Story by Chris Graham

We grew up with “Family Ties” and cable TV, trips to the mall and video games.

Then they called us Generation X - and no, we didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, either.

Now we’re in our 30s - and maybe it’s the remote control and microwave oven that forced this on us, but we’re not interested in sitting around and waiting for our parents’ generation to hand the mantle of leadership over.

“Here in Richmond, we seemed to have missed a step. We have the 60- and 70-year-olds who are still there - and they never wanted to give up power, and the baby boomers were sort of told, Wait your turn, and a lot of them did wait their turn,” said Jenn McClellan, 34, a Richmond Democrat who represents the 71st House District in the Virginia General Assembly.

“Well, we’re Generation X - and we didn’t want to wait. Wait for what? We’re ready now. And so we’re much more willing to say, Give me a chance now. I don’t want to wait,” McClellan said.

And here’s why we don’t want to wait …

“On the one hand, you have a generation of people who got involved and stay involved in office for years and years and years - and as we see those people retire and move into a different time of their lives, there’s a vacuum there. And so rather than having more people of their generation step in and fill their shoes, it is, I think, incredibly inspiring and meaningful that more younger people are seeing the need and are beginning to step up - because more than anything, it isn’t as much of a sea change as it is that more and more people of my generation just feel that we’re getting squeezed,” said Jill Holtzman Vogel, 37, the Republican Party nominee in the 27th Senate District that is based in and around the city of Winchester.
“We have the burden of supporting young families and then supporting our parents, we have all these health-care issues - all of these concerns that generations that preceded us did not have,” Vogel said. “And it’s, in many categories, not getting better - and so we all realize collectively that we have an opportunity to change it. And I care so much - and I think so many other people that I talk to care so much - about what we’re going to leave for our children.

“That’s the most important thing that I think about when it comes to issues of health care or issues of education or issues of open space, conservation and preserving the best parts of this community,” Vogel said. “I care because I have a young family - and nothing matters more to me than that they get the same benefits and the same kind of extraordinary community where I grew up.”
“If anything motivates me, that’s what it is - and across the board, probably more people than we realize are motivated by just that same thing,” Vogel said.
***

So the case is made for having more representation from the Gen X set.

But even with that having been established, legislators aren’t supposed to look as young as Matt Lohr looks.

Are they?

Legislative aides, maybe.

“My first day in Richmond, back in ‘06 when I went down, I had three people stop me and ask me what delegate I worked for,” said Lohr, 36, who was elected to the House of Delegates in the 26th District that represents Rockingham County and the city of Harrisonburg in 2005.

Lohr, who could pass for 25, said he met a legislative aide on the elevator his first week in the Virginia General Assembly who swore up and down that he worked for Northern Virginia Republican Del. Scott Lingamfelter.

“Luckily, that doesn’t happen anymore,” said Lohr, who is running for re-election in the 26th this fall.

Maybe not to Lohr - but the number of thirtysomethings in the General Assembly only looks to get stronger in November, which could lead to more of this kind of confusion come next January.

“Some people have thought that it’s unusual to see someone my age running,” said Arin Sime, 32, who is challenging incumbent Sen. Emmett Hanger, R-Mount Solon, for the 24th District seat in the Virginia Senate.

“I think it’s good to have some younger faces in Richmond, some fresh voices. And I’ve heard from a lot of people with a lot of very positive comments - particularly people quite a bit older than me who are really glad to see young people take an interest and an active voice in politics,” Sime said.

“Age is always a question when you’re a young candidate,” said David Englin, 33, a Democrat who was elected to represent the 45th House District that includes portions of Arlington and Fairfax counties and the city of Alexandria.

“I think it cuts both ways - that young candidates can present a picture of energy and vision and this idea of a focus on the future that can be very attractive,” Englin said. “All candidates have to get over a basic threshold of, Is this person qualified to serve? Does this person meet the basic threshold? And in my case, the fact that I had been a military officer, I had some unique life experiences, I have an educational background in public policy, experience working in public policy, all of those were things that certainly got me over that threshold where people said, Yeah, he’s a young guy, but he’s a great leader.”

***

For David Englin and others in the thirtysomething group that is taking root in the state legislature, family is a big reason why they are involving themselves in the civic arena at such an early age.

