Young Texans face barriers to election in older Legislature

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Figure out what to wear to be taken seriously; prepare a few one-liners to respond to the inevitable critiques about your age; know the issues facing your district.

These are among the tips Rep. Erin Zwiener, a Driftwood Democrat, serves up to young people seeking elected office in Texas.

Zwiener was the second youngest elected state lawmaker in Texas when she won a state House seat at 33. On the campaign trail, competitors and potential voters frequently chided Zwiener about her age, questioning whether she had the skills and experience needed for the job. Zwiener had a standard comeback: Lyndon B. Johnson, the future president, was 28 when he was elected to U.S. Congress, and Lloyd Doggett, now in his 29th year in Congress, was 27 when elected to the state Senate.

“Some of those lines really helped remind folks that my age wasn’t that unusual,” she said.

In the Texas Capitol, Zwiener was — and, at 39, continues to be — something of a rarity. Despite having one of the youngest populations in the country, the Texas Legislature is a gerontocracy, and it has only gotten older in recent years.

In 1981, the average age of lawmakers was 42, according to data from the Texas Legislative Library. Last year, it was 55. The average age of Texas’ 30 million residents is 37, based on U.S. Census Bureau data.

As a result, Zwiener said, issues most affecting young people, including education and access to affordable childcare and housing, are neglected.

“The age gap between the Legislature and the people we represent definitely pops up in ways that create more challenges for our communities,” Zwiener said. “The fact that most lawmakers haven’t been young adults since the ‘80’s or earlier makes it challenging for us to help those folks.”

The demographic mismatch between Texans and the lawmakers who represent them is both a symptom and a cause of civic disengagement among younger Texans. A number of studies have shown that people are more likely to be civically engaged when they see themselves represented, whether in terms of candidates’ age, race or gender.

And because voting is habit-forming, those young people tend to remain disengaged and become less likely to run for office, according to research from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.

The cycle is reinforced through Texas’ barriers to voting and the challenges of running a campaign as a young adult. Texas has some of the strictest voting laws in the country, banning online voter registration and same-day registration — both have been found to increase voter turnout, especially among young people.

Meanwhile, running for office requires raising large sums of money, a roadblock for young candidates who don’t typically have wide networks of wealthy donors. And winning a seat in the House or Senate means traveling to Austin for about 140 days every other year for the legislative session, a commitment that makes it difficult to retain a full-time job.

For young professionals building a career and a family, those logistical hurdles can make running for office seem like a pipe dream. Not to mention the paltry pay of $600 a month.

“We don’t pay a living wage to our legislators, which sounds good because you don’t want to pay politicians, but the end result is you have trust-fund babies making policy for 30 million people in the state,” said state Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin, who became the youngest state lawmaker when he was elected in 2018. “It’s mostly wealthy bankers, doctors, lawyers that can afford to serve, and that’s not a representative democracy.”

Barriers to running for office

Working in a San Antonio public school district in the years following a slate of school budget cuts convinced Talarico that he wanted to run for office and affect education policy.

But as a 28-year-old former educator and non-profit leader who grew up in a middle class household, Talarico did not have the kind of money one needs to launch a political campaign. And he wasn’t sure where he would find it.

A millennial, Talarico naturally turned to social media. He put out a call to his online network of friends, and to his surprise, raised $25,000 within a week. Over the following weeks, Talarico would walk all of District 52 by foot, holding energetic town halls along the way.

“That’s how I won my swing seat in Williamson County, a seat that had voted for Donald Trump just two years before I ran,” Talarico said. “I went and knocked on everyone’s door.”

Talarico also created “camp campaign,” a summer program for youth interested in learning about politics. High school and college students would hear about policy issues from guest speakers in exchange for pulling shifts for the campaign’s phone bank, reaching out to potential voters. Talarico defeated Republican Cynthia Flores by less than 3,000 votes, flipping the district blue.

This year, Talarico launched the Big & Bright PAC to help young Democratic Texans running for public office. The group has raised about $150,000, Talarico said, and has helped several campaigns get off the ground.

Talarico said he knows all the obstacles he faced: “Not having name recognition or experience campaigning or a network of donors. I’m trying to help candidates in similar situations.”

Young candidates on both sides of the aisle say that when they seek elected office, they hear a discouraging refrain: It’s not your turn yet.

“There’s a stigma that young people need to wait their turn in line and that they aren’t ready to serve their communities,” said Mason Morgan, executive director of Run GenZ, a national organization that empowers young conservatives who want to run for office.

Those are the words Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker, a Republican, said she heard when she ran in a crowded field in 2021 at 37.

In the end, Parker, who became the country’s youngest mayor of a major city, said she believes she was successful in part because she was relatable to the average Fort Worth resident, having to balance work with raising a growing family.

“For some reason, we have this stereotype that elected leaders can’t have the level of maturity needed [to do the job] at a younger age,” Parker said. “I’ve tried to break that stereotype to the best of my ability.”

Caroline Fairly, a 25-year-old Republican candidate for House District 87, would become the youngest Texas lawmaker if she is elected in November. She said some people have pulled her aside to tell her she’s not ready for office.

But to her, being young is an asset.

