Gen Z politicians who want to make a change grapple with parties that aren’t always ready for them

Kansas state Rep. Angel Roeser chats with fellow House Republicans on April 10, 2025. Roeser, 25, decided not to run for reelection this year because of frustrations felt by many members of Generation Z who feel excluded from U.S. politics. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

Editor’s Note: This story is part of Gen Z at the Ballot Box, a collaboration between States Newsroom and The 19th.

TOPEKA, Kan. — After state Rep. Angel Roeser defied her fellow Republicans and voted against their plan to ask voters to change the way Kansas Supreme Court justices are selected, members of her own party shared a graphic calling her and three other dissenters “obstructionists.”

With the inside of the Capitol dome colored blood red and the representatives’ faces plastered beneath it in black and white, the words and visuals are akin to a tabloid mug shot. Roeser said she’s not sure her likeness in the post is even real — it’s likely a composite image generated by artificial intelligence.

Even with the vitriol, the 25-year-old lawmaker stood by her decision, saying she had prioritized her constituents instead of the GOP agenda. In hindsight, her vote appears to have reflected her constituents’ wishes: In August, the proposal to elect Supreme Court justices – pushed by anti-abortion proponents to elect more conservative judges –  failed resoundingly at the polls. 

Still, Roeser said that even before the vote, she had had difficulty getting meetings with Republican leadership, and this was just another instance that left her feeling ostracized. So after serving a single term in the Legislature, she did not seek reelection. And come January, her Manhattan-area district, which includes many young voters at Kansas State University, will be represented by someone else. 

“I was called the darling of the Republican Party,” she said. “I was called a new face of Gen Z Republicans in Kansas. I was labeled before I even had a chance to legislate. And when I did not live up to the hype, my own party turned on me.”

Roeser’s experience exemplifies broader frustrations among members of Generation Z who feel excluded from U.S. politics, even as both Republicans and Democrats court their attention and votes. 

Roeser was the youngest legislator in Kansas when she took office in 2024 at 23 years old. The title of youngest legislator will most likely soon go to Democrat Reed Krewson, a 24-year-old parks and recreation manager in Overland Park running unopposed for the House. 

They might come from different parties with different platforms, but representing young people drove Roeser’s consequential vote and Krewson’s candidacy.

Representing young voters can be a tall order in a nation and state led by septuagenarians and older: President Donald Trump is 80, and Kansas Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly is 76. The average age of Kansas lawmakers was 59 years old during the 2025 legislative session, according to a study by the Center for Youth Political Participation at Rutgers University.  

But representation by young people is vital, said Alberto Medina, the spokesperson for Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, or CIRCLE, a youth civics research organization. 

“If we do not have young people at the table either as elected officials or as voters,” he said, “then we have a situation in which our politics are not reflective of the population as a whole, and we have a group of people whose needs that may be unique are being neglected.”

Picking issues over parties

Roeser voted counter to the Republican supermajority dozens of times as a legislator amid pressure from House leadership and colleagues from both parties. She said House Speaker Dan Hawkins punished her for how she voted in the 2026 session.

“Because I contributed to not being able to get 84 sometimes,” she said of the number of votes needed for the House to override a veto from Kelly, “I didn’t take a single meeting with the speaker all year, and I tried.”

In an email to Kansas Reflector, Hawkins disagreed with Roeser’s characterization of the House dynamic. 

“I do not refuse to meet with a member because of how they vote. I have an open door policy with our members regardless of party or voting record,” he said. “Trying to float the idea that there is some kind of political blacklist for members who disagree with leadership simply doesn’t fly.” 

It would seem most young voters in the U.S. agree with the issues-based approach to politics. 

Almost 50 million Americans ages 18-29 will be eligible to vote in the November election, outgrowing the voter-eligible Gen Z population by 9 million since 2024, according to an April survey from CIRCLE. The organization polled more than 5,000 eligible Gen Z voters. The organization reports a sampling margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. 

The survey found that 43% of those young voters are not affiliated with any party, many of them distrust political institutions and individual issues drive their engagement. Most of them believe the country is on the wrong track, the survey also found. 

Among the 62% of young people who said the country is headed in the wrong direction, just over half were women. Only 7% of the Gen Zers think the country is moving in the right direction, and most of them are men.

“Young people are getting involved in politics,” Medina said, “not because they think it’s great, not because they think it’s working. But often because they think it’s not working and they want to change it.” 

Count Krewson — the Democratic candidate poised to become the youngest lawmaker in Kansas — among them. He has been into politics since he was a teenager, working on the party’s campaigns before he was old enough to vote. 

