Is There A Playbook For Young Democratic Candidates — And Does It Work?

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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Sarah McCammon.

I cover politics.

I'm Elena Moore.

I cover politics too.

And I'm Domenico Montanero, senior political editor and correspondent.

Today on the show, younger Democrats are running for office.

What's their message and how is it working so far?

You know, Elena, you've been following this.

There are at least, as I understand it, 10 Democratic candidates under age 40 vying for seats in Congress in next year's midterm election.

How's that working?

Who are they?

What should we know about them?

Yeah, I feel like I've covered young voters long enough that now I'm like old covering young voters.

Old heads like you wouldn't really get it.

I mean, they're running in districts all around the country from the Midwest, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana to Florida to California.

And they have a similar pitch.

The pitch is: we are frustrated and tired with the longtime Democratic leaders, and we want new ones.

And so, you know, give us a try.

And are they pitching that message mostly to other younger voters, or are they trying to argue that they, as younger voters, kind of have an insight into the experience of, like you said, the average voter that is sort of more broadly applicable.

I think they're trying to push a message that goes past the generation and show that these generational issues are ones that other generations can connect to.

And we've seen this, you know, playbook, so to speak, work before.

But it's still a hard thing to do.

And the people who have made it work are more unicorns than anything.

You know, it's worth mentioning that there's only one Gen Z member of Congress.

His name is Maxwell Frost.

He represents a district in Florida that includes Orlando, and he was elected to Congress at 25 years old in 2022.

Since then, many have tried to join him, other Democratic Gen Zers, and they've fallen short for a number of reasons, whether it's lack of experience, lack of, you know, big endorsements, or just fundraising.

And that's something that Cheyenne Hunt talked to me about.

She ran for Congress in California last year.

And here's how she kind of described why Frost's win made sense.

It's like a little bit of an AOC moment.

Like that's not the norm.

That's a perfect storm.

And it's more of a miracle than it is like a replicatable strategy for most of us.

You know, she said that like Frost was able to, yes, he was hungry.

He worked really hard, but he also had a, you know, field of competitors that she argued were asleep at the wheel.

And, you know, he was able to kind of stand out as this young progressive upstart candidate.

You know, Domenico, why are we seeing these younger candidates now?

And is this a new strategy or is this just sort of a new iteration of something we've seen before?

Aaron Powell, well, if you take a step back, I mean, someone who's 25 years old and progressive, you know, they're an infant on 9-11.

They were in third grade when former President Obama won.

You know, they were sophomore in high school when Donald Trump started running for office.

You're talking about 9-11, a pandemic, a financial recession.

These are the things that have shaped those folks'

understanding of politics, and that might run counter to the context that some older people might have, depending on how they grew up and what they had seen.

The 1990s, for example, was a time of some political turmoil, but then became a pretty prosperous time for the United States.

And there's a little bit different context for those who lived,

who grew up earlier than that.

And when you are born in that kind of fire, there's a little bit more of an edge that I think some of these these younger progressives have in how they think that the approach to politics should be.

They see some of the older Democrats as not fighting hard enough, and that's certainly a thing we've seen a lot about.

And given how their youth was shaped, a lot of left-wing populism on affordability, housing, student loans, gun violence, things like that.

Aaron Ross Powell, yeah.

You know, I'm thinking specifically of people like David Hogg, the former vice chair of the Democratic National Committee who runs the group Leaders We Deserve, which is explicitly focused on building up younger candidates.

He and others have talked about challenging older politicians in primary elections and bringing in younger leaders.

What is that about?

Yeah, I mean, to Dominico's point, David Hogg is the perfect example of a Gen Z progressive who has been shaped by the environment he was born into.

I mean, this is somebody who literally survived a mass shooting.

He was in high school during the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas mass shooting in 2018

in Parkland, Florida.

He's since become an activist and his group is focused, he says, on really bringing in a new generation, but also kind of putting the spotlight on Democrats that he would argue have maybe gotten a little too comfortable.

And they stress that that's an argument that goes past age.

But Hogg at the leadership role of this group, I think sends a really strong message of how a lot of young people who have only known political divisiveness, have only known political chaos, so to speak, on both sides of the aisle, are not afraid to push back on their party if they align with a party.

And we've seen that from young Democrats.

We've also seen it from young Republicans who aren't afraid to push back on conservative leaders.

