WASHINGTON — On the final day of new member orientation last week, Gen Z Rep.-elect Maxwell Frost was eating breakfast in the basement of the U.S. Capitol, poking at some scrambled eggs with a plastic fork. “I made a Beyond sausage biscuit,” Frost said, describing what else was on his plate. “Slap.”
If you’re not familiar with the millennial and Gen Z slang for “this thing is delicious” then you’re in good company: The majority of Frost’s soon-to-be colleagues probably aren’t either.
Last month, the 25-year-old progressive activist from Orlando, Florida, became the first person from Gen Z — which encompasses those currently in their teens and early 20s — elected to Congress, where the average member is a baby boomer around 60.
While Frost isn’t the first person to join the House at the minimum allowable age — Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), who recently lost a primary, entered at 25 last year — he’s the first from a generation of digital natives who are significantly more racially and ethnically diverse than previous age groups. It’s fitting, then, that Gen Z’s new congressman identifies as an Afro-Cuban of Haitian, Puerto Rican and Lebanese descent.
Frost embodies many of the characteristics that popularly define at least liberals in Gen Z, like being socially conscious and progressive. But he rejects the idea that he speaks for this generation more than anyone else, despite being the most in-demand member of the new Congress by, like, a lot.
“I do of course appreciate the gravity of being the first member of a generation in an institution like Congress,” Frost told HuffPost over the phone a few days before meeting at the Capitol during orientation, where new representatives learn the nuts and bolts of running an office while also getting to know each other at boozy happy hours.
“But I also like to push back because I really don’t see myself as the representation of Gen Z in this country. That’s the problem with celebrity culture in our politics: We put politicians on a pedestal. I’m honored to be the first [Gen Z] member in Congress. ... But as far as representing this generation, I mean, everyone in the generation is a representative.”
Frost belongs to the youngest class of new members in recent congressional history, and one that is relatively diverse. George Santos of New York is the first openly gay Republican to win a seat in Congress. Democrat Mary Peltola is the first Alaska Native. Another Democrat, Becca Balint, is the first woman and openly gay person to represent Vermont. Seventeen new members are in their 20s and 30s, and Frost is getting to know many of them. “It’s been great learning about their districts,” he said. “I want to visit everyone. Everyone has to come to Orlando.”
Frost is humble, chill and pragmatic — common traits among Gen Zers. “My whole life I’ve done really crazy things,” he said while living out maybe the craziest thing yet, as a 20-something flanked by his two aides in the dining hall of the U.S. Capitol. “I’m always, like, scheming on different ideas,” he added. “I’ll do 30, and one will work and 29 will fail.”
Growing up, Frost was used to hearing that he should eventually run for something. “I did speech competition in high school as a young Black man in the age of [then-President Barack] Obama, so of course you’re going to give a speech and people say, ‘Oh, you need to run for office.’ It’s flattering, but I never really though about it seriously, to be honest.”
Adopted by a Cuban mother who teaches special education and a white father who is a professional musician, Frost — who is also a drummer and ex-manager of up-and-coming musical artists — attended a high school for the arts in Kissimmee and dropped out of college so he could work full time for the American Civil Liberties Union.
He quit a $93,000-a-year job as a national organizer with March for Our Lives, the student-led group that aims to prevent gun violence, so he could devote more time to running for office in a primary against nine other Democrats, including a state senator and two former members of Congress. Frost has said he was motivated to run after meeting his biological mother and learning about her struggles with crack cocaine addiction while pregnant.
Even as his campaign brought in nearly $3 million — and was the beneficiary of $1 million in political action committee spending from the now-embattled cryptocurrency investor Sam Bankman-Fried — Frost drove for Uber to make ends meet at home.
Frost is still broke. The congressman-elect from Florida’s 10th Congressional District said he can’t afford the upfront costs of renting a Washington apartment until he gets his first paycheck from the House of Representatives. “I’ve just kind of been sleeping with friends, couch-surfing,” Frost told HuffPost during orientation, which required him to be in Washington for roughly two weeks. He tweeted Thursday that he was rejected for an apartment because of his bad credit and was out the cost of the application.
“This ain’t meant for people who don’t already have money,” he wrote. When “MAGA folks” argued in his mentions against electing people with bad credit, Frost clapped back with a not-so-subtle reference to Donald Trump: “My brother in Christ, you literally voted for a President who had multiple companies go bankrupt.”
