Maxwell Frost becomes the first Generation Z to reach the US Congress.

Democrat Maxwell Alejandro Frost, seasoned in anti-gun activism, made history this Tuesday in the mid-term elections in the United States.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
08 November 2022 Tuesday 22:30
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Maxwell Frost becomes the first Generation Z to reach the US Congress.

Democrat Maxwell Alejandro Frost, seasoned in anti-gun activism, made history this Tuesday in the mid-term elections in the United States. At 25 years old, he has become the first member of Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2010) to win a seat in Congress.

Frost, of Afro-Cuban origin, born in January 1997, is the minimum age (25 years) required by the Constitution to be a member of Congress. He was competing in a very blue district, that is, predominantly progressive, in the city of Orlando, Florida, after the representative of his party, Val Demings, resigned from the post to dispute a seat in the Senate against Republican Marco Rubio. Demings lost.

“We have made history tonight,” Frost tweeted after the AP and other outlets projected his victory by a very wide margin over Republican Calvin Wimbish, 72, a former Green Beret who called himself “Christian, Conservative, and constitutionalist”.

"We have made history for the citizens of Florida, for Gen Z and for all those who believe they deserve a better life," insisted the winner, who collected the fruit of a campaign developed in the media and door to door asking for the vote. , while driving an Uber to make ends meet.

Another applicant, Karoline Leavitt, born in 1998, was competing to be the first conservative voice of that same generation. She was chasing a seat in the House of Representatives from the state of New Hampshire.

It is unusual for a 25-year-old legislator to be elected. Before Republican Rep. Madison Catwthorn (born 1995), who succeeded in 2020, this hadn't happened in over 45 years.

Adopted by one of the Cubans who left the island with the so-called "freedom flights" and music, Frost reconnected with his biological mother, who was the one who gave him the final push to accept the challenge of fighting for the seat. “Hanging up the phone, I told myself that I had to run for Congress for people like my birth mother, for people like my father, for the community, for the place that I grew up,” he explained.

A survivor of an incident of gun violence on Halloween 2016, he became one of the organizers of the March for Our Lives, which arose after the Parkland High School massacre in which 17 people died, of which 14 were students

He had never considered going into politics until in 2020, at a Black Lives Matter march, they made him the offer. He announced his campaign in 2021, in which he prevailed with the contribution of a television advertisement in Spanglish. “Latinos are in a place where their first language is Spanish, but they also speak English and, frankly, I am one of those. We speak Spanglish at home and I know the same thing happens with Latino families in the district,” he told The Hill.

He soon received endorsements from progressive senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Her campaign focused on issues that concern many young people: gun violence, climate change, abortion and universal healthcare.

“I come from a generation that has seen more shooting drills than fire drills,” he told The New York Times.