Kansas State Rep.-elect Reed Krewson, D-Overland park, visits a park in his district he helps oversee as a parks and recreation manager on May 22. (Photo by Baya Burgess/Kansas Reflector)

That close-up look at the party also showed him it could involve young people more. 

“The party loves — whenever we have big events — loves to put all the young people wherever there could be pictures taken,” said Krewson, who is also president of Kansas Young Democrats. “We make great props.” 

Challenges and advantages for young lawmakers

Looking back on her two legislative sessions in Topeka, Roeser saw fellow lawmakers treating young legislators differently.

“I watched colleagues who had either served in the House longer or came in with me as a freshman, but were much older than me, vote against the party time and time again and not be criticized for it or ignored,” she said. “And I watched other young people toe the line and get rewarded even when they voted against their moral conscience.”

Krewson said older and more experienced lawmakers would do well to learn from young people like him. They represent unique kinds of lived perspective the Statehouse otherwise might miss. 

“When it comes to, like, AI, data, social media,” he said, “there are some legislators that don’t know how to use their email.”

Roeser said Kansas lacks adequate AI regulations, speaking from her experience as the subject of the image she suspects is AI generated. 

“The fact that we haven’t done anything as a state to protect not just politicians but, in my own very personal niche experience, young women from AI in that way is devastating to me,” she said.

Krewson attended Kansas public schools much more recently than most lawmakers. He said many of his teachers at the Blue Valley School District in Johnson County lived in Missouri because they couldn’t afford to live on the Kansas side of the Kansas City metro area. 

As an adult, he has seen the difficulty in finding a home there that fits his budget.

“It took me two years to find a condo in Overland Park, and so I can use my lived experience to articulate housing policy,” he said. “Just being able to share that perspective of my generation having such difficulty finding affordable housing compared to the current baby boomer generation that’s in power that did not face those same struggles.”

Young leaders best address young voters’ priorities, said House Minority Leader Brandon Woodard, a 36-year-old who joined the Legislature in 2019 when he was 28.

During his first year in the Statehouse, the Democrat from Lenexa served on a higher education funding committee. He said seeing nine consecutive state budget cuts while a student and then an employee at the University of Kansas informed his work on the committee.

An older legislator, Woodard said, misunderstood younger generations’ problems at one of that committee’s meetings.

“They said, ‘Why don’t they just mow lawns to pay for tuition like I did?’ I said, ‘1975 called. It doesn’t work that way anymore.’ You have to work, like, three part-time jobs — which is not sustainable — if you even want to afford rent.”

Fighting barriers to entry

Running for public office can present unique financial barriers, particularly for working women with families.

Roeser said many young people like her can’t afford to run for public office while starting a career and paying off student loans.

State Rep. Angel Roeser, R-Manhattan, sits in a local coffee shop near her district on June 8. (Photo by Baya Burgess/Kansas Reflector)

“One of the most common issues across the country for young legislators is the financial burden of serving in a role that is allegedly part time,” she said.

Most House representatives made between $40,000 and $60,000 in 2025, according to KS OpenGov. In April, lawmakers overrode Kelly’s veto of a 4.4% pay raise for legislators.

Krewson said the political system excludes young people by design.

“Younger voices structurally don’t have a seat at the table,” he said. 

He said he owed his ability to campaign to the “lucky” circumstance of moving to an Overland Park district represented by Lindsay Vaughn, another young Democratic legislator who took office in 2021 but who declined to seek reelection this year and endorsed him. The legislative pay raise, he said, is also an encouragement.

In a parting statement on Facebook, Vaughn said she and fellow young representatives supported the controversial raise for Kansas legislators, which will go into effect after the Legislature in April overrode the governor’s veto.

“Many of us were the most vocal supporters of raising legislative salaries so more everyday Kansans — not just retired and independently wealthy ones — can now serve and be represented in our Legislature,” she said.

Moving forward after a consequential vote

After the end of her short legislative career, Roeser plans to work as a business strategist. She said her experience as a lawmaker has helped her learn a lot. And she doesn’t regret her vote on Supreme Court justices, which was consequential for her, if not for the Republican supermajority.

The Republican-dominated Legislature passed the 2025 bill and placed a proposed constitutional amendment on the August 2026 primary ballot. The goal was to replace a merit-based system of selecting Kansas Supreme Court justices with an election process.

When it reached voters, 61% voted no. In Riley County, where Roeser’s district lies, 72% rejected the amendment, according to unofficial results from the secretary of state’s office. 

“As one of the youngest members of the Legislature, I take representing the perspectives of younger Kansans seriously,” Roeser said. “And I believe I did so with this vote.”

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