CMC Prof. Riggio on Young Public Servants; The Obsession with the Young

Recently, it has become fashionable for everyone to vote.

Often the argument isn't so much an argument as it is an exhortation, an emotional appeal to make us all vote Democrat.

You might say that it isn't overtly partisan, but there can be little doubt that young people, indoctrinated by public school unions and a leftish media, would vote for anything other than the Democrat ticket. As such, they've become something of a voting block.

In Pomona, of the 19 candidates seeking office, six are under age 30. I quote from the Contra Costa Times,

For Mark Nava, a 20-year-old candidate for mayor, the notion of public service is not new.

"All of my life, there's been this need to serve the public," he said.

. . .

Nava isn't unusual. He's part of a generation that wants to act now, said Ron Riggio, director of the Kravis Leadership Institute at Claremont McKenna College.

"What we're seeing is a 'We need to change the world attitude,"' Riggio said.

Riggio pointed to the documentary film "The Youngest Candidate," which followed a handful of young adults who sought political office. One of them, Michael Sessions, was elected elected mayor of Hillsdale, Mich., a community of 8,230 people, two years ago. He was 18.

These young people are realistic, but they haven't lost the idealism that makes them forge ahead and work to change the problems they see, Riggio said.

"They see the future looks dark, but they still have the optimism," he said.

These are also young people who are impatient and tend to say, "I don't need to wait. I don't need to pay dues," Riggio said. "It's a very different generation from the Baby Boomers."

The dangers of this kind of attitude were in evidence in my hometown of Milton, MA where 18-year old, Michael Joyce, was elected to my parents' precinct with 207 votes.

His ignorance of all manners politic was such that he campaigned on the wrong side of the street, but as his father was none other than a local state senator, Brian A. Joyce, he was elected. (Joyce the elder is something of a political sleeze bucket. At a funeral we both attended, I watched him hand out his business card to people and talk about how much he missed the deceased. In reality, if rumors are true, she hated him and voted against him every chance she got.)

This isn't the kind of government that the founding fathers imagined we'd have. The idea for age restrictions was to keep the aristocratic families from ruling us.

I belong to the John Lerew school of thought when it comes to running for office. Actually do something before you run.