Youngest member of Congress campaigns for Harris in Pa. to bring out youth vote

U.S. Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost of Florida concluded a four-state tour in Pennsylvania Saturday, campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Speaking at the Community College of Philadelphia, Frost told several dozen students and other young voters that they have the power to affect the outcome of the 2024 election.

“We are voting at higher numbers than any other generation at our current age, and half of Gen Z can’t even vote yet,” he said. “We are going to help this country realize its full potential.”

Frost, who represents central Florida, including parts of Orlando, was elected in 2022 at the age of 25, making him the youngest current member of Congress. He shared with the audience that it was the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that inspired him to become active in politics.

A musician, Frost was getting ready for a show when news about the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, broke. He said he “played one of the worst concerts” of his life, imagining someone could “walk into that theater and kill my friends, my family, and myself.”

He later attended the vigil in Washington, D.C., where he met Matthew Soto, whose sister Vicki was a teacher at Sandy Hook. She died protecting her class.

Frost recounts he immediately called his mother, also a school teacher.

“I said, Mom, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life,” he said. “I want to fight for a world where people don’t have to feel that pain.”

Frost started a petition and got hundreds of people to sign it but didn’t know what to do with it.

“I didn’t know who to give it to, so I gave it to my high school principal, who looked at me weird and was like, ‘okay, we’ll get on that,’ and he probably threw it away,” he said.

However, Frost went on to become the national organizing director for March for Our Lives — an advocacy group formed by victims of the 2016 high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, which tackles gun violence. As a member of Congress, he filed a bill to establish an Office of Gun Violence Prevention.

After Congress failed to act, he lobbied the Biden administration, which, in September 2023, announced an executive order to create the office and that it would be overseen by Vice President Harris, who has since replaced Biden as the Democratic Party nominee for president.

Recent polling shows that younger voters — who usually lean Democratic and have turned out in higher numbers in recent years — favor Harris. However, that same polling says that they are also the least enthused and the most undecided among voters of all ages.

Frost agreed that young voters are “difficult to poll” but argued that there is a great deal of enthusiasm for Harris, particularly online.

“Our job has to be to take that online energy and make sure it translates into votes, and the way we do that is by meeting young people where they are,” he told WHYY News after his speech, adding that Harris is a “movement candidate” and has regularly engaged with young voters. “A lot of politicians like to figure out how they can use culture to win a campaign. Kamala Harris just wants to be a part of it, and that’s the difference in authenticity that has really brought a lot of young people to the table for this election.”

Asked about the impact the war in Gaza is having on the youth vote, he said most younger voters he talks to want a ceasefire, as Harris has called for.

“There might be a lot of noise on very extreme ends of this, but that’s where most humans in this country are at on this issue, and that’s where the vice president’s at as well,” he said. “And when I think about that situation, I’m not really thinking about the electoral implications. I’m thinking about all the innocent people dying. That’s why I want that to stop.

For some students in the audience, Frost was as much — if not more — of an inspiration than the vice president.

“The fact that the Sandy Hook shooting directly affected him and he got to talk to the families that were affected by it, and from that since he was 15 years old, he’s been advocating for these types of issues, it’s truly inspirational,” said Jaritsa Hernandez Orsini, who is a vice president of student government at the community college. “It makes me want to work harder to continue to fight for student voices.”

Hernandez Orsini, who says she was left homeless after a house fire, said that affordable housing, affordable education, and economic opportunity are the issues that are driving her vote this year.

Frost’s speech at the college also resonated with Lucas Eisen, who says that gun violence is often at the top of Gen Z voters’ minds, and that’s why he is voting for Harris and Democrats this year.

“Growing up with images of Sandy Hook or Parkland, all that stuff that really pushed me towards this party, which values the lives of people by advancing common-sense gun reform, background checks, closing gun loopholes, red flag laws, things like that,” he said.

Frost was joined by Mayor Cherelle Parker and U.S. Representative Mary Gay Scanlon, Sharif Street, and Philadelphia City Councilmembers Katherine Gilmore Richardson and Isaiah Thomas.