“Growing up in a home with a single mother who was a public-school teacher on military bases overseas meant that I grew up in an environment where public service was the norm and the expectation,” Englin said.

“My mother’s background and philosophy was that you have a duty to try to figure out how you can give back. She was of that JFK generation of, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’ And that was the example that she set for me,” Englin said.
“I grew up in an environment where every one of my friends had at least one parent who was serving in the military - or in my mother’s case, she was a Department of Defense civilian employee as an elementary-school teacher. It was a culture of public service - a culture of serving something greater than yourself. And from that, I went off into the United States Air Force Academy wanting to serve my country and make the world a better place. And I think that all ties together,” Englin said.

“Whatever I do in life, whether it’s in public office or not, the most important thing to me is that I’m doing something to make the world a better place. I think that upbringing has molded what I have done politically,” Englin said.

David Bulova, 38, a Democrat who was elected in 2005 in the 37th House District that includes the city of Fairfax and portions of Fairfax County, is cut from a more explicitly political cloth.

“My mom is a local elected official as well - so whereas I think a lot of kids grew up to do other things, I had a great benefit in my high-school years of having my mom running for the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. So that gave me a way to help out and to actually learn by example - to watch how she would put together a process, run a meeting and run a campaign. That was a great segue to doing stuff on my own,” Bulova said.

“Ever since I was a little kid, I had the dream of being a public servant - and going on and doing something. I’ve kind of always been Virginia-focused. I grew up in Virginia, and always thought being governor of Virginia was the pinnacle of power and prestige - and still kind of think that,” Bulova said.

Virginia Beach Republican Del. Sal Iaquinto, 39, was also raised in a political family. “My father was active in the Republican Party in New York - he was a committeeman there, and he was their entertainment chairman,” Iaquinto said.

They were also a big influence on his political style.

“My father and mother were just the stereotypical ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ type of husband and wife. They were each others’ best friends. They had a tremendous influence on me and how I act within my family - and how I consider my wife to be my best friend as well,” Iaquinto said.

“I always thought that I would do something in politics. I didn’t know what,” Iaquinto said.

Jill Holtzman Vogel cites as her family influence her father, who was the youngest person elected to the town council in Mount Jackson - until her brother beat his record.

“Granted, that was Mount Jackson - so there were 1,500 people in the whole town. But the idea is, when you come from a small community where everybody does everything, it’s not quite so shocking or unusual to be incredibly involved in your community,” Vogel said.
“I have very much that kind of small-town mentality - everybody pitches in, nobody is too good or too important or too unimportant, frankly, to be involved. Everybody is a stakeholder, and everybody ought to have an opportunity to influence policy - particularly people of our generation,” Vogel said.

Matt Lohr’s family was just as active in community affairs.

“My family was not really active politically. What my family was active in was the community,” Lohr said. “My great-grandparents and my grandparents on both sides, my mom and dad, they were so active in the rescue squad and fire department and the Rotary Clubs and the Ruritans - so what I watched as a child wasn’t so much the politics of my family, but it was my parents’ willingness to always reach out and just help people. And that really, really impacted me. And that’s really the reason that I got involved in community service when I came home from college and joined the Ruritans and the Farm Bureau and served on the planning commission and school board - it really was just trying to find a way to make the community a better place.

“I know a lot of people come from backgrounds where politics was something that was talked about at the dinner table. For me, my parents were Republicans, my grandparents were Republicans, I knew that. They were conservative in their fiscal matters, they were conservative in their personal matters. But they weren’t active politically - they were more just active in the community and active in helping people,” Lohr said.

***

Arin Sime has a good story to tell about how his parents nudged him along as a child toward wanting to be involved in bigger and better things.

“I’ve always been interested in science - I have a degree in engineering. So I was a little bit of a NASA nerd, I guess you could say - following the space program. The movie ‘The Right Stuff’ was one of my favorite movies growing up, still is,” Sime said.

