees are becoming a source of revenue for management companies,” Mr. Frost said in an interview. “We live in a world right now where you can run an extensive background check for $15, why are fees up to $200? Why do we use a credit score to determine if an applicant can pay rent when there’s so many things that hurt someone’s credit score?”The fees are the sour cherry on top of a brutal housing market: Last month, the typical asking rent in the United States was over $2,000, up from $1,850 in November 2021 and $1,600 in November 2020, according to data from Zillow. For Washington D.C., the typical asking rent was over $2,200 last month, a figure that’s been following the national trajectory.Some Gen Zers see no feasible way to get a place of their own: Nearly a third of people between the ages of 18 and 25 are living at home permanently, one recent report found.Raegan Loheide, 25, started looking for a new apartment with their partner and their current roommate last May. Mx. Loheide, a barista, was living in an apartment in Queens, but said their mental and physical health was deteriorating from a series of maintenance issues that their landlord refused to fix, including a roach infestation, holes in the ceiling, a lack of heat and a broken toilet.“We didn’t feel safe,” Mx. Loheide said.But in the months following, Mx. Loheide, their roommate and their partner applied to five apartments — spending hundreds of dollars on application fees — all of which they were rejected from.“The first rejection was because we didn’t have a third guarantor,” Mx. Loheide said. “I kept asking the brokers ‘why?’ but I barely ever got a real answer.”Eventually, Mx. Loheide felt they had no choice but to stay in their current apartment, even if it meant an emotional toll and more landlord troubles.“We couldn’t move,” Mx. Loheide said. “We kept expanding our budgets and scraping together more to afford to relocate, but what good is that if we can’t even get approved?”Why Landlords Care About Your CreditCredit is one of the tools property owners have to utilize to tell upfront if a tenant will be able to make their rent payments, said Jay Martin, the executive director of the Community Housing Improvement Program, a trade association for 4,000 property managers and owners in New York.“Property owners have a fiduciary duty to figure out that the applicants that they’re screening are going to be able to pay the rent that they are applying for, because they have mortgages that they’ll have to pay with the rent money that they are collecting,” Mr. Martin said.Mr. Martin added that the money from application fees “is not in any way a form of revenue for management companies, brokers or property owners.” The fee, Mr. Martin said, goes toward covering the cost of running the background checks, credit checks and other screening processes.Still, some tactics and motives have drawn criticism.Brokers also may encourage people who will likely get denied from an apartment application to apply anyway, for financial incentives or in hopes of raising their statistics on how many applicants they can bring in, said Felipe Ernst, a faculty member in Georgetown’s masters of real estate program and founder of a D.C.-based real estate development firm.While it can create more competition for an apartment and give a landlord more options to choose from, it can negatively impact potential renters who are already struggling since application fees, which can add up to hundreds of dollars, are almost always nonrefundable, he said.“It’s borderline unethical to put someone in the wringer, knowing that they won’t get approved,” Mr. Ernst said. “But at the same time, you need to have a realistic look on your finances. I don’t go to a Ferrari dealership if I can only buy a Honda.”Vipassana Vijayarangan could not live with her boyfriend as planned because her lack of credit disqualified her from renting an apartment with him.Todd Midler for The New York TimesSettling for a Room or a CouchFor people desperate to rent apartments, they are just searching high and low for somewhere to live.In 2018, Vipassana Vijayarangan had to move to D.C. on short notice for a new job. She stayed in an Airbnb until she had pay stubs for a rental application, and with her partner, she found a suitable two-bedroom apartment to apply to in Washington’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.“I told the agent in an email, ‘I’m very interested in this apartment, but I do not have any credit,’” Ms. Vijayarangan, 31, said. “When I lived in the U.S. on a student visa, I didn’t have — and was not allowed — to get a social security card. So it was impossible for me to even apply for the secured version of a credit card until I had work authorization.”Similar to Mr. Frost’s situation, the broker assured Ms. Vijayarangan that her lack of credit wouldn’t be a problem, but in the end, her application was denied.Ms. Vijayarangan, who now works as a data scientist in New York, eventually rented a room in a rowhouse from an immigrant landlord who understood her situation, she said. But, Ms. Vijayarangan and her partner, an American citizen who had a more established credit history, ended up living apart because he could get approved but she could not. “That could have been the first time that we were living together and building a life together,” she said. “We didn’t get to do that.”Mr. Frost is now the proxy for discouraged Gen Zers, but he is just the latest in the storied tradition of members of congress lamenting the process of finding a secondary residence in D.C. after being elected. Through the years, representatives and senators have opted to split a place with one another or even sleep in their offices to save money.In an interview last week, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, said that she has previously “dealt with very similar issues.”In 2018, just after she was first elected and was set to be the youngest woman to serve in Congress, she told The Times, “I have three months without a salary before I’m a member of Congress. So, how do I get an apartment? Those little things are very real.”Similarly, Representative Mondaire Jones, Democrat of New York, said he also ran up debt when he first ran for office.“This place is not set up for people who are not independently wealthy,” Mr. Jones said. “People here don’t understand wealth inequality because they’ve not experienced it.”Mr. Frost has a budget of less than $2,000 a month. He’s looking for a studio apartment within walking distance of the U.S. Capitol since he does not intend to have a car or a driver to chauffeur him. His geographic hopes have restricted his apartment hunt to a few gentrifying neighborhoods.Unsure when he’ll finally secure a place to live, he plans to continue couch surfing for a few months to save money and find an apartment in one of his desired neighborhoods.“I was very close to taking out a loan, which would mean spending a lot of personal money to pay back the loan,” Mr. Frost said. “Rent problems are not just mine. There are millions of Americans that have these same problems.” More

