Youth vote targeted at ‘party-agnostic’ event during GOP convention

Myiah Waddy, 17, of Milwaukee, participates in the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics Youth VoteFest near the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Wednesday. Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom.

MILWAUKEE — Young people provided a glimmer of hope on the outskirts of a 2024 Republican National Convention that has been dominated nightly by speeches filled with doom, inaccuracies and fearmongering.

A few dozen high school and college students gathered Wednesday a half-mile away from the Fiserv Forum, where the RNC is taking place, to discuss how to communicate and organize around their vision for the future.

The “issue agnostic, party agnostic” Youth VoteFest hosted by University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics aimed to provide a space where teens and young adults could learn about civic engagement and voter mobilization, minus the partisan rhetoric, said Zeenat Rahman, the institute’s executive director.

“We want our young people who are attending today to know that they play a role in the political process,” Rahman said.

Mostly Republican programming

Former Democratic U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, who represented North Dakota from 2013 to 2019, opened the event.

But later programming included a fiery speech from a conservative environmentalist, remarks tracing a challenging career move by an Indiana Republican official, a pep talk from a conservative sports talk show host and a Q&A session with former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), who now hosts “Sunday Night in America” on Fox News.

The organization plans to repeat the event in August at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago with a fresh slate of speakers.

Myiah Waddy, 17, a Milwaukee native who recently graduated from the Obama School of Career and Technical Education, said she came to the event to “speak up” about changes she wants to see in her community.

“I want to see a difference in my community, and what I mean by that is violence, education and allowing us youth to get more involved. I don’t see a lot of people my age are involved,” said Waddy, who plans to study early childhood education at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

Heitkamp hit that topic, telling students at the event that they represent thousands of disengaged young people.

“They don’t know why they should care. They certainly don’t see two people at the top of the ticket who look in any way like you guys, that in any way live your experience every day,” Heitkamp said. “And so I think there’s a level of cynicism. And you know, we cannot be successful in this democracy if we don’t all participate.”

Student vote

Clarissa Unger, co-founder and executive director of the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition, said the “student vote has never been more important.” Citing a statistic from Tufts University showing that college-age voting is actually on the rise — jumping to 66% in 2020 — Unger said students have a chance to make change happen.

Unger laid ground rules for the day — that political divisiveness would not be tolerated during discussions.

“We understand and appreciate where we are and what’s taking place down the road and we’re not asking anyone to sacrifice their personal partisan identities, but today’s activities in this space will be nonpartisan,” Unger said.

Students broke into three workshops focused on strengthening nonpartisan voter drives on college campuses, making democracy fun and celebratory and navigating polarization during the this presidential election.

Oscar Allen, 17, a senior at the Bronx High School of Science in New York City, said he and a friend started their own voter drive last year for high school students turning 18.

“We decided that because of the upcoming 2024 election that many high schoolers were actually aging into the vote and not even realizing it. And these people wouldn’t have been able to take their opportunity to vote and actually do their civic duty for the first time in their entire lives,” said Allen, who titled the project VOTE, or Vote Of Teens in Elections.

Allen said he considers himself a political moderate after watching his dad, a staunch Republican, and his mom, a progressive immigrant from Japan, argue over politics.

“There was familial conflict that I always had to sit through from a young age of like 9 years old where I didn’t know what was going on,” he said. “And I really just wanted to promote the harmony and the happiness of our family as a whole. And so I think I’ve taken that perspective into my grown life, even with my own ideologies.

“Political conflict turns into violent conflicts full of rhetoric with vitriol that just is unnecessary because at the end of the day, everyone wants the same kind of harmony,” Allen said, adding that he is scared of more violence after Saturday’s attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania.

Stand up to politicians

Benjamin “Benji” Backer, 26, the founder and executive chairman of the American Conservation Coalition, encouraged the students to challenge rhetoric coming from today’s politicians.

“We’re having this call for unity after the horrifying events that happened in Pennsylvania, but those are the politicians that got us here in the first place, to a place of division,” Backer said.

He said the system needs a reboot.

“We have gotten to a place where something like the environment and climate change are partisan. The dangers of partisanship, the two-party system leading us towards destruction, need to be over,” Backer said.

Gowdy closed the program by talking about his friendships across the aisle when he was in the House, as well as his lasting friendship with former Rep. Joseph Kennedy (D-Mass.) and current ties with Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.).

“I am one fact away from changing my mind,” Gowdy said. He gave the students examples of times when former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) changed his mind about the need for a citizen advocate on the foreign intelligence court. He also told the students of his “great affection” for Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), now the House minority leader.

“We got to get beyond the notion that the fact that we disagree on the size and scope of government or the role of government is the only thing that matters in life,” Gowdy said. “There are lots of things that matter more than that.”

Conservative groups and youth vote

Other organizations targeting the youth vote were present on the convention’s perimeter and at the RNC.

Young America’s Foundation distributed literature from a table posted outside a Moms for Liberty town hall Tuesday at the Bradley Symphony Center five blocks from the convention hall.

A large message on the group’s website asks, “Feel out of place as a conservative at your school? There’s a place for you here.” The group did not respond to an interview request Wednesday.

Charlie Kirk, the founder and president of Turning Point USA, received an early speaking slot Monday night at the convention. Kirk is also the author of “Right Wing Revolution: How to Beat the Woke and Save the West.”

Kirk, whose organization promotes limited government and free markets in high schools and on college campuses, said the Gen Z  generation doesn’t have to accept a “mutilated version of the American dream” which he said has been caused by President Joe Biden.

“Donald Trump is on a rescue mission to revive your birthright, the one your grandparents and those before them gave everything to hand down to you,” he said. “And listen carefully everybody, this is why young men are the most conservative that they have been in 50 years. All the Gen Z’ers watching this convention on TikTok right now, I have a message just for you: You don’t have to stay poor.”

Daniel Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, told CNN in June that there’s “not a ton of evidence that young men are more likely to identify as conservatives, but there does seem to be a growing affinity for Republican identity.”

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