House veterans: Youth can have ‘huge impact’ on election

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) and former Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) said young voters can have a “huge impact” on the 2024 presidential election, but politicians need to convince them its worth the effort amid an overwhelming barrage of news.

“My sense is that there’s a real opportunity for younger voters to have an incredible impact,” Roskam said at “Gen Z’s American Dream: Civic Engagement,” an event hosted by The Hill and A Starting Point that aired Tuesday on Hill TV.

“And I think it’s incumbent upon the candidates themselves once the shine wears off on a new face of a candidacy. It’s the responsibility of a campaign to reach out and to say, here’s why what I’m talking about matters.” 

The House veterans were speaking on a panel moderated by Hill reporter Mychael Schnell and A Starting Point co-founders Chris Evans and Mark Kassen. 

Krishnamoorthi and Roskam also discussed driving up youth engagement in politics, the need for decency in national political discourse, and political turbulence while fielding questions from students in the audience. 

Krishnamoorthi, who knocked on doors in Wisconsin last week for Vice President Harris, said he “can feel the enthusiasm” among youth voters and predicted this election might see a voter turnout above 70 percent. In 2020, there was 67 percent voter turnout. 

“I think there’s going to be a record turnout again,” Krishnamoorthi said. “It just feels like that kind of election year election again. As you know, 67 percent of registered voters voted in the last election in 2020, which was at the time a record. And this time, we might be pushing towards 70 [percent].” 

Roskam and Krishnamoorthi also discussed increasing political turbulence given the assassination attempt on former President Trump, President Biden dropping out of the 2024 race, and increasingly vitriolic political discourse. 

“I think … it can be overwhelming sometimes, particularly if you’ve been born within the last 20 years to say, wow, this is I’m completely freaking out,” Roskam said. “Our country has been through a lot of stuff. And are we in a time where there’s a lot of political turbulence? Of course we are. That’s self-evident, and it’s exacerbated by the pace at which we’re communicating.”

“I think we would be wise to step back and say, OK, we can handle this, and we can we can make a difference here. But to recognize it and to not be intimidated by it,” he said. 

Krishnamoorthi and Roskam added a group of politicians who are more interested in “going viral” have exacerbated political tensions. Krishnamoorthi also pointed to the media for covering “hand grenades, not handshakes.” 

“When I came to Washington, D.C., I did, and maybe Peter felt similarly, but I had to very quickly decide, do I want to be effective or do I want to go viral?” Krishnamoorthi said.

“I wish more of my colleagues would pursue that, because if they did, I think we’d see a little bit less of that divide,” he added.

Roskam called on attendees to change how they evaluate politicians. 

“There’s some grifters in Congress because there’s an audience for grift, and they’re not evaluated on accomplishment,” he said. “They’re evaluated on clicks and likes and all of those sort of social media, imprimatur of approval. And the question becomes, what do we expect of our leaders? And I think that that where you all can make a difference is to change the expectations.” 

Krishnamoorthi also highlighted the importance of building “personal” bipartisan relations by telling a story about going to the same gym as former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and how talking to him about their shared love for the Cubs helped him get a stalled bill on skills-based education passed. 

“So I said, ‘Paul, this is not getting a vote. What the hell is going on?’ And so he said, ‘OK, we’re not supposed to talk about this, but I’ll look into it.’ So he did, and he found out what the obstacle was. We corrected the language. It got a vote in the House and in the Senate. It got signed into law. And that all started by going to the gym,” he said.

“If there’s one takeaway for me, for you, for all of today, it’s to form relationships,” he said. “Identify your common humanity. Start from there and then talk about other stuff. Because if you can do that, then that will withstand the test of partisanship and the other stuff that happens in the atmosphere.”