    More stories

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Raphael Warnock Is a Pastor and Politician Who Sees Voting as Prayer

      by

      Raphael Warnock, a son of Savannah public housing who rose to become Georgia’s first Black senator, secured a full six-year term and a spot among Democrats’ rising stars.Follow our latest updates on the Georgia Senate runoff.He likened voting to a “prayer for the world we desire,” and called democracy the “political enactment of a spiritual idea,” that everyone has a divine spark.He invoked the legacies of civil rights heroes and “martyrs” who fought and sometimes died for the right to vote, even as he promised to pursue bipartisanship in pressing his policy ambitions.Exulting in his victory Tuesday night, Senator Raphael Warnock showcased the dualities that have defined his career in public life.He is a man of deep faith, the senior pastor at the Atlanta church where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached. And he is also a political tactician who has long believed that “the church’s work doesn’t end at the church door. That’s where it starts.”“I am Georgia,” Mr. Warnock said after winning Tuesday’s runoff election, nodding to both the hopeful and the dark aspects of the state’s past. “I am an example and an iteration of its history. Of its pain and its promise. Of the brutality and the possibility.”He is also now poised, some Democrats say, to be a more prominent national figure, as an ardent supporter of voting rights, a next-generation voice in the party — or, as Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey put it, a leader who can speak to “a lot of the hurt in our country.”“I don’t think America has fully discovered the leadership potential of Raphael Warnock, because he got elected and then was immediately in another election season,” said Mr. Booker, who has worked with Mr. Warnock on legislative issues including health equity matters, and who has campaigned for him. “He has the ability to do both the poetry and the prose of politics in a way that I think is rare.”Mr. Warnock, a son of Savannah public housing who rose to become Georgia’s first Black senator, secured re-election on the strength of a strikingly broad coalition that reflected the party’s greatest political ambitions, winning a full six-year term after previously prevailing in a special election runoff.Mr. Warnock’s election night party on Tuesday in Atlanta erupted when his victory was projected.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesHe won over young progressives on college campuses and, polling before the runoff showed, Black voters across the board. He performed strongly in Atlanta’s racially and ethnically diverse suburbs, and secured support from some Georgians who voted for Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, but split their tickets to back Mr. Warnock — reviving a crossover voting practice that some political observers had assumed was all but extinct.In significant part, that coalition was driven by opposition to Herschel Walker, the football legend nominated by the G.O.P. and backed by Donald J. Trump, whose Senate campaign floundered in the face of a barrage of allegations concerning his personal conduct, especially with women. His candidacy left some Republicans publicly concerned and privately apoplectic.But Mr. Warnock, who blended his image as a social justice-minded pastor with a sense of humor and an emphasis on bipartisanship, also showed how a Georgia Democrat could win in a difficult political environment, even as every other statewide candidate in his party collapsed.“‘Remaining the reverend’ was the phrase we used,” said Adam Magnus, Mr. Warnock’s lead ad maker. “It means remaining the unique person Raphael Warnock is. That is a combination of a moral sincerity, an empathy, a hard-working life story from where he started from to where he is now, and a relatability and a sense of humor.”Raphael Gamaliel Warnock was born on July 23, 1969, the 11th of 12 children, to a family of modest means. His father was a pastor who also “hauled junk, mostly abandoned cars,” offering the metal in exchange for cash, he wrote in his 2022 memoir “A Way Out of No Way,” while his mother took care of the family at home, later becoming a pastor.