“The Challenger explosion really caught me by surprise as a kid. It really kind of shocked me. It was one of the first experiences that I had where I realized that government makes mistakes, that government is no less human than the rest of us, that they’re just made up of humans who can make mistakes, too. And we need to be very careful about attaching too much reverence to it and belief that it can do things that we can’t do ourselves just because it’s government,” Sime said.
“I think a lot of times we almost attach a deity reverence to our government - and we forget that very human aspect that it has. So for me as a kid, the Challenger explosion kind of brought that home - because these people, NASA, who I just revered at the time, had just made this awful mistake, and cost the lives of some of my heroes. So this was kind of a shock to me - but it was also an opportunity for a great lesson from my parents,” Sime said.

“I remember sometime in the weeks after the explosion, as the news was coming out about all the mistakes that were made, and the bureaucracy and that sort of thing, and we were sitting around the dinner table, and one of my parents said to me, Well, Arin, what do you think? I was upset. I said, This is terrible. They said, Well, do you still want to work for NASA some day? And I said, No, no way. I don’t want to go work for an agency that would do this to my heroes. And they said, Well, maybe you should - because maybe you could be the person who changes it,” Sime said.

“The lesson was, sometimes if you see something wrong, well, don’t run away from it, go and try to change it,” Sime said.

***

So how will these kids of the ’70s and ’80s lead?

One clue is to note how many of them cite the first president that they remember as their political hero.

“When I was a kid growing up, Ronald Reagan, at the time when I was learning what the president was, what politicians were, I always knew him as president, for his eight years there. That made a strong impression on me - in addition to the fact that he made a strong impression on a lot of people. He was a very unique president and a very great leader - someone who was very admirable,” Arin Sime said.

“Most of us grew up during the Reagan-Bush years - and kind of learned our politics by listening to them,” said Ben Cline, 35, who has represented the 24th House District that includes portions of Rockbridge, Augusta and Amherst counties since 2002.

“I was a great admirer of Reagan from an early age - especially his strong positions vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. I admired his strong stance on international relations,” Cline said.

Cline said he “barely remember(s)” the Jimmy Carter years at the end of the 1970s, except that he “had a schoolkid crush on Amy Carter” - as did Fourth District Republican Sen. Ryan McDougle, 35.

51st House District Republican nominee Faisal Gill, 35, didn’t have Amy Carter on his mind - he moved to the United States from Pakistan with his family in 1980, so he missed out in that respect.

“The big thing for me is the presidency of Ronald Reagan,” Gill said. “I was fairly young at the time, but toward the end, just seeing how he really shaped the country was a big experience for me. Back in ‘88, when Ronald Reagan’s presidency was ending, I was still in high school - but just seeing the positive feeling in the country and seeing the excitement of the people was big for me. He really got me excited in politics.

“After his presidency ended, and folks started to look back on his presidency and things that he had accomplished, I think that became kind of a shaping thing for our generation,” Gill said.

Reagan was a shaping force in the life of young Arin Sime.

“My family and I lived in Little Rock, Ark., and my dad took me to see a political speech, and we went to see Ronald Reagan give a political speech in Little Rock. It was some convention hall or hotel ballroom or something - I don’t remember exactly where,” Sime said. “I do have a very vivid memory of waiting in this very long line to get in the building - on a hot Arkansas day. And how glad we were to get inside. I can picture, actually, the steps in the building where we were sitting down back in air conditioning, thankfully, waiting for them to let people into the ballroom - and it was packed, really packed, once we got into the room, and it was stuffed.
“For a few minutes, I sat up on my dad’s shoulders, and I could see on the other side of the room Ronald Reagan giving a speech. That was a very neat experience to have as a kid,” Sime said.
“The lesson from Ronald Reagan is you have to inspire people with strong principles to get them interested in the political process - because politics is pretty nasty. We more and more do treat it just as a sport, just as a game - my team is beating your team. Party politics really has gone down that sport avenue,” Sime said.

“Through my eyes as a child, I really saw that vision and that passion in the leaders at the time that I just don’t see today,” Sime said.

***

Jenn McClellan didn’t come to politics because of Ronald Reagan. She was inspired by a president who had inspired an earlier generation.

“I got interested in politics in middle school - it was 1983, the 20th anniversary of JFK’s assassination, and I was a big history buff, big into biographies. And there was a miniseries with Martin Sheen - and it was the same night that ‘The Day After’ came on, and I was too scared to watch that one. So I watched the Kennedy miniseries, and was just fascinated - and I read everything that I could get my hands on about him and his administration. And I think that was what got me interested in politics and government in general,” McClellan said.

