The First Gen Z Congressman Believes He Can Change Washington
In a narrowly divided House, the twenty-five-year-old Florida Democrat Maxwell Frost seeks to fulfill a promise to his generation.
By Stephania Taladrid
January 9, 2023
Just before noon last Tuesday, Maxwell Alejandro Frost walked into the Capitol for the first session of Congress. Dressed in a sleek navy suit, with a gold-plated pin on his lapel, he made his way to the eastern side of the House chamber, joining other newly elected Democrats. At twenty-five, Frost is Congress’s first Afro-Cuban and Gen Z member. Less than two months had elapsed since Frost won his seat in Florida’s Tenth Congressional District, an area that encompasses most of Orlando, by nearly twenty percentage points. The day was to mark a transition long awaited by Republicans, who won a slim four-seat majority in the House. But, first, there needed to be a roll-call vote.
“Pursuant to law and precedent, the next order of business is the election of the Speaker,” Cheryl Johnson, the House clerk, sternly declared from the rostrum. Each party introduced its nominee, with Republicans hailing Kevin McCarthy, of California, as a leader who would “save the United States of America,” and Democrats uniting behind Hakeem Jeffries, of New York, the first Black lawmaker to be nominated for the role, proclaiming him “a Speaker who will put people over politics.” A tense silence followed as, one by one, the House’s four hundred and thirty-four members cast their votes. Some used their time to make a political statement, but Frost had his own preoccupations. “All I could think of was, Don’t say McCarthy, don’t say McCarthy, don’t say McCarthy,” he later told me. When his turn came, Frost leaped from his seat, and, after a moment of hesitation, yelled, “Jeffries!”
The Republicans, however, didn’t deliver McCarthy the quick victory that he had been expecting. Nineteen declined to endorse him as Speaker, prompting a second round of voting—an event that hadn’t happened in almost a century. To Frost, this showed how emboldened the “far-right, fascist maga” wing of the party had become. “They can railroad stuff,” he told me, during a break between votes. After the second round of balloting yielded a similar outcome, Frost asked his younger sister, Maria, who was watching the proceedings from the gallery, to join him on a brisk walk through the underground tunnels that connect the Capitol to nearby House office buildings.
Leading Maria down a long marble hallway, Frost rushed to his office and back before the third round of voting began. “Max has always taken me on little adventures,” Maria, a sunny woman of twenty-two, said, trying to keep up with her brother’s swift pace. This, Maria added, was “the best one.” When the siblings squeezed into an elevator in the Capitol, a young staffer instantly recognized Frost.
“Mr. Congressman,” the young man, dressed in a three-piece suit, said, “I’m so glad you’re here—I can’t even tell you.”
“It’s so good to meet you,” Frost responded with a smile, before the doors opened and the man disappeared into a crowd.
More:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/maxwell-frosts-vision-meets-washington
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