(WASHINGTON) — Come January, 25-year-old Maxwell Frost will be the first member of Gen Z elected to Congress, ABC News projects.
Frost will win Florida’s 10th Congressional District, a reliably blue seat, defeating Calvin Wimbish. In the Democratic primary in August, Frost defeated Randolph Bracy, whom much of the party establishment backed.
Following his primary win, Frost thanked his community for supporting his campaign.
“I love this community and my decade-long fight for everything and everyone in it is just getting started,” he said in a news release.
He echoed that message in a tweet celebrating his victory on Tuesday night: “History was made tonight. We made history for Floridians, for Gen Z, and for everyone who believes we deserve a better future. I am beyond thankful for the opportunity to represent my home.”
Frost, who this year crossed the required age cutoff to be in Congress, was a national organizer for the ACLU and then became the national organizing director of March for Our Lives, a youth-led organization dedicated to ending gun violence.
Once he takes his seat, Frost will succeed Rep. Val Demings, who left the House to challenge Republican incumbent Sen. Marco Rubio. (ABC News projects that she will lose.)
Frost spoke with ABC News in March about his run for Congress, saying then that he believes it’s time to elect younger leaders who better represent the values and ideas that the younger voters care about and want to see.
Some of the major issues Frost ran on include gun legislation, “Medicare for All” and addressing climate change.
The 2022 election cycle marks the first-time members of Gen Z — those born after 1996 — are eligible to run for seats in the House of Representatives, where legislators must be 25 years old by the time they’re sworn in.
Another Gen Zer may join Frost in Congress in the new year: Karoline Leavitt, a former congressional and Trump White House aide, is running in New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District Republican, challenging incumbent Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas.
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