Faisal Gill was himself a middle-schooler when he decided that politics was something in which he wanted to be involved.

“It was an experience that I had when I was in eighth grade. It was career day, and you had to go work somewhere. Most kids were picking working for their parents. My father was a taxicab driver, so I didn’t want to spend the whole day in a taxicab. For some reason, I ended up calling Congressman Frank Wolf’s office, and basically asked if I could come and volunteer in the office for the day,” Gill said.
“Just going there as an eighth-grader changed me - from that day on. From that day, all I wanted to do was politics,” Gill said.

Jill Holtzman Vogel was a student at Central High School in Page County when she was chosen - along with current 15th House District Del. Todd Gilbert - to represent her school in a Model General Assembly.

“We’ve always looked back and joked about that - in a million years, I never could have foreseen Todd or myself, much less both of us together, going to Richmond,” Vogel said.
“That clearly was an early formative experience - because you realize that what you don’t know about seems shrouded in mystery and really complex. And once you spend a little bit of time around politics and around the public-policy arena, you realize that it’s just a lot of regular people who are forced to make very tough decisions,” Vogel said.

Matt Lohr was a little older - he delayed his enrollment in college to serve a term as a national officer in Future Farmers of America.

“When I served as a state and national officer, I deferred college for two years and traveled the world as an ambassador for the industry - and that gave me a lot of experience in speaking with elected officials and business leaders. And through that experience, not only did I learn about service, but that’s kind of where I got a taste of politics,” Lohr said.

“We met with former President Bush four times that year - and just really got a taste of policymaking and what legislators do. I guess that really turned me on to politics - and I knew that at some point in life I wanted to be more involved in political life,” Lohr said.

David Bulova’s first taste of the political life came in college - when he volunteered on Doug Wilder’s gubernatorial campaign in 1989.

“I was simply looking for a way to get involved - and was introduced to the folks in the Northern Virginia office up here. This is before computers were real big on the campaign scene - and they needed somebody to help coordinate the absentee-ballot application process. So it was me and a couple of other volunteers who intrepidly went through all the paper registered-voter lists picking out people who were between the ages of 18 and 21 and likely to need an absentee ballot - we actually sent a letter to every single one of them along with an application, saying how important all of this was,” Bulova said.

“What was kind of neat about that summer were the people who were working in that office - because the first person who was in charge of the Northern Virginia operation was Toddy Puller. She had to actually drop out about halfway through because she decided she was going to run for the House of Delegates down in her area - so I’ve known her for ages. And the person who took her place was Mark Warner - and I got to know Mark, and at the time I had no clue that he was going to go on to become state-party chair and then the governor and then consider a run for the presidency,” Bulova said.

Jenn McClellan had an earlier brush with presidential-level politics.

“I went to the University of Richmond and joined the Young Democrats there - which when I joined, there were, like, four of us. In my junior year, which was 1992, that was when we hosted the third debate between Clinton, Bush and Perot - the one where Bush looked at his watch. I had been working with Clinton’s campaign leading up to that - so Mrs. Clinton invited me to sit with her at the debate,” McClellan said.

“Back then Democrats controlled everything in Virginia - so I met in that one night everybody who was anybody in the Virginia Democratic Party,” McClellan said.

“That was my entree into playing with the big boys,” McClellan said.

Chris Yakabouski, 32, the Republican nominee in the 17th Senate District and the current chairman of the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors, made his big splash as a volunteer on the George Allen gubernatorial campaign in 1993.

“I was 19 at the time. And I did the stuff that young volunteers do - signs, little things like that. I kind of enjoyed doing it, and I joined the local party the next year,” Yakabouski said.

“I did some more volunteering - and really started to enjoy it. I worked some more campaigns. I worked a Commonwealth’s attorney race here in ‘95, and then went on from there to work other campaigns - Mark Earley for AG in ‘97 and Hager for governor in 2001,” Yakabouski said.

***

It’s one thing to follow politics, volunteer, even sign up for a local party committee - and it’s another thing entirely to decide that one needs to be the person running for public office.

