Young TikTok Stars Enter Democratic House Primaries as Gen Z Steps on to the National Stage

Three young social media influencers are starting to set the tone for Generation Z’s political future by running for Congress mostly based on their digital footprints.With only one member of that generation currently in the House — and Congress suffering from a gerontocracy problem — these new young candidates are breaking with past media strategies to engage a cohort that does not get its news from the legacy press. Young people’s news consumption habits are sharply breaking from past generations, based on multiple polls. According to a Pew study from last year, 45 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 regularly consume news on TikTok, while 43 percent list Reddit as a regular news outlet for them, and 39 percent say Instagram. These three candidates believe their activism and online presence is enough to catapult them to the U.S. House of Representatives. The most recent candidate to announce her House campaign is an abortion rights activist and former staffer for Vice President Harris’s 2020 presidential campaign, when she was still an undergraduate — Deja Foxx. Ms. Foxx announced on Wednesday that she would run in Arizona’s seventh congressional district, which was recently made vacant by the death of the area’s longtime representative, Congressman Raúl Grijalva. His daughter, Adelita Grijalva, is running to succeed her late father after serving on the Pima County board of supervisors and on a local school board. On Thursday, Ms. Grijalva won the endorsement of Senator Kelly and his wife, Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. In a statement announcing her candidacy, Ms. Grijalva talked about her work as a school board member and county supervisor, and how she wants to fight for seniors, veterans, and immigrants if elected to the House. Ms. Foxx, meanwhile, is likely best known from last year’s Democratic National Convention, where she addressed the from the dedicated podium for influencers, many of whom have been accused of being paid by the Democratic National Committee. “People my age are making big decisions about our lives, and we deserve a president who has our back,” Ms. Foxx said at the time. “This moment calls for more than a politician. You deserve a fighter,” Ms. Foxx says in her announcement video, which heavily features videos of her at protests and marches, and on the campaign trail for Ms. Harris in 2024. As of Thursday, Ms. Foxx has not put up an “issues” page on her website detailing what her specific policy goals are in the House. In a 2021 interview with the Cut, Ms. Foxx — then still an undergraduate at Columbia University — said she plans to run for president in the future. “I don’t just want to, I plan to,” Ms. Foxx said. “I think in large part that’s why I ended up in the Kamala Harris campaign, as a woman of color, a first-generation American, someone raised by a single mom. I saw myself represented in her in a way that I never had before, and I felt the power of that.”“So yes, I have every intention of still being president one day,” she added. Another Democrat with a hefty social media following now trying to leverage his profile into a seat in Congress is Isaiah Martin. Like Ms. Foxx, he was invited to the convention last summer as one of hundreds of influencers whom the Democrats believed could turn out the vote. He is running in the special election to succeed Congressman Sylvester Turner, who unexpectedly died last month on the same night he attended President Trump’s joint address to Congress.Like Ms. Foxx, Mr. Martin pitched himself as a break from the politics of older generations. “We can’t solve today’s problems with yesterday’s politics,” he wrote on X. In his announcement video, Mr. Martin declared: “If you’re ready for something different, then you must choose something different.”Mr. Martin probably faces the hardest path to the House, however, given the fact that he is running against Houston’s popular district attorney, Christian Menefee, who has won the backing of much of the city’s political establishment. Mr. Martin has also been derided as a non-factor given the fact he is now facing a lawsuit from a contractor who worked with him on his last congressional race. A third Gen Z candidate is using her leverage not only as a social media star but as a Democratic Party outsider to pitch herself to voters. Kat Abughazaleh recently announced to her more than 300,000 social media followers that she would run in Illinois’ ninth district, which is represented by Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, who would be 82 on election day 2026. Ms. Abughazaleh spent years building up her social media following as a researcher at Media Matters and as a writer and content producer for Mother Jones. Unlike Ms. Foxx and Mr. Martin, Ms. Abughazaleh was not invited to the convention last year as one of the Democrats’ chosen influencers to reach young people, despite her large audience. “Unfortunately, this party has become one where you have to look to the exceptions for real leadership as the majority work from an outdated playbook,” she said in her announcement video.

Young TikTok Stars Enter Democratic House Primaries as Gen Z Steps on to the National Stage

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