|
Listen to this article here
|
Maxwell Frost, a 25-year-old community organizer, is anticipating victory in the Democratic nomination in Florida’s 10th Congressional District, CNN projects, and could become the first member of Generation Z elected to Congress.
Frost bested a crowded field of candidates looking to replace Democratic Rep. Val Demings in an Orlando-based district, including state Sen. Randolph Bracy, former US Rep. Corrine Brown – who recently settled a federal corruption case after winning a new trial and serving more than two years in prison – and former US Rep. Alan Grayson.
Demings is vacating the seat for a Senate run, and she clinched the Democratic nomination Tuesday to face GOP Sen. Marco Rubio in November. Frost’s victory Tuesday makes him the favorite in November for the deep-blue seat that Joe Biden would have carried by 32 points in 2020.
According to New York Magazine, Frost is endorsed by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and came to prominence earlier this summer when he interrupted a panel between Ron DeSantis and conservative YouTuber Dave Rubin, yelling at the Republican governor to “take action on gun violence.”
In an interview with CNN, he described his experience as a member of the “mass-shooting generation”: “We’re a generation that goes through more school-shooting drills than fire drills.” Frost is at the early end of the zoomers, the generation born between 1997 and 2012. If he wins the solidly Democratic seat vacated by Val Demings, he will also be the only Afro-Cuban in Congress.
Maxwell Frost may be a trend – not a blip.
According to The Hill, Frost has roots in a broad swath of American life: His parents, who adopted Frost at birth, are a Cuban American woman and a white man from Kansas. His birth parents were a Lebanese Puerto Rican woman and a Haitian man.
Frost, who is Black, spoke both English and Spanish at home, and he capitalized on his multicultural upbringing to campaign in a district that’s as diverse as his own origins.