Let's Find Common Ground - Why Republicans are Losing Gen Z

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

Almost 70 percent of Generation Z voted for Democrats in November’s midterm elections. As the years go by, Republicans are getting an ever smaller slice of the youth vote. In the last episode, we looked at why Democrats are failing with rural voters. This time we ask why the GOP does so badly with young ones.  Generation Z is often described as overwhelmingly liberal. But our guests on this show - two young Republicans - say it’s not that simple, and that if the GOP engaged in better marketing and outreach, it could win over many of the young electorates. Joe Mitchell is a former state congressman from Iowa, elected to the Iowa House of Representatives at the age of 21. He is also the president and founder of Run Gen Z, a nonprofit dedicated to recruiting and mentoring the next generation of conservative leaders as they prepare to run for office. Karoline Leavitt ran for Congress in New Hampshire last year, securing the nomination in the state’s 1st Congressional District at the age of 25. Previously she worked in the White House as assistant press secretary to President Trump. Joe and Karoline say Republicans don’t need to change their conservative message to win over young voters. Rather they argue that the GOP should appeal to Gen Z where they are, particularly on social media, and support the young candidates trying to reach them.  Please tell us what you think! Share your feedback in this short survey. For every survey completed we’ll plant 5 trees.  Common Ground Podcast Feedback Survey (qualtrics.com)

When Republican Nikki Haley announced she was running for president this week, she called for a new generation of political leadership. Haley is Generation X, but much younger Republicans are clamoring for power at the state and local levels. And they're worried. This is Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Ashley Maltite. And I'm Richard Davies, almost 70% of Generation Z voted for Democrats in November's midterm elections.

A pretty devastating number for Republicans and their party that's trying to ditch its reputation as being the home of all white men. In the last episode, we looked at why Democrats are failing with rural voters. This time, we ask why the GOP does so badly with young ones. So Richard, Generation Z, it's often described as overwhelmingly liberal, right? Well, not just liberal, but even progressive, and sometimesists, there are polls of generation Z suggesting that they have Graved-outs about capitalism, just one example of how far left many young people are

Right, and they have strong feelings on abortion, gun violence, climate change But in this show, we speak to two young Republicans who say it's just not that simple But in this show, we speak to two young Republicans who say it's just not that simple. Yeah, our guests say that if the GOP actually put more effort into marketing to young people and social media outreach, they could win over a lot of people in their teens and twenties. You're going to hear from Joe Mitchell. He's a former state congressman from Iowa. He was elected to the Iowa House of Representatives at just 21. He's also the president and founder of Run Gen Z, a non-profit that recruits and mentals the next generation of conservative leaders. Also joining us is Caroline Leffitt. She ran for Congress in New Hampshire last year and secured the nomination in the state's first congressional district at 25.

Previously, she'd worked in the White House as Assistant Press Secretary to President Trump. Let's kick off our interview. So, Caroline, I'm going to start with you. Is the Republican Party ignoring voters under 30, kind of writing them off as a lost cause? Well, I certainly do believe so, unfortunately. And that's part of the reason that I decided to run for Congress. I live amongst Generation Z, they are my friends, they are my former colleagues, former teammates, and they are overwhelmingly liberal.

They are increasingly signing up to vote for the Democrat Party, registering as Democrats voting for Democrat candidates. And the numbers really are startling to the GOP, you know, 68% of generations the Americans voted Democrat in the 2022 midterm elections up and down the ballot. And so I do believe that unfortunately the Republican Party, including the establishment leadership and leadership on Capitol Hill, believes that this generation is too far gone. I would like to disagree because I think that sets a very sad narrative for the future of our country. I think the Republican Party needs to invest heavily in digital marketing to reach these voters. We have not done that in the past. That's again

part of the reason that I decided to step up and run for Congress And I hope that other conservative candidates will to put pressure on the leadership to show that we are not all Liberal and we want representation among our party and we deserve that in our country deserves that as well Joe What are the numbers about voters in their late teens and 20s telling you are Republicans losing Gen Z voters by the sort of margins that Caroline says they are? Absolutely, and Caroline's 100% correct and everything she just said, and what I always tell people is that when you look at historically, younger people always vote more progressive. They always vote more liberal and that's nothing new to us.

