These Millennials will make you feel better about Madison Cawthorn

by | Jan 18, 2021 | Politics | 1 comment

It is with genuine shame that I observe Madison Cawthorn is the first Millennial to hold high office in North Carolina. In typical underhanded fashion, he markets himself as a member of Generation Z, but having been born in 1995 he represents the tail end of the generation that carried the state for Barack Obama. He has distinguished himself as a populist demagogue and showboat more interested in hogging the cameras than addressing the social emergencies that continue to torment our country. And his act calls into question the idea that younger adults will inevitably shift North Carolina to the left as they take center stage in our political culture.

Happily, Cawthorn is not the only Millennial moving up the ranks in North Carolina politics. Concentrated in the state’s urban areas, numerous leaders under the age of 40 have emerged as the future of the state Democratic Party. They largely hail from Raleigh and Charlotte and for the most stand a bit to the left of the Boomer and Silent Generation Democrats who ran the state until 2010. In the coming years, they have an opportunity to repudiate Cawthorn’s narrow, destructive vision for the state and build a future that resembles the best of the state’s immensely complicated past.

Jeff Jackson, 38, occupies the most prominent position of his peers. Representing Mecklenburg County in the North Carolina Senate since the local Democratic committee appointed him to replace Dan Clodfelter, Jackson has built one of the largest profiles of any Democrat in the state legislature. Though raised in Chapel Hill, he has constructed a moderate political profile, allying himself with receptive members of the business community and championing Smart Start and NC Pre-K. He’s been known to meet with constituents for beers and burritos and his cultural fluency has made him a favorite of young voters across the state. Just before Christmas, he announced that he was exploring a run for U.S. Senate in 2022.

Jessica Holmes, 35, ran for North Carolina Labor Commissioner against Republican Josh Dobson. It was a bitter disappointment to see Dobson, an anti-labor supporter of right-to-work laws, narrowly prevail over Holmes, but Holmes’s performance represented a strong showing for this political talent. From 2014 to 2020, she served on the Wake County Commission, holding the position of Chair for two years during her tenure. Before entering public service, she worked as a labor attorney for the North Carolina Association of Educators. She has blazed a trail for the next generation of African American woman leaders in North Carolina.

Chaz Beasley, also 35, rose from poverty to the heights of North Carolina politics. He was raised by a single mother in rural North Carolina and went to work at a young age to help keep a roof over his family’s head. After graduating from Harvard University and Georgetown University Law Center, he moved back to North Carolina to work in Charlotte’s financial industry. A center-left district in suburban Mecklenburg elected him to the N.C. Hosue of Representatives when he was only 30 and he ran for lieutenant governor four years later.

Dan McCready is 37 years old and has two strong campaigns for congress under his belt. The military forged his character, as he served in Iraq as a United States Marine. After Harvard Business School he, like Beasley, moved back to Charlotte, and McCready started a solar energy investment business. Public service called in 2018 when he launched his first campaign for U.S. House. Republicans stole the election with a ballot harvesting scheme that quickly became infamous, but McCready returned the next year to face Dan Bishop in a redo election. Though he lost to Bishop, the margin of defeat was only 2% in an R+9 district.

And Zainab Baloch rounds out the list. Twenty-nine years old and a native of Raleigh, she has twice run for municipal office in the capital city. Her first campaign for city council drew national attention after right-wing thugs spray painted a racial slur onto one of her campaign signs. Showing dignity and courage, she spoke out about the climate of Islamophobia that she and other Muslims have faced in the Trump era. She’s remained an active presence in city politics, with a large social media following, and hasn’t minced words about the city’s failures to live up to its progressive self-image. With two Muslims serving the North Carolina General Assembly, Baloch is part of a wave of diversity that is sweeping the N.C. Democratic Party.

These five leaders, ranging from their late 20’s to their late 30’s, stand ready to punch through the barrier of gerontocracy that has lingered in recent years. North Carolina has often done best when it went for the next generation, whether in the case of World War II veteran Terry Sanford or the 39-year-old Jim Hunt. As National Geographic observed during Sanford’s governorship, “there is something youthful about the state.” The days when Millennials could be called youthful are numbered if not over, but Baloch, Jackson, McCready, Holmes, and Beasley could rekindle the state’s forward-looking spirit.

1 Comment

  1. Alicia G.

    “the tail end of the generation that carried the state for Barack Obama.”
    1995-1998 borns couldn’t vote for Obama in the 2012 general election. Marketing think tanks often debate whether Gen Z begins in 1995 (McCrindle, Forbes) or 1997 (Pew, Bloomberg). Cawthorn (August 1995) is closer in age to indisputably Gen Z celebrities like Lil Nas X (April 1999) than he is to any of the Millennial politicians listed in the article, in particular fellow 90s-born Zainab Baloch (May 1991). It’s natural for the first year of a given generation to be in between their surrounding birth years culturally. No one would say Kamala Harris and Robert Downey Jr., separated by about half a year in age, are all that different culturally, despite being born in different generations (Boomer and Gen X respectively).

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