This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2004, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
How low can you go?
To hold offices, you must be a certain age:
l President: 35
l U.S. senator: 30
l U.S. House member: 25
l Utah governor: 30
l Utah legislator: 25
l Average age of Utah lawmaker (2002): 53
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By Carl Weiser
Gannett News Service
WASHINGTON - They sound like candidates for MTV's ''The Real World'': A 24-year-old who watches ultimate fighting. A 33-year-old hip-hop fan who hits dance clubs. A 23-year-old grad student who likes to hike, camp and listen to lounge music.
But they are remaking the world.
They are people younger than 35 who have won public office. They are young, and they are the government.
An estimated 800 politicians are younger than 35, from city councils to Congress. They represent every party and race. Some are second-generation politicians. Others come from families who stayed out of government affairs.
''Anything can change at any given time. That's what I like about politics,'' said Andres ''Andy'' Martinez, a 24-year-old fan of ultimate fighting, an extreme martial art in which almost anything is allowed short of eye gouging. The Democrat is a firefighter who won a seat on the Driscoll, Texas, City Commission in April.
''The mayor used to change Andy's diapers,'' said City Administrator Rachel Saenz, who believes Martinez's presence attracts young residents to meetings that had been sparsely attended.
The most comprehensive study of young politicians, based on 2002 data, found 814 of them - about one of 20 elected officials. There is no data for other years.
But anecdotal evidence shows that some young people - some inspired by the Iraq war, some by local issues - are choosing politics to change their world. Voters are responding.
l In Greenville, Miss., voters last year picked a 28-year-old woman, Democrat Heather Hudson, as mayor of the city of 41,630, the Delta's largest.
l In Newark, Del., voters in April put 23-year-old graduate student and independent Kevin Vonck on City Council.
l In South Dakota, voters last month chose 33-year-old Stephanie Herseth, a Democrat, as their sole voice in the U.S. House.
Herseth said she tapped the state's network of young professionals, especially useful in the largest county, Minnehaha County, home to Sioux Falls.
Start young, keep going: Of the 20 most recent presidents, 12 won their first elected office before age 35.
Republican Theodore Roosevelt was 24 when he won a New York State Assembly seat. President Clinton, a Democrat, was Arkansas attorney general at 30.
The Republican and Democratic presidential candidates this year both tried to start early - though both lost. President Bush ran for Congress at age 32; Sen. John Kerry ran at 28.
For people like Alicia Reece, vice mayor of Cincinnati, politics meant passing out Reese's Peanut Butter Cups when her father, Steven, ran for City Council. As she helped her father on the Rev. Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns, she knew politics would be her life.
The Democrat was elected to City Council at age 28. Now 33, she campaigns where young voters are - even at happy hours or a late night dance party. And fellow young people have joined her on City Council.
''We had lost the energy of young voters because they were disconnected from City Hall,'' she said. ''If we have young voters disconnected from City Hall, in the future we would have a dying city.''
Not your father's politician: Young politicians say they differ from older counterparts, especially on technology.
They are religious about answering e-mail and almost every one has a Web page, often separate from the standard-issue government one. Reece's page features polls and animation.
Young politicians also think further into the future. They look out 20 or 50 years because they will be alive then.
A recent congressional report pushing back Social Security's bankruptcy a decade to 2052 was welcomed as a sign of no crisis.
''For my generation, those [10] years don't matter. It's still not going to be there,'' said Rep. Adam Putnam, 29, the youngest member of Congress and a Republican from Bartow, Fla.
Like their generation, young politicians tend to be more open-minded toward gay rights.
''It's inevitable that we'll have gay marriage in this country, because it's a generational question,'' said Jason West, the 27-year-old Green Party mayor of New Paltz, N.Y., who defied state law by marrying gay couples. ''Give it 10 or 20 years when we're holding state legislatures and Congress. It will just be a nonissue.''