But when you look at what's happened this last midterm is the disproportionate numbers that people voted for liberal candidates was astronomical compared to other election years. So normally when you see people under 30, they're voting 60, 40, Democrat Republican, and now that gaps almost widen to 70, 30, which is a huge margin. And so when we have more and more voters in our generation that are voting on the left side of the aisle, but also, they're starting to be more hardened where they're, they're self identifying as radical leftists, you know, socialists, some people as communists. And so it takes a lot more for us to then get them back to the middle to consider voting for a conservative candidate or a Republican candidate.

So to be clear, turnout amongst younger voters isn't the big factor. It's not that so many more young voters are going to the polls than in past elections. Correct. Yeah, so 11 to 13% of the electorate, when you look at last five or six midterms have all been folks under 30. So that number has not drastically changed. It's just the amount of people in that age group that are then voting for it. Democrat candidates has drastically changed. And you know, those 10, 15, 20 point spreads are tens of thousands of people. And so when you're looking at extremely tight races, like the Herschel-Walker race,

even Caroline's race, Carrie likes race. I mean, those are all numbers that if we could have had, as a party, been more concise and not as divisive to young people than I think that we could have

won a lot of these races, frankly. Let me just ask, guess Caroline, you were talking about you're surrounded by, obviously, people you're age, but so many of them are on the left. Like how does that feel? Well, Joe and I are certainly amongst the ideological minority in our generation. There's no doubt about it.

You know, I really realized that I was conservative when I was on my college campus. I did not grow up in a political family. I went to school to play sports on an athletic scholarship and quickly learned that some of the values that I held dear were not held dear amongst my peers, my classmates and certainly my professors. And I guess that's where I began to identify as a Republican as a conservative. This was the 2016 election interestingly enough, where I was definitely one of the few students on campus who voted for President Donald Trump. And so I realized then that I was amongst, again,

the ideological minority amongst my generation. I take grade pride in that, though. I spoke to so many young people who were liberal because that's all they know. That's the only viewpoint that is shared to them, whether it's through the mainstream media, big conglomerate channels like CNN and MSNBC, whether it's through social media, we know the facts tell us that generations the Americans overwhelmingly consume their daily news on social media platforms,

such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. And the Republican Party has failed to get our message out on those platforms. And so when I've shared whether it's news articles or my perspective on the news of the day, my inbox always is flooded right now with hundreds of messages from conservatives amongst my generation or just a political folks in my generation saying, wow, I didn't even know this was happening in our country and our world. And so I think a big part of this is the message, you know, they always say that the GOP used to be the party of the old white man. Well, when you have young folks, young women, young men of all races, ages, demographics that look like these young people, talk like them,

have the same interests, listen to the same music, etc. you can resonate. Sometimes the messenger is more powerful than the message itself. Joe, you became a state representative at a very young age and you've also founded a group called Run Gen Z. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, of course. So Run Gen Z in a nutshell is an organization that helps empower, recruit and mentor the next generation of conservative leaders across this country. So, you know, a little bit about myself, I got elected at the age of 21,

when I was still a senior at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and I ran in my home district back in Southeast Iowa. And shortly after, you know, getting sworn in, I started getting asked to speak to these different college Republican groups, to turning point chapters, really just young, professional groups in general. And my main message to these people was if I can do it, you can do it.