Chris Yakabouski made that call four years ago - at the ripe old age of 28 - when he decided to run for the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors.

“There was a big rezoning issue here in the county - and I thought there were a lot of mistakes that were made,” Yakabouski said. “It was poor judgment, it was lack of planning, it was the same old thing that we were getting. So I was encouraged by several folks that I knew to run for the board - and I decided to go ahead and do it.”

It took Jenn McClellan longer to make the big leap.

“When I graduated college, I went to law school - and at the same time was the president of the state Young Democrats. I served as president for three years - worked on every campaign, was on the state party’s steering committee, and eventually became Third Congressional District chair, became vice chair of the state party, a member of the DNC. And all along the way, I had gotten to know a lot of different people,” McClellan said.
“I always had thought in the back of my head, One day, after I’ve established my career, gotten married, had some kids, then I would run for office. So I expected that if I ever ran, it would be late 40s, early 50s - the traditional, particularly for women, road to take,” McClellan said.

“In the fall of ‘04, Viola Baskerville decided to run for lieutenant governor - and she held this seat. And she had been the chair of the Richmond city Democratic Committee - and I was an officer. And periodically, she would ask me, Are you interested in running for office? And I would say, Yeah, one day. So when she decided to run, she said, You know, if you want to run, now’s probably the best time to do it,” McClellan said.
“I had started working at Verizon in 2002 - and was really at a crossroads where I was trying to decide, is my path the political world or the corporate world? When the decision was put in front of me, the more I thought about it, and the more I talked to people, it was like, everything that I had been doing since I watched that miniseries, whether I knew it or not, was leading me to run. So I thought, Well, I’m probably as ready as I’m ever going to be, and as ready as anybody can be,” McClellan said.

***

Jill Holtzman Vogel doesn’t view her decision to run as a thirtysomething as being something she has to explain away because of her age. She feels that her age is an important reason why she needed to run.

“To the extent that you disagree with what happens in government or you disagree with policy decisions that have such a negative impact on your day-to-day life - whether it’s your business or your kids’ education or all those things - rather than sitting around and waiting for the guy who’s been doing it for 25 years to fix it or make the right decision, I think we would all be much better-served if we had more people our age like us who have young families and who are dealing with all the things that we deal with,” Vogel said.
“I run a small business. I have to make payroll every month. I have to deal with incredibly high - almost cost-prohibitive - prices for health insurance, because I want to be able to provide them with good benefits. This morning, I sat down and tried to come up with an answer to the question - how are we going to fund our 401(k)s?” Vogel said.

“Here we are, this generation of people in our mid to late 30s, who have all these things to deal with, and are squeezed at every angle - and more of us should be stepping up. Because frankly we’re the ones who are going to be holding the bag in 20 years,” Vogel said.
“I talk with people all the time who say, That’s awesome - you’re a mom, and you’re more like me than anybody I’ve ever seen run. And I think about that, and I think, What a shame. We ought to be represented by people that we genuinely believe are like us - whose lifestyle and values reflect our own. Because those are the people who most likely will make the kinds of decisions that reflect how we view government,” Vogel said.
“Some people decide, Well, I’m retired now, and I have the time to put into this - and that is noble, and it’s important. But we need people of every age to run for office. I think we place ourselves in government at somewhat of a disadvantage if everybody waits until that point in their life - because fundamentally their positions are different, their world views are different. They’ve had their jobs, they’ve raised their families - they’re a step removed from education, they’re a step removed from workplace issues. And that’s not to say that that makes them less-qualified - but it definitely colors a person’s opinion and views if they’re dealing with it every day in real life,” Vogel said.

***

Ryan McDougle was 29 when he made his first run for the House of Delegates.

He saw that number - 29 - more times than he could count in reference to his campaign.

“The articles in the newspaper always led off, ‘McDougle, 29.’ Everything,” McDougle said.

And think about it - he was a year older than Chris Yakabouski was when he ran for the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors.

“The message from my opponent was, I have the experience, I have the knowledge, I have basically the wisdom - it was obvious what he was trying to say. But never directly,” Yakabouski said.

Jenn McClellan was 32 when she ran for her district’s House seat. The Richmond district is considered a safe Democratic district, meaning that all she had to do was beat back the primary challenge of 70-year-old community activist Melvin Law in what McClellan described as a “stereotypical old-guard-versus-next-generation race.”.