“She grew up in the 1950s in Waycross, Ga., picking somebody else’s cotton and somebody else’s tobacco,” Mr. Warnock said in his victory speech. “But tonight she helped pick her youngest son to be a United States senator.”He gave his first sermon at the age of 11, and was deeply inspired by the legacy of Dr. King, whose church — Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta — Mr. Warnock now leads.Mr. Warnock is the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached. Kevin D. Liles for The New York TimesMr. Warnock, a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, graduated from Morehouse College in 1991 before heading to New York City to study at Union Theological Seminary, staying in the city for about a decade.It was in New York, former classmates said, that he deepened his instincts to put the teachings of his faith into practice in the public square. He studied under, among others, the Rev. Dr. James H. Cone, a founder of Black liberation theology, which emphasizes the experiences of the oppressed.And at Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church, where Mr. Warnock became assistant pastor, he immersed himself in a world of Black civic and political activism. He was arrested at a protest for the first time in New York, objecting to the police killing of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed Guinean immigrant. His own brother was sentenced to life in prison, in a nonviolent drug-related offense involving an F.B.I. informant, a turn of events that shaped Mr. Warnock’s views of the criminal justice system. (His brother was released in 2020.)It was during his time in New York, Mr. Warnock later wrote, that the idea of running for Congress first occurred to him. But it would be years before he did so. Instead, he built a preaching career that eventually brought him to Atlanta, and to Ebenezer.As a pastor, Mr. Warnock condemned police brutality and racial injustice and championed expanding Medicaid. Encouraged by Georgia’s changing demographics, he wrote, he considered running for the Senate in the 2014 and 2016 cycles before seeking the seat vacated when Senator Johnny Isakson, a Republican, announced his retirement. He won after a January 2021 runoff that helped to deliver control of the Senate to the Democrats.In that contest, as in this year’s, Mr. Warnock leaned heavily into his identity as a pastor, making it harder for Republicans to cast him as a generic Democrat.“He’s literally in Martin Luther King’s pulpit every weekend,” said Jason Carter, a Warnock ally and Ebenezer congregant who ran for governor in 2014. “He has credibility that is unshakable in certain contexts that allow him to run his own kind of a race.”In the 2020 Senate campaign, Republicans unsuccessfully tried to use Mr. Warnock’s career and past sermons to paint him as radically left wing. This year, they focused more on linking Mr. Warnock to President Biden. They also tried to make an issue of Mr. Warnock’s relationship with his ex-wife, with whom he has two young children.Mr. Warnock’s team emphasized character and fitness for office and cast the race as a choice, rather than a chance to vent at the party in power.And some Republicans conceded that Mr. Warnock effectively defined himself in a way that allowed him to both keep the Democratic base energized and to engage the middle.Republicans “did not neglect to argue that his voting record doesn’t match his moderate rhetoric, they didn’t neglect to mention that he votes with Biden,” said Brian C. Robinson, who was a spokesman for former Gov. Nathan Deal, a Republican. “His brand was stronger. It was a shield that deflected accurate attacks.”Mr. Robinson called Mr. Warnock “the best performer I’ve ever seen in Georgia politics,” adding: “He’s up there with, as far as sheer talent, up there with Clinton and Obama.”Mr. Warnock also campaigned on his ability to work with conservative hard-liners like Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.“I’ve spoken with more conservative Democrats who are really excited, I’ve spoken with very progressive Democrats on college campuses that are really excited,” said Maxwell Alejandro Frost, the 25-year-old elected in November to the House from Florida, who campaigned with Mr. Warnock on Monday. “That’s the future of our party.”Mr. Warnock’s victory will undoubtedly prompt questions about his own future, as the country awaits Mr. Biden’s decision on whether to seek re-election and Democrats chatter about which midterm stars could emerge as party leaders.“A lot of people want to move someone like him, they want to move him around the board like a chess piece,” Mr. Carter said. Asked if he thought Mr. Warnock had any ambitions beyond the Senate, he replied flatly, “I don’t.”“He wants to do a good job as a senator,” Mr. Carter said, “but his children, his faith, his church — those things are really, really important to him.”With a six-year term now his, Mr. Warnock sounded impatient to get started.“Let’s dance because we deserve it,” he told his celebrating supporters. “But tomorrow, we go back down into the valley to do the work.” More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Maxwell Frost, First Gen Z Congressman, Gets His Bearings on Capitol Hill