And that, you know, I was able to do it at my age and, you know, I didn't have this huge, you know, political resume built up or a lot of connections. I just went out there and I knocked on people's doors. I told them the message that I wanted to bring to our community and they put their trust to me and build voted for me. And so soon after that, I started mentoring several young people and started getting this idea that we can actually grow this coalition and grow this movement into something that could be incredible. And frankly, that we need because I saw on the left, they had run for something

and they had an organization, they were very well organized, they were very well funded, where they were habling young progressives, run for office, and they were winning all over the country. And so that's why you have people like Max Frost and AOC, and the party was much more open to those folks running as well. I mean, Caroline can tell you in her primary, she had to fight tooth and nail,

a lot of times because she was a young person, she was a woman. And so her ham to go through that fight tooth and nail a lot of times because she was a young person, she was a woman. And so, her ham to go through that adversity, just like a lot of other young people did, I wanted to be able to showcase her story and many other people's stories around the country that are young conservatives that are running because unless we have people to look up to that are in positions of power and that are elected officials, then we're not going to think that young people should be conservative. Caroline, you ran for Congress in New Hampshire during the last election.

What was that experience like? Running for Congress, especially running for any office, is a huge, huge commitment. It takes a lot of sacrifice and hard work, and it certainly took a lot of hard work in our race. I started my career uniquely, because I started at the federal level in Washington, D.C. I was granted an internship at the White House, which led to a full-time position for two years

in President Trump's administration, and then moved to Capitol Hill, where I served as a spokeswoman communications director for Congresswoman Elise Daphonik, who was at one time the youngest woman ever elected to the United States Congress. And so that was very inspiring to me. So I quit my job in DC and packed it my little apartment, moved back home to the district in which I grew up. My family has businesses. I went to school and it was a remarkable experience, very difficult but very rewarding. And I was an unknown candidate, a first timer.

I started literally, and at my dad's pickup truck, we went to American legions, local Republican town committee meetings, barbecues, anywhere I could just get in front of people and share my story, share my vision for New Hampshire. And as we began to travel around the district and speak to voters, the momentum began to just fuel around our campaign because voters want young people to run for office. And I think there's a huge disconnect between the Republican establishment leadership, if you will, the party leadership and the grassroots GOP voter.

The Republican establishment did not want me to win the primary, but we won by 10 points. Because grassroots campaigning is everything. And when you're a young person, you have the energy to do it. I was making fondries and calls all day, and then knocking doors all night, literally every single day, for six months in the summertime. And I ran for a year and a half straight. Both of you, tell us a bit about how you grew up. Why are you a Republican? First Caroline. Sure.

Well, I grew up, as I like to say, not in a political household, but a patriotic household. My father served in the United States Marine Corps. My family were small business family. I was actually the first in my immediate family to graduate from college. We owned a used trucking car dealership and we owned an ice cream stand. My entire childhood growing up where I spent many of my childhood days helping my mom run the business. I was a manager of the shop. I scooped many ice cream cones throughout my upbringing. And I think those values, whether I knew what or not, I was being instilled with hard work, love of faith, love of family, love of community.

But I do credit my conservative values to my conservative upbringing, whether I knew that or not at the time. Joe? Yeah, and very similar to Caroline's story, you know, my parents were entrepreneurs as well. And so I grew up in a family where my dad quit his job when I was five years old. I started a manufacturing company. And neither my mom nor my dad had college degrees.

And so, you know, they just got to finish stuff, you know, paying off our very small, ranced out home in Rola, Iowa. Put up that home to start their business out of their garage. Make orthopedic braces for babies with club feet. And so, you know, for two years, we had no income coming in from my dad. He was out in the garage trying to invent this brace. My mom had to go back to work as a bank teller and, you know, had very tough times and eventually my dad had to break through, created this brace that has now fixed thousands, tens of thousands of babies' feet around the world.

