How Millennials Could Increase Government Innovation
In 2010, when I was a senior in college, a young politician by the name of Benjamin Downing came to Tufts University to give a talk to political science students. He was from Berkshire County — as far west and as far away from Boston as you can get in Massachusetts. Four years earlier, at the age of 25, he had run for State Senate and won, becoming the youngest State Senator in Massachusetts. He was also a graduate student in policy and planning at Tufts. I didn’t know it at the time, but Ben would be the first of many young Massachusetts politicians I would come to know.
Indeed, Millennials are getting elected all over the state, bringing the potential for significant changes in how government works and which issues exist at the forefront of our political dialog. Ideas and optimism aren’t enough, however. Young political figures still make up a small fraction of the total, and they have to work within the system to get things done.
My classmates and I at the NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress have been reading about policy innovation and the barriers to policy change. In Instructions to Deliver, Michael Barber describes how he worked with British Prime Minister Tony Blair to effectively cooperate with the government bureaucracy to get things done. In Leading Public Sector Innovation, Christian Bason writes about “co-creation”, a theory of policy creation where “new solutions are designed with people, not for them.” In The Art of Public Strategy, Geoff Mulgan discusses strategic leadership and how rare long-term thinking is in government.
The following section will touch on my personal experience in local government and give examples of other Millennials who have run for office and won in Massachusetts — and these are just people I personally know. We’ll discuss why change is hard, how these individuals could bring about policy innovation anyway, and in some cases, how they already have.
Millennial Politicians in MA
Alex Morse (b. 1989)
In January 2011, a senior at Brown University named Alex Morse announced that he would run for mayor in our hometown of Holyoke, MA against an incumbent who had been in city government for at least sixteen years. I was living in Cambridge at the time, but came home to volunteer a little for his campaign. That fall, incredibly, he won, becoming the youngest mayor in Holyoke history and making national news.
City Government
In his first month in office, Alex Morse turned 23 and began hiring staff and appointing commissioners. He immediately showed that he wanted to bring new blood into the government, including many young people.
One of the people he hired was Director of Economic Development and Planning Marcos Marrero (b. 1983). Marcos had not only a solid pedigree — a Master’s degree in planning from Princeton plus work at the regional planning agency that covers Holyoke — he also added much-needed diversity to Holyoke’ city government. Holyoke’s population is 43% Puerto Rican, the highest proportion of any place outside Puerto Rico, and Marcos grew up on what Holyokers call “the island”. By hiring Marcos and leaning on him in the years since, Alex has shown the essential leadership skill of surrounding himself with smart people who bring strengths he doesn’t have. In addition to his resume and cultural perspective, Marcos brought an innovative approach to Holyoke government. In 2015, he helped found a quasi-governmental organization called SPARK Holyoke, which helps people start and grow local businesses. I got to do some work with SPARK as a facilitator/mentor, and it’s a great example of how the public sector can support private sector economic development.
Starting in Alex’s first administration, I got to experience working in local government. Alex appointed me to the Conservation Commission, which preserves watershed resources, “undertakes planning, acquires and manages open space, and encourages and monitors conservation and agricultural preservation restrictions.” Around the same time, the City Council appointed me to a “Citizens Advisory Committee” tasked with conducting a reuse study for an aging coal plant in the city. In these two roles — even though they were part-time volunteer positions — I served as what Michael Lipsky calls a “street-level bureaucrat”. On the Conservation Commission, I voted twice a month on how the city would manage its conservation properties and if and how development projects could move forward. As the youngest commissioner in the city and one of only a few people around who had formal education in environmental science, I brought an academic background and 21st century sustainability sensibilities to my work on both committees.
Mike Fenton (b. 1987)
Michael Fenton was elected to the Springfield City Council in 2009 at the age of 22 and was voted City Council President by his peers four years later. He’s a good example of someone who got elected very young, seems to stick to his principles, and still has gotten traction with the “establishment”, being twice elected by his much older colleagues to the city council presidency.
Daniel Donahue (b. 1987)
Daniel is a state representative in Worcester, Massachusetts’ second largest city. He won a special election in 2013 at age 26 and had to immediately run for re-election in 2014, which he also won.
Eric Lesser (b. 1985)
Eric Lesser is the state senator from the district neighboring the one I’m from. He went to Harvard, worked on Obama’s 2008 campaign, worked in the White House, then went to Harvard Law School. When he came back home he brought a very seasoned approach to politics and a strongly progressive message. He won a very, very close Democratic primary in 2014, then won the general election more easily. One of his Democratic rivals from 2014 changed his registration to Republican and is now Eric’s opponent in the 2016 general election.
As senator Eric has given a lot of emphasis to building a strong rail corridor between Springfield and Boston, a difficult goal that would bring a lot of change to to the region. This is a good example of a policy agenda that has great long-term benefits but fewer of the short-term gains that politicians typically seek. He was also appointed by the state senate president to lead a “Millennial Engagement Initiative.”
My Run for City Council (b. 1988)
In 2015 I ran for an at-large seat (voted for city-wide as opposed to in a ward) on Holyoke’s City Council. I ran an aspirational campaign focused on building a new economic identity for the city, promoting public- and private-sector innovation, and reducing social inequality. I worked hard, ran a smart campaign, and developed an enthusiastic fan base, but came up short. In a competition for eight at-large seats between sixteen candidates, I got twelfth place. Of the eight who won seats, seven were incumbents and one had the exact same name as a former Holyoke mayor. The loss was a lesson in the value of name recognition and the difficulty of crowded campaigns — both for voters trying to get a handle on their options and for candidates trying to stand out.
In its last three elections, Holyoke has had contradictory election outcomes: progressive change in the mayor’s office in the form of Alex Morse, but little change in the City Council that makes the city’s laws. Civic engagement, voter education, and policymaking “with, not for people” are causes Holyokers must fight for if the city is to re-accomplish its former industrial greatness.
Solomon Goldstein-Rose (b. 1994)
In August of this year, I got a fundraising call from a 22-year-old named Solomon Goldstein-Rose who was running for state representative in the nearby town of Amherst. On his website I found a thoughtful campaign platform covering several relevant issues, with one highlighted above all the rest: stopping climate change. It is very unusual for a local- or state-level campaign to focus on such a global issue; usually voters in local elections are concerned more with schools, jobs, public infrastructure, and property taxes. Yet, impressively, he won the democratic nomination in September against five opponents, automatically winning the seat because there was no Republican in the race. Amherst is home to a huge state university and two small colleges, so perhaps Solomon’s platform worked because Amherst’s voters are academic and globally-minded. And his win probably required a strong canvassing game.
Jerome Parker O’Grady (b. 1984)
Our final example is a Millennial who’s currently fighting an uphill battle for a state senate seat. The district that includes Holyoke and several other towns has elected a Republican every cycle for over two decades. JD is a political newcomer who ran unopposed for the Democratic nomination.
The Future of Millennials in Elected Office
Millennials won’t control Congress until the mid/late 2030s, says research reported on by the Huffington Post:
And for young people to win elections, we need young people to vote, which means we need young people to have a reason to vote:
As young people do come into positions of authority, one of the primary challenges is how they interact with existing leaders. One of the politicians above has been criticized for taking ownership of ideas that others have been working on for years. This could hurt his ability to build relationships with his older colleagues and potentially diminish his ultimate effectiveness as a result.
The trick will be to learn from the generations that came before us while sticking to our best ideas. There’s much we can learn from seasoned leaders, but for a generation that has grown up with technological and social change as the norm, for us to be true to ourselves, we must innovate.