      by

      In the weeks after his election, the youngest member of the incoming House has learned just how different his lifestyle and perspective is from his older colleagues’.WASHINGTON — He is a fan of early-2000s rock, which was popular when he was in kindergarten. He is still working to get his undergraduate degree. And he is couch surfing to save money as he starts his new job, which is representing Florida’s 10th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives.Representative-elect Maxwell Frost, a 25-year-old Afro-Cuban progressive activist from Orlando, is about to be the youngest member of Congress. He has swapped the megaphone he once used to lead protests for a seat in one of the nation’s most powerful institutions, where he will be the first member of Generation Z to serve.In a body where the average age was more than twice his (58.4 years old in the most recent Congress), Mr. Frost is starting with a keen sense of mission.“I think we all have this call to action, and you feel like you have to do something,” he said on a recent Wednesday, as he made his way to a hotel room to freshen up before getting his official head shot taken.The something that motivated Mr. Frost, he said, was the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, when he was in high school, which killed 26 people, most of them young children, and gave rise to a grim and nearly omnipresent ritual of active shooter drills for primary and secondary school students across the country.Mr. Frost, who is of Lebanese, Puerto Rican and Haitian descent and was adopted at birth in 1997, grew up in Orlando with a mother who was a Cuban refugee and schoolteacher and a father who was a Kansas-born musician.At an early age, he came to love music and the arts, eventually hosting a music festival with a friend. But he found another passion in political activism, volunteering in 2012 with President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign and then in 2016 with presidential campaigns for Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.After enrolling at Valencia College in Orlando in 2015, he took a break in 2019 to work for the American Civil Liberties Union, and later became a national organizer for the youth-led advocacy group March for Our Lives, which focuses on enacting stricter gun control measures. He drove for Uber to make ends meet.In January 2021, a political operative approached urging him to seek public office, but Mr. Frost said what ultimately persuaded him to do so was connecting with his biological mother several months later.Mr. Frost jogging to the front of the room to participate in the office lottery for new members in the Capitol last week.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesMr. Frost looking at a potential office after the lottery.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesDuring the conversation, Mr. Frost learned that his biological mother, who had seven other children and gave birth to him at the most vulnerable point in her life, had given him up because she did not have the resources to care for him.“Just hearing about the hardships she went through as a woman of color really solidified my beliefs,” Mr. Frost said. “I hung up the phone and said, ‘I’m running for Congress.’”A New U.S. Congress Takes ShapeFollowing the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats maintained control of the Senate while Republicans flipped the House.Divided Government: What does a split Congress mean for the next two years? Most likely a gridlock that could lead to government shutdowns and economic turmoil.Democratic Leadership: House Democrats elected Hakeem Jeffries as their next leader, ushering in a generational shift that includes women and people of color in all the top posts for the first time.G.O.P. Leadership: After a midterms letdown, Representative Kevin McCarthy and Senator Mitch McConnell faced threats to their power from an emboldened right flank.Ready for Battle: An initiative by progressive groups called Courage for America is rolling out a coordinated effort to counter the new Republican House majority and expected investigations of the Biden administration.He declared his candidacy two months later. Mr. Frost said he was moved to run “for people like my biological mother, for my family and for my district,” and wanted to be in a position “to fight to ensure that the condition doesn’t exist for anybody.”Mr. Frost’s win in the midterm elections was a bright spot for Democrats, who lost ground in Florida and narrowly lost their majority in the House. He adds to a diverse field of newly elected representatives from underrepresented communities.Not everyone has been dazzled by Mr. Frost’s youthful enthusiasm. His