Aaron Ross Powell, yeah.

And think about some of a little bit of what his group, Leaders We Deserve, says.

The first line of what they're about says, too many elected leaders in the Democratic Party are either unwilling or unable to meet the moment and are asleep at the wheel while Trump is demolishing the economy, et cetera.

And he says that younger leaders simply bring a different level of urgency that we just aren't seeing in our politics right now.

And I find it interesting because a lot of his messaging, I think there's a lot of Democrats who actually agree with some of the idea that you need to fight back more urgently against Trump, that

affordability is a real problem in the country.

I think he alienates some people with this idea that only younger people know how to do that,

even though he has drawn some carve-outs for some older Democrats, like people like Bernie Sanders.

But if he didn't even start with talking about why youth is the necessary ingredient, it might actually find a broader audience.

But I think that's the kind of thing that comes with, you know, experience on the national stage, figuring out what works, what doesn't work.

And, you know, who knows?

I think that the Democratic Party is one that's being reshaped right now by a younger energy with a lot of progressive voters.

And, you know, we've had a lot of younger voters who've moved toward Trump's side from a very different sort of polar opposite idea of culture in this country.

So I think we're going to see something very, very different start to play out over the next few years heading into 2028 when neither Trump nor, of course, Biden are going to be the people on the ticket.

And we should say that Hogg's group was a bit controversial because David Hogg was a member of the Democratic National Committee's leadership.

And a few months ago, he made an announcement that his separate group would be supporting Democratic primary challengers.

So that was the big dividing moment here.

And Hogg has since left the DNC to focus on this.

And I think the last thing I'd say, Dominico, you're right.

And this is a generation that may have a lot of political potential.

And both sides are kind of weighing how to harness that and how to keep those voters seen.

Right.

And I think what happened with Hogg and the sort of pushback his strategy has received within the party is illustrative of one of the larger divides in the Democratic Party.

And it's not really a new divide, but it's sort of this perennial question of

playing to the center or moving to the left.

We're going to take a quick break.

We'll have more in just a moment.

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And we're back.

We've been talking about younger candidates, but I want to talk a little bit about younger voters who some of these messages are aimed toward.

Alina, young Republicans were a big part of the coalition that elected President Trump, so this isn't just about young Democrats.

Are there similarities between what younger Republicans and younger Democrats are looking for?

Yeah, I think so.

I think that there are a lot of overlap policy-wise on some of the more populist issues of really kind of focusing on how

struggling working class folks are able to get access to benefits that they feel they deserve, whether that's affordable health care, housing,

access to good jobs, education.

And I think that obviously both parties have different points of view on how to get those those things, but they're pitching a similar message.

And when I was out covering young Republicans in the 2024 election, the message I heard was often similar to what you hear from many of the progressives.

You know, we want to make you have a better life than your parents.

That's what was constantly said on the right.

And we know that that did work.

You know, there's a Venn diagram clearly between this right and left on the younger side of things.

We saw that in the 2016 Democratic primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, for example.

And obviously, with Donald Trump running in that election, there were some similarities between the Bernie Sanders wing of things and Donald Trump, particularly on economics, this affordability issue.

And anti-elitism, I think, is also core to that, not trusting the people who came before necessarily.

I think that where they divide significantly, though, is on culture.

And I think that we can say that over the last 10 years, culture has been far more important a political factor in determining a lot of people's votes.

I mean, I think the last election, you probably saw some crossover on economics as well.

But I think driving core to a lot of people's reasons for voting Republican or Democrat, the dividing issue is culture.

I think it's going to be interesting to see how both parties try to balance those

in some ways conflicting policies.

You know, we did see an example, you know, in addition to Frost, another young person who kind of recently successfully channeled a lot of these policy feelings was Zoran Mamdani in New York, you know, in the Democratic mayoral primary.

He won.

He beat former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who was running as a moderate.

Mamdani is a Democratic socialist.

He's 33.

He's a state representative.

And his campaign was centered on working class New Yorkers.

And he pushed a very economic message, despite also very openly having a ton of much more progressive cultural views.

And we saw that resonate with New Yorkers.

And, you know, it's an apples to orange comparison when you look at, you know, young congressional candidates of different race, different places around the country.

But he ran on a similar playbook to what we're seeing many young candidates vying for federal office trying to emulate.

New York,

of course, is a very different landscape than much of the rest of the country.