And so when they started that business, they gave over half their profits away to philanthropic charities in their own foundation eventually into our church. And so my dad always told me, as younger, he said, you start a successful company, the government takes halfway, and then, me and your mom are giving halfway anyways

to the church and to our philanthropical missions, because that's what we believe in. But he said, think of where that money could go, the government did take halfway. Because he said, I have no problem paying taxes, but you see what they're spending the money on, and it doesn't seem responsible. And so he was always for a more limited government in general,

but they were, you know, they're entrepreneurs, they were people of faith, and so, you know, all those values aligned with the Republican Party at that time. You're listening to Joe Mitchell and Caroline Levitt on Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Ashley. I'm Richard. We know there are a lot of you listening out there. Yeah, and we're really happy about how our listenership is really growing in the past year or so. And we want to hear from you. We'd love your opinions on the current show as well as how it could improve. You might have ideas for a specific topic or guest or you might hate something we said or something a guest said and never want to hear it again. Either way, let us know.

And it's easy. Just head over to commongroundcommity.org slash podcasts. You'll see a link right there to tell us what you think. And thanks. Now back to our interview with Joe Mitchell and Caroline Levin. Caroline, large majorities of young voters do support abortion rights. And as you know, they tend to be liberal on social issues.

Do Republicans need to change their policies or their message? No, I don't think that we need to change our policies, and I don't think we should. We have to have conviction in our policies and in our beliefs. And as a young woman myself, I am pro-life. I believe strongly in that. And I think sadly, our culture has not become a culture of life in the United States of America or frankly the world. The reason that I'm pro-life is if you talk to any mother in this country in this world and you ask them

Do you wish you had aborted your child? Every single mother 100% of the time will always tell you no Absolutely not and so I believe that we as conservatives. I'm a Christian as well We have a fundamental obligation to celebrate life and to empower women and so I think this is an issue The Republican Party should not shy away from. We should have courage in speaking about it and sharing enlightening, positive, heartfelt stories to encourage a culture of life. Joe and Caroline, you're both passionate about politics, committed conservatives.

about politics, committed conservatives, as you know, most Americans aren't nearly as interested in politics as you are. How do you reach across and persuade people who are unconvinced or perhaps don't think that who's in power matters that much to them? I guess it's a common ground question because we're let's find common ground on this show. Joe? Yeah, so I think several different aspects here. Number one, in the legislature, I believe when you are elected, you're elected by not only Republicans, you're elected by Democrats as well and independents, and that's true. You're representing when you're elected by Democrats as well and independents. And that's true, you're representing when you're eventually governing

and in the state house, you're in that city council or in Congress. And so I knew that was my job, was to govern and try to represent as many people as I could in my district. So I had no problem with working with Democrats on issues that we may agree on, which in the legislature, we will understand this.

90% of what's passed is bipartisan. And so you have support from both parties. Obviously, topics of portion and large tax bills, second amendment, right, type of stuff, is the 10% that is showcased on the news. And that was going to be the most heated debates, of course. But still, when you get to the Capitol

and you start talking to the Farm Bureau or to the realtors or to the realitors or the financial institutions, a lot of these technical fixes that they have, whether you're a public or a Democrat, you agree that yeah, this is going to help my small town bank or my small town realtor, or this is a good thing for our public schools. And so I think that's something that when you're outside of politics, you just see the headlines and you say these people never get along. And that's just not the case. And even you've seen, you know, this past, you know, the past few weeks, and then did the speakers race. And you saw a O C, talked to Matt Gaetz, like these people

talked to each other. And, you know, the news doesn't like to highlight it a lot. You know, by I think telling stories, especially when you're actually a legislator and you're an elected official telling stories of the humanity of Being in a governing body and in working across the aisle. I think it's extremely important In the last podcast we did we spoke with the progressive Democrat Chloe Maxson from rural Maine who won a couple of races in conservative rural parts of her state. And she said that very often convincing people who are skeptical of you is about helping them understand

that you share their values. Do you think that very often persuading people to vote for you is not just policy as we so often hear in the media, but also about values? Yes, I do. And I think that politics is also a lot about likeability. And it's about trust. And it's about looking someone in the eye and having a hard conversation with them about policy,

but coming to Common Ground to use the name of this wonderful podcast, coming to common ground on just basic values. I had a lot of conversations with people who were Democrats or Independents or even maybe skeptical Republicans who were more moderate than me on certain issues or maybe even more conservative than me on others. I guess politics is best sales, right? And when you're selling anything, whether it's a product or your campaign or your message, what's the first thing every good salesman does is you find common ground with that person.