Republican challenger, Calvin Wimbish, suggested that he was unfit to serve in Congress. “What has he been able to do?” Mr. Wimbish asked in an interview with Spectrum News. “Has he managed people, resources, has he had time? Has he had the exposure to learning from others?”Mr. Frost is taking over the distinction of youngest member of Congress from Representative Madison Cawthorn, Republican of North Carolina, who was elected in 2020 at the age of 25. But the Florida Democrat is not the youngest member of Congress in history. That record, which is unlikely ever to be broken, belongs to William C.C. Claiborne, who may have been 22 when he was elected to the House in 1797. (There is some dispute over his age, but no question that he was under 25.)While the Constitution mandates that House members be at least 25 years old, the House chose to seat Mr. Claiborne anyway.With his youth come some unique challenges for Mr. Frost. He is spending his first few weeks in Washington crashing with friends as he searches for an affordable place to live, as he will not be paid for a few weeks, until the new Congress convenes on Jan. 3.When the moment is right, he said he would rent a studio apartment within walking or electric scooter distance of the Capitol.Mr. Frost viewing an apartment last week. He plans to couch surf during his first few weeks in Washington.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesBut his age has also given him a leg up in some areas. During the digital training portion of new member orientation over the past two weeks, he managed to set up his personal technology in half the time of his older colleagues.He surprised his fellow members-elect last week as he captured moments throughout the day with 0.5 selfies, a new fad among the Gen Z set that entails taking iPhone photos using the back camera. And he’s had the privilege of being “slimed” by Nickelodeon and getting a shout-out from the English pop band The 1975 while at one of the band’s concerts.On Capitol Hill, he has sometimes felt like a kid trying to get to know a new school. He got lost in the Capitol Visitor Center — as the soundtrack of the Broadway musical “Hamilton” blared in his headphones — and had the dizzying experience of meeting new and current members during informational sessions throughout the Capitol complex.Representative Val B. Demings, the Florida Democrat whom he will succeed, has offered him mentorship and described him in an interview as “beyond his years.”“He takes the job seriously, but I don’t think he takes himself too seriously,” Ms. Demings said. “If he can keep that kind of spirit, even on the rough days and nights here, he’ll be OK.”Her main piece of advice for the youngster: Talk to different people and look across the aisle for unlikely allies.Representative Mark Pocan, Democrat of Wisconsin, who visited Mr. Frost before the primary election to help his campaign, said he would fit right in in Congress.“You know, for someone who is 25, he’s kind of an old soul,” Mr. Pocan said, adding that he had been struck by Mr. Frost’s “thoughtfulness of how he looked at issues and his progressive values.”Mr. Frost was an activist and volunteered for several presidential campaigns before running for Congress.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesMr. Frost will be the youngest member of the 118th Congress.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesMr. Sanders was among the first to reach out to congratulate him after the election was called, Mr. Frost said, recounting how he knew his former boss was calling when the Vermont area code popped up on his phone.“He has the potential to be a great leader, speaking to the young people in this country,” Mr. Sanders said of Mr. Frost in an interview.For now, Mr. Frost is focused on some immediate tasks. He has about a year left of his undergraduate education at Valencia College, and he said he intends to resume his coursework at some point.Over the next two years, Mr. Frost aims to lean into his love for grass-roots organizing by building a strong local presence with an accessible district office. At the Capitol, he said his goal was to make incremental steps toward addressing Democratic priorities such as improving health care, enacting gun control measures and building community violence intervention programs.In the next few weeks, he will hire a staff, move into his new corner office in the Longworth Building across from the Capitol and learn how to balance his administrative budget and manage his time as a representative.“Let’s start where we can,” he said, “and not lose sight of our values.” More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Congressional Freshmen’s First Fight: Landing a Good Office