I think a lot of Democrats have looked at Mom Dani's success and wondered if that could be a model for Democrats going forward, especially because of the data that suggested he did turn out a lot of younger voters.

Are there lessons from that race that Democrats can draw more broadly?

Or is there a risk that appealing to younger voters might move the party to the left to a degree that hurts Democrats in general elections?

I feel like it gets back to the whole point of this conversation, which is that this sometimes works and it sometimes does not work.

At At this point, it's still pretty rare for something like Mom Dani's win to happen.

And so I think, yeah, Democrats have to take it with a grain of salt and really kind of zero in on the factors that made that possible.

You know, New York is a very specific place.

This campaign really catered to specific issues like to New Yorkers, renters, housing affordability.

But at the same time, there are...

parts of that campaign that I think House Democrats, especially in the upcoming midterms, will try to emulate.

You know, Momdani was very, very much present on social media.

He developed a brand on social media, like walking around New York.

I think that his clear issue focus separated him from the competitor, which is something that not all young candidates are able to do to break out and to get attention that way.

But again, in the same way, he was also given a very, you know, in some ways, helpful gift by running against someone like Cuomo, who is so different than what Mandani is pitching.

So I think that Democrats are not always going to have a playing field like that where they're able to be like, look, I'm a progressive, he's a moderate, he's, you know, from the old guard, I'm from the new guard, pick the new guard.

I think often it's going to be way more messy than that.

And Democrats can't bank on those specific

boundaries kind of shaping every race.

And turnout in primaries is obviously lower than in a general election.

And Momdani is going to face another test where Andrew Cuomo is now running as an independent in a general election.

And I think it's really interesting because that is going to be another major hurdle to show whether or not his social media strategy, his message, all of that can continue to work, even in a place like New York, which is different than the rest of the country.

But I think that there are three things that we know are important in politics: name ID, money, and message.

And any combination of those, depending on the audience of people that you're trying to win over, is what's going to be most important.

I think there's a combination of a lot of these things that Democrats are going to take from moving forward, and they're going to have to walk this line in not alienating the people who are fired up by whether they were somebody who was more a name that people recognize in establishment and somebody who might be younger and trying to have a more revolutionary message.

Aaron Powell, we've been talking about the politics of younger voters, but just when it comes to sort of the nuts and bolts of turning out the electorate, is being a younger candidate necessarily an advantage?

I think that it depends on what part of this generation you ask.

I think that for someone like David Hogg, who supported Mom Dani, I think some people see their political identity tied to their generational identity because it has been so shaped by that.

And I think for some voters, I'm sure they connect to that.

At the same time, we've also seen that backfire, and people, you know, get accused of being ageist.

And when you look at someone like Mom Donnie, it gets back to this is a generation that cares about issues over party.

And I think a lot of people voted for him because of his policies and his accessibility to people rather than the fact that he was 33 years old.

I think that it's a good reminder that this is always a combination.

Yes, he's young.

Yes, he's pushing for a new guard, but he also had the right messaging for the constituency he wants to represent.

And I think policy over politics is still what Gen Z is looking for.

You know, look, I mean, at the end of the day, you've got a lot of people now who are trying to get involved in politics because they understand that it's the only way to be able to change or fix the things that they think are problems, left or right.

I mean, you know, where the energy is and where it's going is clearly different and things change.

And I think that that's not necessarily a bad thing for people who are older.

I think that it's something that, you know, is just kind of the way things evolve and the way things change.

And I think the real real key here is how they can walk together to be able to bring change and build a coalition that's 50 plus one.

And, you know, I think you both just alluded to something that I think is so interesting about younger voters, which is overall, they like parties a lot less than older generations, right?

Regardless of the party.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, they have higher levels of skepticism in government.

I think Trump's win shows us that this is a generation that's still up for grabs politically.

And Democrats and Republicans, this is crunch time for them to try to cement their base of this generation.

And, you know, we're hearing, you know, Democratic leaders who are maybe eye on a 2028 kind of thing, like former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, go on these shows where he's meeting young people where they are on these podcasts.

And he's talking about the fact that these voters are not, you know, solid party voters yet, but they will be soon.

And both of these sides have to kind of show them that they see them and they see their issues.

All right, we're going to leave it there.

I'm Sarah McCammon.

I cover politics.

I'm Elena Moore.

I also cover politics.

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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