In the basement of the Hyatt Regency Chicago hotel, where state delegates to the Democratic National Convention mingled over coffee, the top corner of a red, white and blue banner stuck onto a wall began to peel and sag.
Upon seeing this, Parker Short, the 22-year-old delegate with a misleading last name leapt up and slapped it back into place.
Short, the president of the Young Democrats of Georgia, went viral on social media for dancing and singing along to Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” at Vice President Kamala Harris’ Atlanta rally late last month, but he is not the only example of youthful energy bouncing around the DNC.
“I really appreciate seeing so many young delegates,” he said. “I’ve been so impressed. I thought Georgia was kind of a phenomenon. We have 20 young delegates. I was like, ‘oh, we’re going to blow everybody out of the water.’ No, there are a lot of young folks here, and I think it speaks to the energy and the excitement that we have. It’s like a rock concert, which is amazing because we have a rock star at the top of the ticket.”
The youngest of Georgia’s delegates, 18-year-old Avi Dhyani of Johns Creek, missed freshman orientation week at Cornell University to come to Chicago and cast his vote for Harris. Dhyani said he first got involved in politics as a 14-year-old interning for the campaign of former state Rep. Angelika Kausche.
“I think for me it was being the son of two Indian immigrants,” he said. “In middle school I had a teacher, and they made us read the news a lot. So I started reading about how (former President Donald) Trump is attacking immigrants, and ultimately, that led to me kind of realizing how much danger our country was in under Trump, and after a while of being scared, I’m like, being scared will do nothing, there must be some way I can get involved. So I got involved with my first campaign and I never stopped from there.”
Edward Bohannon, a young delegate from Carroll County on his last semester at Yale University studying history and political science, said he’s enjoyed being among like-minded young adults.
“There’s been a ton of camaraderie,” he said. “When you walk around the convention, we’re kind of huddled together, we’re talking, we’re having fun, we’re doing our own thing, and it’s been really special, I think, in an election cycle where youth turnout is so critical to winning not only the state of Georgia, but the electoral college. Having such youth excitement really shows bigger and better things and has great implications for November.’’
Bohannon said growing up in a Republican stronghold exposed him to some ribbing from his classmates, but it also taught him how to stand up for his beliefs, and he thinks Trump could lose ground among young conservatives if Trump continues his mostly one-sided feud with Republican Gov. Brian Kemp.
“I went out to a couple of bars in Carrollton after I got home for my internship this summer in DC, chatting with kids my age, and these are people who I would consider very strong Republicans,” he said. “And the thing they keep telling me is, why the hell is Donald Trump picking on Brian Kemp? Because I would argue that the majority of Republicans in Georgia like Brian Kemp a hell of a lot more than they like Donald Trump, and he can’t leave that guy alone. And if Donald Trump knew it was good for him, he would leave him alone.”
Vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and a former high school teacher and coach, told members of the Democratic Youth Council Tuesday that young people will be the deciding factor.
“This thing’s going to be close,” Walz said. “It’s going to be closer than it should be. It’s going to be won in the trenches. It’s gonna be won by your demographic, for the most part, if we can turn you out and get you to vote. That’s how it’s gonna be done, and it’ll be you who elected the first woman president of the United States, it’ll be you that protected women’s reproductive rights, it’ll be you that said this democracy’s worth fighting for.”
When it comes to Georgia, Walz is right on the importance of the youth vote, said University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock.
“It absolutely is important,” he said. “The Democrats do well among young voters. In Georgia, they have gotten the youth vote, you know, under 30s, at least since 2014. So they had 10 years of this. If they aren’t getting that vote by a substantial margin, then they’re in trouble. And also, they need to not only win that vote by a substantial margin, they need for it to be large. And it was quite large in 2020, so that’s a twofold thing that they need to do, is to convert it and then turn it out.”
A Morning Consult poll conducted just before the DNC found 50% of 18-29-year-olds nationwide say they prefer Harris, while 40% say they’d rather have Trump, with the rest evenly split between undecided and an independent candidate.
Harris’ lead among young voters could be more tenuous in swing state Georgia, according to a New York Times/Siena poll conducted Aug. 9 to 14. In that poll, Harris only enjoys a one-point lead among the youngest voting group, 48% to 47% in a two-way race. Georgians 30 and older prefer Trump. Altogether, the former president took about 50% of the support in the poll, with Harris scoring 46%.
This story was provided by WABE content partner Georgia Recorder.
