Their turn: Young voters relish chance to make history

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - When the seats fill in a darkened auditorium on the Johns Hopkins University campus, students squeeze into the aisles, sit on the floor and cram along walls to catch a glimpse of actor Kal Penn.

The 200-some undergraduates aren’t here to watch Penn, a college audience favorite, deliver lines from his marijuana-laced comedy “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle” or the TV hit “House.”

Today, the talk turns to presidential politics, and the audience of teenagers and 20-somethings does what would have been unthinkable in many campaigns past: Everybody hangs onto every word.

“Who likes Barack Obama?” asks the 30-year-old actor, eliciting whoops and applause from the students, many of whom learned about the event from Facebook. Even at a university like Hopkins, long chided for its apathy about activism — because, the students joke, they are too busy studying — a new politically engaged generation has sprung up.

It’s the Millennials’ turn

They’re the millennials, many of them first-time voters who turn to social networking sites and blogs to learn their friends’ picks for president.

They can’t remember a time when a Bush or Clinton didn’t live in the White House. They relish the chance of making history by electing America’s first black or female president. Nationally, they’re participating in elections the most since the voting age was lowered in 1972. And they’ll come out in droves, political analysts predict, for today’s Maryland primary, a state election finally relevant thanks to an earlier date and a tight race between Illinois Sen. Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.

“We are the Bush generation. An 18-year-old today has lived with Bush as president since age 11,” says Daniel Marans, a sophomore history major at Hopkins and programming chairman for the school’s College Democrats. “I think this election has really energized young people because so many younger Americans are tired of the older generation making decisions for the country based on outmoded social values and cultural conflicts.”

For this generation, Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Sicko” formed their views on foreign policy and health care, and Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” warned them about global warming.

They turn to YouTube to watch candidates’ speeches and sing along to the star-studded “Yes We Can” music video from Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am.

They fret about whether they’ll get jobs when they graduate and whether they’ll be able to pay off college loans and handle house mortgages.

Today’s youth are volunteering more in their communities than earlier generations, so it makes sense that they would vote more, too, says Peter Levine, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement.

Eighteen-to-29-year-olds’ participation in this year’s primaries quadrupled in Tennessee and tripled in Missouri, according to CIRCLE’s analysis. And in Maryland, teenagers and twentysomethings make up almost half of the new registered voters this

year.

This rise in voting by young adults, who have been long written off by candidates as apathetic no-shows at the ballot box, actually started during 2004’s presidential election, when the nation saw an 11 percent increase in 18-to-29-year-olds voting.

“For way too long, most people just assumed that the youth are not going to come out,” says Del. Kirill Reznik, 33, D-Montgomery County. “I think that’s being disproved now.”

And the technology of Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, text messaging and e-mail helps to attract supporters faster than ever.

“They are getting information about what their peers are thinking without even having to have a conversation about it,” says Don Engel, a physicist from Pikesville and president of the Baltimore County Young Democrats.

Obama: Fresh face, fresh ideas

For many young voters, Obama is their man.

Students see in Obama a fresh face, someone new and young who is not associated with a previous administration, says James Gimpel, a government and politics professor from the University of Maryland.

After chatting on her cell phone, April Grant, a junior at Loyola College, gushes about Obama.

“This is the most exciting election ever,” says the 20-year-old.

“Obama is all about rebuilding relationships with other countries.”

Hamza Kahn, 20, head of Students for Barack Obama at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, spent the weekend knocking on doors to entice voters.

“Hillary is viewed as divisive and a symbol of the old guard,” he says.

But Alex Benjamin, a 24-year-old Baltimore City teacher, is torn between Clinton and Obama.

“I’m just excited about the fact that we have both an African-American and a woman running,” she says as she walks to one of her graduate courses at the College of Notre Dame.

Two friends at Towson University take a break from their lacrosse game to share their reasons for voting for different men.

“I like that John McCain has friends from both sides of the aisle,” says Rich Sebastian, 19, a freshman business administration major.

Eric Franklin, 19, a freshman studying music education, hopes Obama’s promise to raise teachers’ salaries comes true.

Regardless of party, the contenders are finally taking young voters seriously, with Republican Mike Huckabee and Obama, a Democrat, leading rallies at the University of Maryland and Clinton making a stop at Bowie State University in the last few days. Clinton even dispatched her daughter, Chelsea, to visit College Park.

During his speech Saturday before a packed ballroom in the Stamp Student Union in College Park, Huckabee asks students to vote for him and to persuade their friends, too.

“You may be a student, but your vote counts just as much as the people on TV telling you how to vote,” Huckabee tells a crowd chanting, “We like Mike!”

The former Arkansas governor remains popular among young Christians.

As country music blares, Maryland freshman Nick Wagman, holding a Huckabee sign, says he’s attracted to the candidate’s anti-abortion, family-values platform.

“He’s a man of faith,” says Wagman, 18.

‘They can’t discount us any longer’

Several college students roll out of bed early Saturday to meet at a small office off York Road in Baltimore.

She has never canvassed before, but Andrea Nelson, 19, a freshman art history major at Hopkins, listens to Obama campaign organizers’ instructions on which addresses to visit.

“Getting up early is not exactly fun when you’re in college,” she concedes. “But we’ve really had some awful PR globally. Obama gives us a shot at looking better.”

Then she hops into a car, off to strangers’ houses to spread her excitement about the election.

In the time line of America, Nelson and her friends appear as one of the most politically active generations since 18-year-olds were given the right to vote three decades ago.

The children of baby boomers, they are the nation’s new idealistic conscience.

“We are not just the future,” says Jennifer Kramer, president of the Young Democrats of Maryland.

“We are here now, and they can’t discount us any longer.”

kvolkmann@baltimoreexaminer.com

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