When 20-year-old Ephren Taylor III is out knocking on doors in Wyandotte County neighborhoods for his Kansas Senate campaign, he often hears a version of the phrase: “We need some new blood.”
His opponent in the Aug. 6 Democratic primary, Sen. David Haley , has been representing northern and eastern Wyandotte County in the Legislature since 1995, almost 10 years before Taylor was born.
Taylor is just one of several Generation Z candidates — born between 1997 and 2012 — vying for a seat in a statehouse largely dominated by older electeds. On the other side of Wyandotte County, the race to represent Senate District 6 includes 19-year-old Republican Tabitha Burt.
“We’re not in the Legislature,” Taylor said. “And the people in the Legislature are not talking about the issues young people care about and a lot of the reason why is that there just aren’t young people in office.”
Kansas is one of just 14 states that allow candidates to run for office in both chambers at 18 years old. Despite this, the median age of a Kansas lawmaker is 63, and the average age is just over 59 years old, according to the Star’s analysis of lawmakers’ birthdays published in Hawver’s Capitol Report.
Just one Gen Z lawmaker, 27-year-old Rep. Avery Anderson, is currently in office. The Newton Republican ran at 23 and is now the youngest chairperson in the Legislature, charged with running the House transportation committee.
While many Americans are feeling disillusioned by the state of the presidential election, Gen Z candidates and political organizers in Kansas from both parties are looking to have more influence at the state level. The Star talked to 15 of them, including younger lawmakers already in office.
They said that younger representatives are uniquely positioned to push for policies that reflect Kansas’ current economic, technological and environmental realities. And that electing younger representation is crucial to retaining younger people in the state and preventing anticipated worker shortages in the coming years.
“We’re running into the same problems year after year after year in our state and in this country, but we’re using the same ideas to try to defeat these problems, instead of having fresh ideas and fresher perspectives,” said Rep. Nick Hoheisel, a millennial Wichita Republican and co-chair of the bipartisan Kansas Future Caucus that recruits millennial and Gen Z lawmakers.
Next month, candidates as young as 19 will appear on Kansans’ primary ballots. For many on the younger end of their generation, this will be the first time they can run for office.
‘We didn’t like what we saw’
Taylor became more engaged in politics out of frustration with the current polarized landscape.
“Many of us started to get politically engaged around 2016 when (Donald) Trump became president,” he said. “We didn’t like what we saw from that election and that presidency.”
He decided to run when he saw his veteran opponent — who is one of the longest serving members of the Legislature and began his career as a Republican — vote for the failed flat tax and “publicly identify as a fiscal conservative.”
Taylor said it was disappointing in a district that values progressive tax policies.
“With Wyandotte being so blue and Democrat, it was off putting to me that someone in such a strong area didn’t hold more progressive values and wasn’t listening to their constituents to do things that benefited them,” he said.
“If you’re in a strong blue area, that means you’re a lot safer to be able to advocate strongly for the things that your community needs without having to worry about losing your seat.”
Sen. Haley, the incumbent in Taylor’s race, said Taylor lacked an understanding of Wyandotte County, which Haley cast as a moderate Democratic community that is more concerned with economic issues than social issues.
He described Taylor as an outsider whose campaign shows a “real disregard and disrespect” for the community’s representation.
“I’ve been serving for over 20 years, or longer than my now-opponent has been alive,” he said. “Point blank I don’t think he’s ready. I don’t think we have seen a 20-year-old senator, and certainly not in many many decades.
“The reason for that is because life experience and connections to the community are helpful in terms of representation. That’s difficult to obtain at an early stage,” Haley said.
If elected, Taylor hopes to focus on increasing the availability of affordable housing in the state, protecting voting rights and reducing property taxes — something Kansas lawmakers have talked a lot about but not taken much action on in recent years.
Growing up in the ‘politics of the present’
Rep. Brandon Woodard, a Lenexa Democrat who was elected at age 27, recalled the “final straw” before he ran for office was hearing a representative say that students should just work a job — like “mowing lawns or delivering newspapers” — to pay for higher education.
“It was so clear how out of touch our representatives were,” he said. “They had no understanding of the issues younger people are facing. We’ve seen this swath of young people running because people are generally out of touch with the largest voting block in Kansas.”
In Kansas, where the median age is approximately 38 years old , the largest block of voters is people under 50 years old.
On both sides of the aisle, Gen Z and millennial legislators The Star interviewed agreed that issues like affordable housing, public school funding, child care and higher education costs are not being addressed quickly enough to keep young graduates from fleeing the state , which has long been a priority among Kansas leaders.