      by

      Representatives-elect cheered and sneered as they drew buttons in a lottery that would decide the order in which they could choose their new offices on Capitol Hill.WASHINGTON — Representative-elect Maxwell Frost, Democrat of Florida, took a whiff of a Vicks nasal stick his mother had given him.Representative-elect Erin Houchin, Republican of Indiana, played “The Final Countdown” by Europe on her phone.Representative-elect Becca Balint, Democrat of Vermont, ran to the front of the room with her arms raised to rally the crowd, only to return to her seat with her head downcast and feet dragging after learning her fate: She would be the ninth-to-last newly elected member of Congress to choose an office.The cheers and sneers filling an ornate room on Capitol Hill on Friday came from 73 soon-to-be freshman House members who were participating in one of the most anticipated events in their orientation to Congress: the lottery for selecting their new offices.The congressional equivalent of a college room draw, the ritual can be a stressful and sometimes raucous affair. It was done in person this week for the first time in four years — the process went remote during the pandemic — and the participants brought back beloved traditions like dancing, chanting and sign-waving for good fortune.A New U.S. Congress Takes ShapeFollowing the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats maintained control of the Senate while Republicans flipped the House.Divided Government: What does a split Congress mean for the next two years? Most likely a gridlock that could lead to government shutdowns and economic turmoil.Democratic Leadership: House Democrats elected Hakeem Jeffries as their next leader, ushering in a generational shift that includes women and people of color in all the top posts for the first time.G.O.P. Leadership: After a midterms letdown, Representative Kevin McCarthy and Senator Mitch McConnell faced threats to their power from an emboldened right flank.Ready for Battle: An initiative by progressive groups called Courage for America is rolling out a coordinated effort to counter the new Republican House majority and expected investigations of the Biden administration.The newly minted lawmakers have spent the last two weeks attending an elaborate orientation in Washington, meeting one another and learning how to navigate the tunnels that snake underneath the Capitol and its surrounding buildings and grounds. They got crash courses in how to set up their offices, but it wasn’t until Friday that they had the chance to actually choose one.“The box we picked from is over 100 years old,” said Representative-elect Wiley Nickel, Democrat of North Carolina, who credited his luck in getting a good draw to refusing to look at the number he had pulled from the mahogany container. “Any time you get to stand in the shoes of people who have come before you is an amazing honor.”The box dates to the early 20th century, when a blindfolded House page would draw marbles for lawmakers. On Friday, newly elected members took turns pulling buttons bearing the numbers that would determine the order in which they could select an available office.Over the span of an hour, they cheered and heckled one another, sneering with envy when a colleague pulled a low number and whooping with schadenfreude when someone pulled a high one.After the draw they left, armed with floor plans, to survey both empty and occupied offices. Staff aides briefed their uninitiated bosses on the pros and cons of each House office building: Longworth, a neo-Classical building lined with Ionic columns, has low ceilings but is more central; Cannon, the Beaux-Arts marble and limestone edifice next door, is the most recently renovated and therefore the most desirable.Representative-elect Max Miller, Republican of Ohio, was among the lucky first few who landed an office there. He waved a single finger in the air for luck as the crowd cheered him on, chanting, “No. 1.” To his surprise, he drew the first pick, eliciting raucous applause.A member-elect drew the number 42 from the mahogany box that has been used for the office lottery since the early 20th century.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesMr. Frost drew a middling 23. He held out hope he could still get a Cannon office, joking to a reporter at one point about starting a dirty-tricks campaign to persuade his colleagues to go elsewhere.“We should talk smack on Cannon,” he said.As Mr. Frost browsed through the halls of Longworth, one staffer warned him that mice run there. He was in the market for a newer office to accommodate his allergies, with a large room for staffers.Representative-elect Robert Garcia, Democrat of California, said he wanted a blue carpet in his office as a symbol of his pride in his party.When members were done shopping, they returned to make their selections, huddling around laptop computers that showed the remaining available offices.Nikki Rapanos, chief of staff for Representative-elect Nick LaLota, Republican of New York, stomped when she heard Representative-elect Derrick Van Orden, Republican of Wisconsin, claim her boss’s top choice: a corner office in Longworth with ample space for staff.Ms. Rapanos had even played “My Way” by Frank Sinatra to channel the spirit of Mr. LaLota, who was not in attendance, and bring her office luck when drawing a number.Representative-elect Seth Magaziner, Democrat of Rhode Island, who drew the fourth-to-last pick, raised both his hands in resignation after the selection. He tried to make the best of his misfortune.“They say the best office is the one you’re in,” Mr. Magaziner said. More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      With House Majority in Play, a New Class Takes Shape