“Being the youngest in the room means I’ll bring a fresh perspective, especially on issues that impact younger generations,” Fairly said. “It’s also a chance to show that leadership isn’t about age — it’s about vision, values, and the drive to serve.”

Barriers to voting

As the president of the University Democrats at the University of Texas at Austin, Brian Peña spends a lot of time talking to students, encouraging them to register to vote. He’s been surprised to learn that students are uninformed about the registration process. Peña said he had a government teacher who instilled in him the importance of voting and showed him how to complete registration, but many Texas high school students don’t have that same experience.

Many assume they can register online or that they can wait until Election Day. Some students have no idea if they are even registered, Peña said.

“One in three students we ask if they are registered say, ‘Let me ask my mom,’” Peña said. “We really have to walk them through this process.”

The window for Texas teenagers to register before turning 18 is shorter than in other states. Texans must be 17 years and 10 months old to register; more than half of U.S. teens live in states where pre-registration starts at age 16, which gives high schools more time to educate students. Texas also has a relatively early cutoff for registration, 30 days before Election Day.

All of these factors contribute to the low registration rate among young people in Texas, where 39.6% of 18-24 year olds were registered to vote in November 2022, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Once registered, the next challenge is educating students on the issues to motivate them to turn out. Young people who are registered are less likely to vote than older Texans. During the 2022 midterm elections, only 49% of registered Texas voters between 18 and 24 voted, compared to 86% of voters 65 and older.

Peña says his organization tries to connect with potential voters three times before early voting begins. During each interaction, they instruct the student on where to vote and tell them about different candidates’ platforms.

To address transportation issues and possible long lines at polling places, Peña said his group is chartering buses that can transport students to and from different polling locations.

A segment of the student population is especially hard to convince to vote, said Zach Spanhak, vice president of the Texas Aggie Democrats at Texas A&M University. Those students are disillusioned with politics and feel like they aren’t represented or heard by elected leaders.

“They feel like their vote doesn’t matter,” Spanhak said. “It’s a self-defeating mindset.”

Spanhak said he tries to break through to those voters but that sometimes it isn’t possible.

Jeremy Muchemi, who leads a GenZ organization called Voters of Tomorrow, deals with young people who have a similar sentiment.

“A lot of people my age are feeling this resentment that neither side is listening to us,” Muchemi said. “We feel like we are yelling into a void.”

Muchemi said he has aspirations to run for office, but says he will wait.

“It’s an insane atmosphere and I’m not ready for that right now,” he said.

Addressing the dearth of young leaders

One of the first times Democratic state Sen. Morgan LaMantia, 37, crossed the Capitol rotunda and entered the House floor, a House member — who didn’t recognize the newly-elected senator from South Padre Island — told her that staffers aren’t allowed on the floor.

LaMantia, the second youngest state senator, recalled struggling to be taken seriously by fellow lawmakers, many of whom also assumed that she was a staffer rather than a senator.

“I’ve felt like I needed to work twice as hard so I would be seen as a peer and a colleague, as someone who could talk about the issues at their same level,” said LaMantia.

LaMantia said she hopes to see more young people elected in Texas to challenge the stereotype that one must be older and more experienced to serve. She said she regularly visits high schools and colleges to have conversations about civic engagement in an effort to get them interested in politics from a young age.

“At first they are intimidated, but it quickly turns into a conversation among peers,” LaMantia said. “We get them interested and engaged in what’s happening and have them see this as something they can pursue.”

LaMantia urges students who express interest in politics to apply for an internship in her office.

Research from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University has found that youth who are interested in running for office are much more likely to have been involved in political activities, whether by volunteering for a campaign or through activism. And young people who pay attention to elections tend to become more interested in running for office.

That was the case for state Rep. Cody Vasut, R-Angleton, 37, who served on the Angleton City Council as a 28-year-old before winning the Texas House District 25 seat in 2021.

Vasut’s mother served on the local school board, his father was a justice of the peace and his grandfather was president of the Angleton Rotary Club. Every Wednesday evening, his family sat down for dinner and discussed the goings-on in the community.

“I had been out at the polls for my mom and dad since I was 9,” Vasut said.

Nobody was surprised when Vasut expressed interest in running for local office, or when he sought a state seat, though he did recall being mistaken for a teenager while blockwalking in shorts and a t-shirt.

Vasut and others in his age group help challenge assumptions about who is qualified to serve in office, said Sara Suzuki, a senior researcher at the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.

She said it’s important to offer encouragement to young people considering running for office. Based on her research, young people show high levels of interest in running for office but are underrepresented on ballots because of perceived or actual financial barriers.

“Older people should not be representing the whole population,” Suzuki said. “Equitable representation is important, and because young people as a generation are more diverse in terms of race, gender identity and immigration status, getting them in office is a way to diversity who our elected officials are beyond age.”

Run GenZ, the group that helps young conservatives run for office, said they are pairing young conservatives who are interested in running for office with young elected officials who can offer support and encouragement.

“You don’t need to wait 15 years to step up and run,” said Morgan, the group’s director. “If you have a servant’s heart, you’re ready to run now.”

Disclosure: Texas A&M University and the University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.