Political predictions are notoriously unreliable, but here is one I am willing to stand behind: the elected officials who figure out how to govern across difference will dominate the next decade of American politics. With dysfunction and paralysis having become the status quo in Washington, elected officials who work together to get things done will turn heads, offering desperate voters a much-needed alternative to a broken system.
Consider what happened in Alaska last year. The state’s lawmaking structure does not encourage political independence. Alaska has the nation's highest veto-override threshold: three-quarters. So when a popular education bill promising smaller class sizes, a cellphone ban, and vocational training funding cleared the legislature, only to be vetoed twice by the governor, it looked dead in the water.
But two lawmakers on opposite sides of the aisle made it their mission to revive it. State Senator Löki Gale Tobin, a Democrat from Anchorage, and State Representative Justin Ruffridge, a Republican from the Kenai Peninsula, held together the bipartisan coalition that supported the bill, defied the governor, and ensured it became law. Their cross-partisanship was rewarded: Rep. Ruffridge was elected minority whip by his own Republican colleagues.
Mississippi saw a similar feat of legislative courage and collaboration at the height of the COVID pandemic. Since 1894, the state flag had featured the Confederate battle cross. Conventional wisdom said it couldn’t be changed, but two lawmakers proved everyone wrong. Representative Jeramey Anderson, a Democrat, and his Republican colleague, former Representative Toby Barker, had built the relationship, over years, that made possible a bipartisan vote to redesign the flag.
With the mid-terms approaching and the highest stakes presidential election in modern memory on the horizon, the political establishment is desperate to identify winning issues. But as long as Americans are severely polarized, issues will no longer win elections; character will. More so than any single policy issue, what most of us want to solve is the underlying condition that makes everything else harder: the sense that Americans, especially our elected officials, no longer share enough common ground to solve problems together. Politicians who offer a credible case against division and back it up with constructive, collaborative governance will go places.
Many of the politicians who exemplify this get-it-done attitude share a trait that is worth singling out: they are among our youngest public officials. Younger politicians are often caricatured as inflexible and ideologically driven, but more often, it’s just the opposite. Research by Future Caucus, the nonpartisan organization that I lead, found that in 2022, 40 percent of all bipartisan bills signed into law at the state level were introduced by a Gen Z or millennial legislator, despite them making up only a quarter of all state lawmakers.
These lawmakers firmly belong in the American tradition of young political innovators. Our democratic project was born 250 years ago out of young lawmakers’ insistence on charting a new course. James Madison was 25 when he helped draft the Virginia Constitution, and Thomas Jefferson was 33 when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Much of the constitutional architecture we still live with was built by people in their thirties, some of whom had never governed before.
At America's hinge moments, it has often been younger leaders who are willing to attempt the kind of coalition-building that entrenched interests have given up on. These young officials often have less to lose. When lawmakers join Future Caucus, which brings together Gen Z and millennial politicians from across the political spectrum to pursue collaborative fixes to stubborn problems, most cite frustration with a calcified status quo as their main reason for signing up.
What stands out about today’s young lawmakers is not that they are ideologically moderate – their views span the full breadth of the political spectrum – but that they have correctly diagnosed what voters actually want. Even with polarization at a fever pitch, Americans are hungry for productivity in politics. Eight in 10 U.S. adults agree that elected leaders should compromise to get things done. Americans are twice as likely to say they would rather see leaders in Washington compromise to pass legislation (47%) than have leaders stick to their political beliefs at the risk of accomplishing little (24%).
Right now, the young lawmakers who are delivering what voters want can be found in state capitals and city halls doing the procedural, unglamorous work of finding the final three votes to get a critical piece of legislation out of committee, actually returning calls from the other caucus (not to mention, from their constituents), and prioritizing bills that serve their communities over bills that virtue signal.
The commitment to problem-solving shared by these young lawmakers is already translating into political success: 100 percent of state Future Caucus co-chairs were reelected in 2024, many have been elected to committee and caucus leadership, and several — including Georgia Future Caucus co-chair Rep. Jasmine Clark — are running competitive races for higher office. In our deeply divided political moment, the power of cross-partisan respect and collaboration is becoming impossible to ignore. Voters have signaled that they are eager for a new era of cooperation. The politicians who make the most compelling case for connection – and walk the talk once in office – will write the next chapter of American history.
Layla Zaidane is president and CEO of Future Caucus, the nation's largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization for Gen Z and millennial lawmakers. Future Caucus has supported more than 2,000 state and federal legislators since 2013.