The shooting at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School, which happened 10 years ago this month, was the “call to action that my changed my life,” Frost told HuffPost. In the immediate aftermath, he traveled to a Washington vigil where he met the brother of Victoria Soto, a teacher killed in the attack. “Seeing a 16-year-old, really with the demeanor of a 60-year-old, crying over his sister who was murdered changed my life forever,” Frost said. In 2016, he had his own brush with gun violence a Halloween event in Orlando when shooting broke out.
“We all started running,” Frost told Insider in May. “I remember I had to pick up my friend who froze on the ground.”
A handful of years and dozens of vigils later, Frost confronted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — a Republican widely expected to run for president in the next election cycle — at an appearance in Orlando, asking him about the number of people dying from gun violence. “Nobody wants to hear from you,” DeSantis told Frost, who filmed the encounter on his phone and later used it in a commercial for his congressional campaign.
“I call our generation the ‘Mass Shooting Generation’ because we’ve been through more shooter drills than fire drills,” Frost said. “And if you think about the timeline of Gen Z, it’s Sandy Hook, it’s Parkland, it’s Pulse, it’s Breonna Taylor to Trayvon Martin,” he added — references to a number of high-profile instances of gun violence.
“These are all really defining moments for our generation. All of our community, we just want everybody to be safe, and we’re a little confused on why it hasn’t been fixed yet.”
Frost supports the Green New Deal, so-called Medicare for All and expanding the Supreme Court, and he is entering the House as a leader within the Congressional Progressive Caucus. But he isn’t a member of the “squad” — a group of six representatives of color who are among the most progressive in the chamber, including the best-known millennial representative, 33-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Frost’s first legislative effort after his election was calling for a vote on an assault weapons ban, even though it’s certain to fail in a GOP-led House.
Gen Z elected its first member with the help of dozens of progressive organizations focused on young voters and engaging Democrats in swing states. “He represents the future coalition that we’re trying to build,” said Maya Handa, the PAC director for Way to Lead, one of the groups that endorsed Frost. “We really feel like we can’t write off especially Latino voters and young voters in the states that we’re investing in in the Sun Belt.”
Expectations are high, and understandably so. Not long after Cawthorn was ousted in a bitter primary following his disastrous first term — during which he stopped staffing his district offices and responding to constituents — Frost’s general-election opponent, Calvin Wimbish, essentially argued that Frost was too young and inexperienced for the job. “What has he been able to do?” Wimbish, a 72-year-old ex-Green Beret, said in the lead-up to the election. “Has he had the exposure to learning from others?” Frost beat him in a solidly blue district.
“I don’t think time on this earth is a good measure of the value or experience that a representative will bring to the legislative body. Maxwell has had unique experiences that no other member of Congress can speak to,” said Jack Lobel, a spokesman for Voters of Tomorrow, a political group that engages Gen Z and was the first national organization to back Frost. “We’ve grown up with the same experiences as Maxwell, whether that’s fearing that we will get shot in schools or fearing that we won’t have a planet to live on in a few decades.”
Frost has received encouragement from members like outgoing Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), one of the first people to reach out to him during his campaign, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who told Frost that “it’s going to be very refreshing to have a such a young person in Congress,” he said. “She really encouraged me to stay true to who I am,” he added. Frost plans to hire an “eclectic mix” of staffers, including some like him who don’t have college degrees, but he nonetheless tapped a Hill veteran, Yuri Beckelman, to lead his office.
While Frost told HuffPost he was “homesick” and tired after a long week that included a few “boring” orientation classes, he still radiates a serene optimism about everything that’s ahead, not just legislating. Music is a great passion. He plans to fly a hip-hop duo to Washington for his swearing-in next month. He said he’d love to get a youth-orientated music series going on the Hill.
“People want to hear from their leaders about the world we all want to live in,” Frost said. “That’s what excites people and gives them hope for this country. We’re in a world where just like an hour ago on Twitter I saw a video of some dude doing Nazi salutes in an airport. This is the world we live in right now and there’s a lot of trauma right now, especially with our young people.
“We can’t just be neutral,” he said.
“We have to be anti-trauma, right?”
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story stated that Rep. Madison Cawthorn is from South Carolina; he is from North Carolina. It also misstated that Maxwell Frost’s campaign brought in more than $1.5 million; in fact, the amount is nearly $3 million.