Orlando-area Democratic U.S. Representative Maxwell Frost says that elected officials like himself need to get more involved in turning around the electoral fortunes of the Florida Democratic Party.
And that he’s trying to do his part by spending his own campaign money to get people registered to vote in 2024.
“I’ve been very critical of our state party for a while,” the freshman lawmaker said on Tampa radio station WMNF on Friday.
“I think that under the previous leadership — the way that it was run before — there was really no organizing work going on year-round. I think we kind of rolled over and let the Republican Party of Florida win last year. We didn’t raise enough money. There was a ton of different factors that really led up to the fact that last year Gov. DeSantis won by 18 points.”
The margin actually was 19 points.
Frost says while most members elected to Congress lean into fundraising for their next election almost immediately after they arrive in Washington, he’s been taking a different route by keeping Rayanne Anid, his campaign organizing director, onboard to manage the program he calls “Democracy Summer.” It consists of 10 “organizing fellows” between the ages of 17 and 22 who are learning to organize and register voters and other candidates.
Great dinner tonight with our Democracy Summer Fellows who start with us tomorrow! Trainings + hands-on campaign and movement work here in Central Florida. Gotta build the bench 💪🏾 #DemocracySummer pic.twitter.com/sFKHwGabzk
— Maxwell Alejandro Frost (@MaxwellFrostFL) June 26, 2023
“We paid them for the summer so that way they could spend half of their time learning to organize — a curriculum that we helped put together that they took part in, and they spent the other half of their time out on the streets, registering people to vote, getting people to sign the abortion ballot initiative petition, helping with other candidates, and engaging in the community year round, and I’ve committed that I’m actually going to be doing this program year round,” he said.
Those efforts are all about helping the Florida Democratic Party create an infrastructure to build the party up. “It’s not enough to just run for your office and focus on yourself and just do your job,” Frost said.
He added that while he can accomplish much for his community as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, there are also limitations.
“I believe that as electeds, we need to be involved in just not getting ourselves elected, but building a bench so that way we can create the true change that we want. Yeah, my platform, I really believe in it, but I can’t do that alone, right? We’re going to need a real apparatus here in Central Florida and across the state and want to take back the state to make it happen and I’m going to be super involved in that.”
Support for Biden?
In almost every article written about him, the 26-year-old representative is described as the “first Gen Z” member of Congress.
But what about Gen Z when it comes to embracing his party’s standard bearer, President Joe Biden?
A New York Times-Siena University poll published last month shows that of voters between the ages of 18-29, 44% viewed Biden as “favorable” but only 4% viewed the president as “very favorable.” A national poll by the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School showed Biden’s support among 18-29 year-olds at 36%, a drop of three percentage points from last fall and five points since last spring.
Frost says he’s seen polls that show that Biden with strong support from Gen Z voters, but concedes that there’s “lots of work to do” when it comes to getting young voters enthused and ready to support the Democratic incumbent in 2024.
“What I’ve told the campaign and what we’ve expressed to the administration is, ‘Let’s keep talking about the future and what we believe in and making sure that young people see themselves as part of that,’” he said.
Disclosure: Frost appeared on WMNF’s “The Skinny,” co-hosted by the author of this story.
This article originally appeared in florida phoenix