“He had been chair of the Richmond School Board, was chair of the Richmond Crusade for Voters, which is the civil rights/voting rights organization. He was the handpicked candidate of the mayor - Mayor Wilder. He had all the endorsements, basically - he had a lot of city-council members, the establishment of the city,” McClellan said.

“What I had was I had worked as an intern at the General Assembly - and I had a lot of endorsements of sitting General Assembly members. So I had sort of the statewide people backing me, and he had all the local people backing him,” McClellan said.

“He presented himself as, I have experience, this is what I’ve done in the past, what has she done? My platform was, Well, actually, I’ve done a lot, this is what I’ve done, and here’s what I want to do in the House of Delegates,” McClellan said.

Matt Lohr had to face down the challenge of Rockingham County Democrat Lowell Fulk - who took to addressing his opponent as “Matthew” in an apparent attempt to play up the age issue.

“I was 33 at the time - and that is pretty young, when you think about it, to be serving in politics,” Lohr said. “What I tried to stress was the experience. That’s the way to combat that. You could be 50 years old, but if you haven’t done a lot and don’t have the experience, then you’re no more suited just because you’re older. So to me, age really doesn’t matter.
“I’ve been blessed - I’ve had so many neat opportunities, such as serving as an FFA officer - that really gave me a solid footing and a firm foundation to serve. And I think that really the age is irrelevant,” Lohr said.
The age factor in David Bulova’s race against Republican John Mason was not as transparent as the Lohr and McClellan races.

“But my opponent did use the label ‘Experience Matters.’ It was the difference between somebody who had had a long career in public service versus somebody who was relatively new,” Bulova said.

“One of the things that I’ve been very careful about is I believe in the concept of paying your dues,” Bulova said. “So I made sure that I did the volunteer work up front, that I was involved in the party up front. Right after I got married, I became the chair of the local Democratic committee, the Braddock District Democratic Committee, and I did that for four years. And then I sat on the State Central Committee for three years - and got very involved in civic life. Just because I wanted to make sure that nobody could come back and say, You don’t have the experience to do what you want to do.

“I think the energy and youth is great as long as you’re able to back it up with some experience,” Bulova said.

***

Surely we will be different from our parents and grandparents in terms of how we approach leadership - if only because we grew up in a different world than they did.

Our grandparents were shaped by the Depression and World War II, our parents by the postwar boom and Vietnam.

We were shaped by Ronald Reagan, the end of the Cold War, the introduction of the Internet and international terrorism.

Hmmm …

So maybe the world we grew up in wasn’t all that different from theirs.

“My goal when I went down to Richmond was to really learn from the older generation - the people who have been doing it a long time,” Matt Lohr said.

“One thing that’s interesting when you speak to the Vince Callahans and the Lacey Putneys and those guys who have truly done it their whole life - it’s unfortunate, but they say that back in the day, 20 years ago, things were a lot less partisan, that they would debate the issues on the floor, but then they could go out afterwards and go to dinner and still have those camaraderies and those friendships. And it seems that politics is a little different now - in that it’s much more partisan, and it seems like everybody is just out to gain political advantage. And you don’t develop those deep friendships across the aisle - because everybody just wants to win,” Lohr said.

“There will be fewer pop-culture references to The Beatles and Woodstock - we can refer to MTV and all the other stuff that we had when we were younger. And we’ll be called old fogies by the next generation. But the issues will probably be the same - except for the fact that we have been spending without really any thought to tomorrow, putting us in a very precarious situation of, how do you fund some of these programs as we go forward?” Chris Yakabouski said.

“It’s not going to be easy, but I think the old mantras that were used in the past of liberals and conservatives will fade - I think what people are looking for is solutions,” Yakabouski said. “That’s not to say that ideology won’t play a role, but I think that simply branding somebody one way and thinking that that’s enough to ride into office is over and done with. I think people are getting tired of that - and they want to know, OK, you won’t do this, you won’t raise taxes, so how are you going to fund these things? No new taxes is not a vision. It doesn’t tell people what you will do. And I think we need to get away from those slogans and those sort of things.”