      by

      The Republican ranks grew more extreme and slightly more diverse, while Democrats added several young liberals to their caucus.WASHINGTON — Whoever holds the House majority in January, the new lawmakers will include a fresh crop of Republican election deniers, including a veteran who attended the “Stop the Steal” rally at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; a handful of G.O.P. members of color; and a diverse group of young Democratic progressives.As vote counting continued across the country on Wednesday, with Republicans grasping to take control and Democrats outperforming expectations in key races, the contours of a new class of lawmakers began to emerge.It featured a sizable contingent of Republicans who have questioned or denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election, many of them hailing from safely red districts, adding to an already influential extreme right in the House. At least 140 of the House Republicans who won election this week are election deniers, at least 15 of them new additions.A handful of Black and Latina Republicans also won, adding a touch more diversity to a mostly white, male conference — though far less than leaders had hoped as many candidates they had recruited for their potential to appeal to a broader set of voters in competitive districts fell short.For Democrats, the election ushered in younger, more diverse members to fill the seats of departing incumbents. Many of those candidates had held state offices or previously sought seats in Congress and are expected to back many of the priorities of the Democratic left wing.Here are some of the new faces:Kristen Zeis for The New York TimesThe RepublicansJen A. Kiggans, a Navy veteran and state senatorAs a woman with military experience, Ms. Kiggans was regarded by Republicans as a prime recruit to put up against a centrist Democrat in a conservative-leaning area. She defeated Representative Elaine Luria on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, propelled in part by state redistricting that tilted the district more decisively to the right.She focused her campaign narrowly on inflation and public safety, and was bolstered by top Republicans, including Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader who is running to become speaker should his party retake the House, and Gov. Glenn Youngkin. That suggested that she would be more likely to serve as an acolyte to Republican leaders than a thorn in their sides.But though she ran as a mainstream candidate, Ms. Kiggans declined throughout her campaign to say whether she believed Mr. Biden was legitimately elected.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesDerrick Van Orden, a veteran at the Capitol on Jan. 6.A retired Navy SEAL who rallied at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Van Orden flipped a key seat for Republicans in western Wisconsin, in a largely rural district currently held by Representative Ron Kind, a 13-term centrist Democrat who did not seek re-election.Who Will Control Congress? Here’s When We’ll Know.Card 1 of 4Much remains uncertain. More

    • 113 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      Maxwell Alejandro Frost Secures Generation Z’s First House Seat

      by

      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.” More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Two 25-Year-Olds Could Be Elected to Congress, a Historical Rarity

      by

      Generation Z has been pushing for more political power since its first members came of age in 2015. This year, it has its first opportunity to enter the halls of Congress — and, as the dust clears from a long primary season, two candidates are poised to take advantage.Karoline Leavitt won the Republican primary in New Hampshire’s First Congressional District on Tuesday, less than a month after turning 25, the constitutional minimum age to serve in the House. She is an underdog in the general election, facing a Democratic incumbent, Representative Chris Pappas. But the district is roughly evenly divided between the parties and the race is competitive.Even if Ms. Leavitt loses in November, the next Congress is virtually guaranteed to include a member of Generation Z: Maxwell Alejandro Frost, also 25, who won the Democratic primary last month for an open House seat in Florida’s solidly blue 10th Congressional District.Either of them, if elected, would be the youngest sitting member of Congress. If both are elected, the distinction will go to Ms. Leavitt, who is about seven months younger.But neither would be the youngest person ever elected to Congress.That record, unlikely ever to be broken, belongs to William C.C. Claiborne, who was 22 when he was elected to the House from Tennessee in 1797, according to congressional records. (There is some dispute in other sources about his exact age, but no dispute that he was younger than 25.) The age requirement was no different then: The Constitution said House members had to be at least 25, and Mr. Claiborne wasn’t. But the House chose to seat Mr. Claiborne anyway.A handful of 24-year-olds were seated in the 1800s, too, according to congressional records, as were some people who turned 25 less than a month before being sworn in.In modern times, however, it is rare for a 25-year-old to be elected to the House.Representative Madison Cawthorn, Republican of North Carolina, managed it in 2020; if elected this year, Ms. Leavitt would be less than a month younger than Mr. Cawthorn was when he was elected. Before Mr. Cawthorn, the last 25-year-old to serve in the House was Thomas Downey, a New York Democrat elected in 1974.Generation Z leans strongly toward Democrats, but its members are not an ideological monolith, as evidenced by the political leanings of Ms. Leavitt and Mr. Frost.Mr. Frost is a progressive Democrat who supports Medicare for all, abortion rights and stricter gun laws. “I come from a generation that has gone through more mass-shooting drills than fire drills,” he told The New York Times in an interview after his primary victory, adding that he believed his generation had “a natural sense of seeing the world through the eyes of the most vulnerable.”Ms. Leavitt, whose campaign did not respond to an interview request, is a right-wing Republican who worked as a press aide for former President Donald J. Trump. She supports a “zero tolerance” policy against illegal immigration and opposes abortion and gun control. More