Some attacks on Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign have focused on his plans to create city-owned grocery stores, make bus rides free, offer baby baskets of diapers to new parents and freeze rent for over two million New Yorkers. One of the stranger and more personal attacks focused on his summer scavenger hunt. Mr. Mamdani, who is 33 and a State Assembly member, went from one little-known nook of New York to another — and was promptly denounced as unfit for office.
A member of the New York Post’s editorial board called his base “adult-kickball-league D.S.A.-nerd Mamdani cultists” in a jeremiad against the scavenger hunt. Mayor Eric Adams suggested on social media, before leaving the race last week, that the scavenger hunt was nefarious. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running against Mr. Mamdani for the mayoralty, sneered at it. The ability of a simple scavenger hunt to rile Mr. Mamdani’s detractors showcased a panic that seemingly unites many in the political old guard, even if they didn’t name it: The youngest Americans are taking over American life.
Younger Americans are sometimes derided for apathy about politics. But that indifference is almost entirely a product of established politicians’ appearances on cable news and occasional social media clips, as I’ve seen time and again in my role at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics. Many younger Americans are eagerly seeking out politicians and pundits of their own age. They are united not by one political platform but by establishment politicians’ inability to relate to younger Americans. Younger officials seem better placed to offer plausible road maps to our students, showing near-term solutions to problems where long-term solutions are often hazy.
This is true on the left and the right. Charlie Kirk understood this, and he was able to convert that enthusiasm into engagement for himself and votes for Republicans. There are very few among the political old guard who could fill a lawn with 3,000 people on any campus in America right now, but he could.
Young politicians will always be criticized by their elders for inexperience, and in politics, “young” doesn’t just mean the under-40 crowd. Barack Obama faced these attacks when he ran for president in 2008 as a barely seasoned U.S. senator. When I covered City Hall in 2001, Michael Bloomberg — the businessman who was nearly 60 when he first ran for mayor — was targeted for his lack of political perspicacity.
The hand-wringing in those cases did not carry the same get-off-my-lawn vibes that characterize jabs at this generation of newcomers — younger millennials and members of Generation Z, mostly. The ire for Mr. Mamdani and other young political hopefuls borrows from tropes about young Americans’ dues-skipping sense of professional entitlement.
It’s easy for people to dislike the cultural references that elude them, as well as young candidates’ ease with digital platforms that older generations have failed to master. Add to that the ability of young candidates on both the left and the right to connect with voters in their 20s and 30s who feel displaced by geriatric fat cats in business and government — not to mention baby boomer landowners and their 2 percent interest rates — and a cycle of resentment was born.
Millennials — those born from 1981 to 1996 — are by far the largest generation the United States has ever known. In the past few years, they’ve managed to find their footing in American politics. This cohort is likely to become more and more powerful, and most older politicians simply cannot capture their loyalty, even if they’ve made Instagram accounts.
Since 2020, the number of millennials running for public office has soared, including an almost 80 percent spike in the number running for Congress. Younger elected officials include Mayor Justin Bibb of Cleveland and Mayor Michelle Wu of Boston, and 72 members of Congress were born after 1980. Both Democrats and Republicans are getting in on the action: Of those 72, 38 are Democrats, and 34 are Republicans.
Younger politicians aren’t being stopped by wait-your-turn messaging. A Democratic first-term member of the Nevada Assembly, Joe Dalia, recently announced a run for state treasurer, with a platform focused on housing. In Michigan the fight for the Democratic nomination for a U.S. Senate seat is among three millennials; the oldest major candidate was born in 1983. In Texas the race for the Democratic Senate nomination seems likely to come down to two millennials: former U.S. Representative Colin Allred and Texas State Representative James Talarico, a social media wunderkind who was once a teacher. The organization Run Gen Z is pushing to get young conservatives elected. Its coalition includes 156 elected officials nationwide, up from just six in 2020.
In both parties, younger politicians defy their parties’ reputations on some issues, taking heterodox approaches more aligned with their ages. Last spring the Institute of Politics took a group of largely progressive students to meet with Josh Schoemann, a 40-something county executive in Wisconsin. Mr. Schoemann, who is running for governor, is proudly conservative, but he created a down payment incentive program for home buyers in which publicly financed loans can be repaid with community service work. The program appealed to many of the students.
Some older politicians — particularly Democrats — seem to see the writing on the wall. After Texas Republicans strong-armed a rare middecade gerrymander to cut many Democrats from the state’s congressional delegation, Representative Lloyd Doggett — the delegation’s longest-serving member — decided to retire rather than face off against a much younger fellow Democrat, Representative Greg Casar. Representative Jerry Nadler, Democrat of New York, said his 34-year tenure would end after his current term. Among those interested in Mr. Nadler’s seat are many in their 20s and 30s, including the Kennedy scion Jack Schlossberg and the anti-gun-violence activist Cameron Kasky.
Youth itself is no guarantee of connection with voters, whatever their age. And sometimes engagement with the internet ignites skepticism from old and young alike, as it has in the case of Vice President JD Vance and the businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, who is running to be Ohio’s governor. Their attempts to out-Trump President Trump can come across as smarmy and polished rather than authentic. In general, a chin-out posture toward critics works best when edged with some humor, which Mr. Mamdani has mastered.
Older politicians may choose to cling to power and relevance until death or elections come for them. What they need to accept, whether or not Mr. Mamdani succeeds in November, is that the political world now belongs to a new generation. The rest of us just need to learn to live in it.
Jennifer Steinhauer is the senior director at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics. Previously she covered New York’s City Hall, the U.S. Congress and California for The Times. She is the author of “The Firsts: The Inside Story of the Women Reshaping Congress” and other books.
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