“There just seems to be a sense of wanting to get the job done - maybe looking a little bit past partisanship, not looking at the partisan issue, but looking at the issue that we’re trying to resolve and trying to work that out,” Sal Iaquinto said.

“I think that because our parents grew up in the generation that had the Nixon scandal and all that, maybe that made people mistrust government and elected officials - and maybe also created a partisanship that takes a while to overcome,” Iaquinto said.

“There will be a little bit less politics and a bit more directness. Our generation is cynical by nature, I think - more so than the previous generation. So I don’t think that we’re going to go around playing politics too much,” Faisal Gill said.
“A lot of times you hear from people, Oh, nothing’s going on in Congress, the Virginia General Assembly, whatever. I don’t think that’s going to happen as much in our generation,” Gill said.

“We’re just more direct. I don’t see us letting problems linger as long as you see things going on now. Maybe it’s because we all have attention-deficit disorder from TV and video games, I don’t know. But I think you’ll see us more focused on getting things done,” Gill said.
“And I don’t think we’re going to be as afraid to speak our mind just because it might upset the leadership. That’s going to be a huge difference. As you have more folks from our generation in office, a freshman delegate is not really going to care too much if the speaker or the majority leader gets upset, if they’re not following the party line. They’re going to do what they want to do,” Gill said.

“A lot of what has shaped our generation is different perspectives on economics and how we view our institutional links - and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the baby-boomer generation was sort of the end of the gold-pocket-watch generation, where you stick with a firm for a long time and then you go ahead and retire,” David Bulova said.

“Generation Xers - we like a whole multitude of experiences. We don’t experience one midlife crisis - we often experience several midlife crises. And it does kind of shape your perspective when you’re willing to go ahead and change institutions - I think things move a lot quicker with our generation. And I think that’s something that we need to be cautious about,” Bulova said.
“I think change is good - as long as it’s well thought out. But I think we also need to remember to cherish the institutions that we have. And that’s something that we can learn from past generations,” Bulova said.

“I would like to think that on some of the divisive social issues that consumed the baby-boomer generation - that our generation is a bit more progressive and unified. And that we’ll be able to come together on some of those issues and make some progress a little more easily. And that that will then give us a greater opportunity to focus on other issues like health care and education - the issues that really have a deeper impact upon day-to-day lives of a much broader group of people,” David Englin said.

“On some of the issues that I care about in terms of equal rights and tolerance of people with differences and those kinds of things, I think that our generation is just more open-minded. And I think that’s going to just give us an opportunity to make a lot of progress very quickly in some areas - and then let us focus on more ideas to make people’s lives better in the future,” Englin said.
“Race is a great example. In our generation, the idea of interracial relationships is no big deal - there’s a common acceptance of interracial relationships. I think people in our generation don’t even think twice about that. That’s an example of an area where our generation doesn’t have that baggage - and we have much more of a notion of acceptance of a wide range of people,” Englin said.

“Some of the really controversial issues that baby boomers grew up with are not a big deal to us. For example, on a lot of racial issues, the baby boomers were the ones who integrated schools - and that memory is very fresh in their minds. Whereas we were born into integrated schools. So little things like - I’m in an interracial relationship. To the baby-boomer generation, that would have been a political issue. To my generation, it’s like, so what?” Jenn McClellan said.

“Some things are really obvious - like we grew up with the Internet, and so we’re much more comfortable with that world. And with the Internet, things are much more global. It’s not enough to just know everybody on the street - you have to have an Internet presence. It helps you to communicate in ways you never could before. And we get that and immediately use it - whereas the baby boomers are somewhat comfortable,” McClellan said.
“Think about my parents’ generation or my grandparents’ generation - people didn’t go to college, they didn’t have access to higher education, they didn’t travel. With the development of instant communication, we are now a global community. And so whatever the issue is, it calls for a degree of sophistication in technology and global issues - and I think that more people of my generation have had that experience, have had that exposure. And I think that helps us in very important ways in dealing with what is a much less myopic focus on local and community - suddenly, world issues are our local community issues,” Jill Holtzman Vogel said.

“I think that we bring a degree of diversity of life experience and also a progressive approach to government that I think is very important now,” Vogel said.

Filed under: 5-October 2007 Issue