And so that's something that I found to be hugely important when I was pitching myself to voters who were skeptical of me. And look Ronald Reagan said, at best, someone who agrees with me 80% of the time is my friend. And I think that has been lost in our politics today because of the media sensationalism always wanting to pull us apart.

But as Joe mentioned, both on the hill where I worked, there's a lot of bipartisan work that gets done that doesn't make the headlines because it's not exciting as omnibus bill or immigration reform or second amendment rights, which are issues that strike up a little bit of political division. Okay, so I want to get to the meat of how you actually get people to vote for you, because you've talked about abortion, we've talked about that so many in your generation are on the left, even more than were in the past, and Caroline, in an interview you did fairly recently, you said, we can't continue to run on issues

that young voters don't care about. We have to talk about the issues they care about and persuade them to believe in our policies and our solutions on them. So, okay, give an example. How's this gonna work? I'll give you a great example. Well, first of all, in order to get someone to vote for you

in a congressional race at least, I read a statistic once that said, you need a voter to hear about you, see you, or listen to you 13 times before they make up their mind to vote for you. One of the things that we did more than any candidate in our race, both on the Republican and Democrat side of the aisle, was in-person events.

We hosted grassroots events every single day. It felt like to meet voters one-on-one. And we did a college campus tour. I actually labeled it Wake Up Gen Z. And we were the only candidate to go to every single college campus in the state of New Hampshire. That one-on-one engagement, when you're talking with voters and going back and forth, you can't put a price on that. You can run all the TV ads in the world, but if you're not showing up to the college auditorium or the honky-tongued barbecue on a Saturday, which many days you have to do, you're not going to earn votes.

Joe, anything to add to that? Yeah, I think that's universal, right? And so, especially in a local race, which that's what Run Gen Z focus on is state local races, city council, county water supervisors, state legislative races, and almost every single one of these races that we participate in that we give mentors to, our races where you can knock every single door

in that district and talk to those voters one on one. That is the best tool that you have. Just going back to a specific issue for a minute. Joe, you've said Republicans, well, you've both said Republicans need to be sort of unapologetic about your stances. And yet voters in their teens and 20s have grown up with fear of mass shootings at their schools

and other places. Do Republicans need a more urgent message about guns? It's not a matter of giving an inch to the other side, but saying that we care about school safety as well. I mean, we care about school safety just as much as the left does. We just have different solutions to it, and that's called having more secure schools, having potential armed guards at your school. And so I think a lot of these issues, whether it's abortion, whether it's the gun safety question, whether it's at the environmental questions, is that we need me to be proactive about getting our message about saying that we also care about these issues as well, but we just have a different avenue of getting there and in protecting

these people. And so I think that's where there's been a huge messaging problem overall from the Republican Party and from the conservative movement is we try to kind of sweep these issues under the rug and not talk about them and we need to talk about them and be more proactive about it because when we're not proactive about it then the left gets to define what we think about these things. You have twin tasks, both of you. One is to convince more skeptical young voters to move over from voting for Democrats to Republicans. The second task you have is convincing your own party.

So how do you convince them to take you more seriously? Well, I've been having discussions with people in Republican Party leadership, both at the RNC and on Capitol Hill. I think the 2022 elections proved that the GOP, our greatest, most colossal challenge is generation Z and millennial voters. This is a demographic that's not going away. It's growing every single day. Americans are turning 18 every single day.

And to Joe's point earlier, it's not your, you know, the old times where you're very liberal when you're young and then you get a job, you start paying taxes and you become conservative. No, these young people are being brainwashed, in my opinion, more than ever before, because of the power of the digital age that we live in. That's something that I think the Republican leadership needs to understand. And so I think the party is starting to wake up to the effect that this is having. We just have to convince them that it's a worthy investment to make.

