A playbook is forming for younger candidates. The results have so far been mixed

On primary night in Arizona on Tuesday, Deja Foxx had hoped to move one step closer to her goal of representing Arizona’s 7th Congressional District. A seat that had long been held by former Democratic Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, who died in March at 77, was open.

A 25-year-old content creator and progressive activist, Foxx would have been the first Gen Z woman elected to Congress. But voters went a different direction, instead electing Adelita Grijalva, 54, the late congressman’s daughter, who secured the Democratic nomination by a wide margin. Grijalva will advance to the general election this fall, where she is expected to come out on top in the reliably blue district.

As a first-time candidate, Foxx had been seen as an underdog in the months-long race, but her campaign appeared to gain traction as the primary neared. In a statement after her loss, she said her effort had written “a new playbook for our generation of leaders.”

Foxx is part of a growing number of younger candidates who have launched bids for office this year. At least 10 candidates under 40 are currently eyeing seats for Congress in the midterm elections. Like others, she centered her campaign on bringing generational change to D.C., at a time when national Democrats continue to reckon with age-related party divides and calls for new leadership after President Trump’s 2024 election victory.

In recent years, this playbook has helped younger progressive candidates who have gained national attention online win office. This includes Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old Democratic socialist who won an upset victory last month in New York City’s mayoral primary. But those victories have been few and far between. Foxx’s defeat remains a more common reality, as others have struggled to secure enough institutional support and stand out in a primary field.

“Part of the reason it’s so exciting and so energizing when it does happen is because it is so rare and because it is so hard,” said Amanda Litman, who leads the group Run for Something, which supports first-time Democratic candidates running for state and local office.

AOC-like races are happening. But they’re still not the norm

Last month, dissatisfaction with longtime Democratic leadership helped fuel Mamdani’s run for New York mayor. He won in the city’s ranked-choice primary, centering his campaign around helping working-class New Yorkers. He defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, 67, who campaigned as an experienced moderate.

Mamdani’s campaign may be an alluring blueprint for some House Democrats gearing up for their midterm races next year. The New York Democratic nominee for mayor visited Capitol Hill on Wednesday and met with a group of lawmakers who praised his organizing strategy.

But that type of upset remains an exception, argues Litman, who says there were a handful of factors that made Foxx’s race in Arizona a very different playing field.

For starters, there was less time for campaigning, given that the race was a special election. Plus, Litman says, it was difficult for Foxx to set herself apart on policy and form key fundraising relationships, which proved consequential since her main competitor, Grijalva, also ran as a progressive and secured a slew of key endorsements from progressive leaders, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

“[Foxx] was going up against an opponent that was well-liked and had credibility on the ground as a local elected official,” Litman said. “She and [Grijalva] were very ideologically aligned. So it had to be about something else … I think that is a distinction between that race and, say, the New York City mayoral, where there was actually very specific differences on the issues when it came to Mamdani versus Cuomo.”

Victory has eluded Gen Z candidates

As a generation that has come of age during Trump’s rise to national politics, Foxx argued that young leaders are “uniquely suited to operate” within the current political environment.

“Trump is … creating distractions by design. And we need people on the ground, at home and in D.C., who are equipped to fight that,” she said during an April interview with NPR. “Who better than a generation of young people who have only known his chaos?”

Despite an atypical resume for Congress, Foxx defended her qualifications, leaning into her background as a political influencer-turned-candidate, posting daily videos of her life while running for office. She also shared her experience growing up in poverty and her work as a reproductive rights advocate.

“There is a place and a time and a reverence for the experience that comes with being in office,” she said. “We are in a different moment. We are in a moment that calls for activists. We are in a moment that calls for disrupters. And that is not just true on a national level. That is true in our own party.”

It’s a similar argument that now 35-year-old Ocasio-Cortez made during her historic 2018 campaign, as well as Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., 28, who in 2022 became the first member of Gen Z elected to Congress. Both came to electoral politics with careers as progressive organizers.

In the years since Frost’s win, a handful of young Democrats have launched bids for Congress, but they’ve all fallen short.

To 28-year-old Cheyenne Hunt, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress last year, Frost’s victory was “a perfect storm” of factors. She argued his campaign took advantage of a weaker primary field and built a strong ground game. At the same time, she called it “a little bit of an AOC moment.”

“It’s kind of more of a miracle than it is a [replicable] strategy for most of us,” she admitted.

Hunt’s campaign obstacles looked different than Frost’s. Running as a progressive attorney and political content creator, she had attempted to unseat a vulnerable California Republican in a purple district. Despite coming into the race with tens of thousands of followers on politically valuable platforms like TikTok, she said she struggled with many challenges younger candidates often face, like raising money and mustering enough support from prominent groups and party leaders.

Now, Hunt is the executive director of the left-leaning digital organizing group Gen-Z for Change, which endorsed Foxx ahead of her primary. Reflecting on Foxx’s loss, Hunt said she connected with her as a young woman navigating her first campaign, arguing that Gen Z women have been held to a “different standard” in politics.

“I can’t tell you how many times I was told that I couldn’t possibly understand the needs of a working-class family because I didn’t have children. I wasn’t a mother,” she said. “I was called an influencer, even though there were Gen Z men running in my year and in my cycle who had more followers than me and were never stuck with that label.”

Hunt says she hopes a young woman can be elected soon, but “realistically, I think, it’s going to be another man first.”