They said they experience these issues differently now than some of their older colleagues, which influences what policies they prioritize.
Alexis Simmons, a 28-year-old Democrat seeking election in House District 58, said being a student when former Gov. Sam Brownback slashed public school budgets to make up gaps from his administration’s tax cuts affected the way she thinks about education funding.
“I wish we’d had younger voices to add to the conversation,” she said.
When she worked in the statehouse before running for office, she watched older lawmakers debate issues like legalizing marijuana in a way that did not accurately reflect what she saw as the views of younger Kansans.
“The folks who are in there do a great job, don’t get me wrong,” Simmons said. “But being a young woman who is unmarried and childless means that different issues would be brought up. To say it’s disproportionate would be an understatement.”
Sen. Chase Blasi, a Wichita Republican, is the youngest state senator serving in Kansas, at 30 years old. He, along with other lawmakers, said older legislators have been open to hearing their ideas.
“Younger Republicans and I have been championing issues like child care for a while,” Blasi said. “That’s something our older colleagues have largely embraced and supported. But from my perspective as a young parent, we prop these issues up because they have been overlooked.
“Some of the things younger people struggle with are just not issues to a lot of them — they don’t have young children, they already graduated college,” he said. “In that way they’ve been more than supportive in helping us represent young Kansans.”
Logan Ginavan, a 21-year-old University of Kansas student, is running for a seat in House District 46, which includes part of Lawrence. He said he grew up doing active school shooter drills and fears he will never be able to afford a home — something he said some older legislators are not able to fully understand.
“What young people will be is a simple modern voice — one that has grown up in the politics of the present, not the past,” he said.
Rep. Brenda Landwehr, a Wichita Republican who is not seeking reelection, said an influx of Gen Z and millennial candidates would be good for the Legislature.
“Having a mix of age always brings a different perspective,” she said. “And you can never discount a perspective because you can always learn from it.”
A new generation of issues
Gen Z and millennial candidates are also prioritizing issues the Legislature has yet to take major action on — like artificial intelligence and climate change.
This year, Colorado passed the first comprehensive law in the country putting guardrails around artificial intelligence. Kansas does not have a technology committee and has not yet begun conversations about AI.
Ginavan said the state may be caught off guard if it doesn’t act.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that when it comes to technology and AI, my generation absolutely has to be at the table,” he said.
On climate change, Taylor said young people could help bring a climate committee to the Legislature “because we will be the ones there to experience its effects.”
Donnavan Dillon, a 21-year-old activist with the civic engagement group Loud Light, said electing Kansans in or recently graduated from college will help the state identify the needs of that demographic.
For years Kansas has struggled to keep college graduates in the state, and research shows the state may fall short of meeting educated worker demands over the next decade .
“Legislators talk a lot about recent Kansas graduates keeping them there,” he said. “But they’re not being reflected in current policy. So why wouldn’t I move to a state where there’s more opportunity, or I feel more welcome, or where policy reflects what I want to see happening?”
Breaking down barriers to office
Previously some of the worst paid lawmakers in the U.S. — taking in less than $30,000 annually — Kansas lawmakers approved a pay increase last year aimed at encouraging younger candidates to run for office. At the start of the next session, lawmakers’ salaries will nearly double.
Lawmakers spend the first three or four months in the statehouse, where they work as full time legislators. But many young legislators said the obligation to the Legislature makes it nearly impossible to keep full time jobs or to run without making significant financial sacrifices.
Several young legislators including Hoheisel, Woodard, Anderson and Rep. Rui Xu, a Westwood Democrat, said they’d seen the pay discourage potential candidates from running, and Simmons said she would not have been able to run without the increase.
“You want a whole representation of Kansas. You want schoolteachers, blue collar, and young people to run,” Hoheisel said. “This will help our Legislature to look like our state.”
Speaker Pro Tem Blake Carpenter, a 33-year-old Derby Republican, said the state’s campaign finance laws allow young people to run and win off just a few thousand dollars, where it may take much more in other states.
But Simmons said younger candidates still face fundraising challenges.
“A perk of being an older candidate is you’re more likely to have a network of established, financially stable people who can afford to give to political campaigns,” she said. “I’d imagine most young candidates are less likely to have those strong fundraising networks.”
Anderson, the only member of Gen Z in the Legislature, said he believes voters are more than ready to see younger representation.
“People want to see younger folks get involved in politics,” he said. “Our government has to continue to evolve with time and everything around us. We have to keep up with that.”
The Star reached out to multiple additional young Republican candidates but did not hear back.
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