And that's really what's lacking is the investment in young candidates, the investment in digital advertising to meet young voters where they are and to relay our conservative message. Young people built this country, young people can save this country, and I am hopeful that the GOP leadership and establishment will get on board with that. So final question, what does Common Ground mean to you? Joe, you're first. Common ground to me is taking two issues that are divisive and talk about okay what can we agree on and one of these things people always talk about abortion okay the nothing in abortion we can agree on which is you know not true you know why was in the legislature I said okay neither the democrats my

democrats friends claim that they don't want abortions either, neither do Republicans. So I said, okay, how can we figure out how to be proactive and stop that decision for me made at all? That was access to birth control. And so, you know, I co-sponsored several different bills to make it easier for women to be able to get access to birth control, whether that be the pill, or the armbar, or an IUD. Those are things that Democrats or Republicans were able to come together on.

For the most part, you know, people on the fringes of both parties that, you know, didn't like the idea of that. But being able to come to the middle and say, okay, there's got to be something in each individual issue that we deal with, whether that's the school safety question, whether that's abortion, whether that's the environment, whether that's taxes, or we can all come together on and say, you know, this is something that we're trying to proactive on to prevent this decision from happening, period. Once you sit down across the table from somebody and start really discussing the problem, you can normally find some sort of solution that both parties agree with to a certain extent.

It's a great question and one that I don't think I have specifically thought of before and I agree with what Joe said is, you know, any good negotiation, you have to compromise a little bit to get to common ground. But I also think common ground here in the United States of America is that sense of patriotism, that sense of being an American, being blessed to live in the greatest country in the United States of America is that sense of patriotism, that sense of being an American, being blessed to live in the greatest country in the history of the world. And what's the bedrock of this country? It's family. I think that's what it all boils down to. Thank you, thank you both. Thank you. Thank you guys.

Caroline Levit and Joe Mitchell on Let's Find Common Ground. So, Richard, what do you think? This is the first time we've had two young Republicans on the show at the same time, I think. Yeah, and we followed up from having a young Democrat on the show the previous episode. And before that, we were talking about independence, really trying to explain why the two main political parties often misunderstand large groups of voters. Yeah, and this latest show has been about how the Republican party just doesn't seem to get the youngest voters. Yeah, I was really struck by a Caroline Levitt saying that she wasn't really going to compromise in our views, very controversial issues like abortion and guns, and instead she talked about how to reach out

to young voters with salesmanship and with a better media strategy, right? Right, and also a work ethic. I was struck by where she talked about how hard you have to work and just how many doors she knocked on over such a long period of time and I mean obviously she didn't win but she did pretty well. She secured the nomination which was I think quite a feat because she was only in her mid-20s when she did so, but I think she was quietly saying without actually saying it that someone in their mid-20s has a lot more energy than somebody in their mid-60s or 70s when it comes to knocking on doors and reaching voters. And when we spoke to Chloe Maxman for the last show, she, in a different way, talked about how much time she spent knocking on doors. And in her case, it was about meeting rural voters where they were and finding common

ground with them, really by listening to their stories and empathizing with them. You know, the other podcast that we also did recently about another very large group of misunderstood voters is the show with Jackie Salott and John Updike on Independence. And I think that was really fascinating in the way that they lifted the hood on voters that are often mischaracterized. Yeah, and how many they revealed to us just how many young voters are actually identifying as independence, not Republicans or Democrats. I thought that was something I hadn't really taken in. I think they made a really strong case on episode 76. That podcast was released last month. And we have one more note about our show or a relative of our show before we go.

Common Ground Committee founders Bruce Bond and Eric Olson have their own podcasts these days. It's called our take on Common Ground. You can find it at commongroundcommandu.org and it's coming very soon to an app near you. I'm Ashley. I'm Richard and thanks for listening to our show and we hope you'll take a listen as well to our take with Eric and Bruce. This podcast is part of the Democracy Group. This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.