Key Points:

1. Deja Foxx running to be the first woman of Generation Z in Congress

2. Average age in AZ Senate is 57, while in the House it’s 51

3. Deaths have sparked national conversation about age in Congress

When Deja Foxx talks to voters in the 7th Congressional District, she starts her pitch to them the same way nearly every time.

“If elected, I would be the youngest member of the body, the first woman of our generation, Gen Z,” she told one voter on May 16.

Foxx is 25, just old enough to run for Congress. If she succeeds in a July 15 primary for the seat in southern Arizona, she would be one of the only members of Generation Z representing the state at any level of government.

As members of Gen Z continue to come of age, they are left out of most areas of Arizona politics. Meanwhile Baby Boomers, Generation X and Millennials dominate the state Legislature, statewide offices and congressional seats. According to the Pew Research Center, Gen Z is the generation of people born between 1997 and 2012. Members of Gen Z are currently between 13 and 28 years old.

Those under the age of 30 running for office in the state often face an uphill battle due to opposition from party leaders, low salaries for lawmakers, the cost of campaigning and negative attacks from opponents. 

State statute requires those running for legislative and statewide offices to be at least 25 years old, so many members of Gen Z still are still too young to run for office. But some, like Foxx, will reach that age this year or next, making them eligible to run in 2026. 

“We have to do more than just say we want newer and younger leaders,” Foxx said. “We have to invest in them, and there’s an opportunity here in southern Arizona to meet that moment, to be the first referendum on 2024 and lead 2026 with a strong message to young people all across this country that their voice matters and that they have electeds in their corner.”

Age of Arizona politicians

At a time when politicians — Democrats especially — are dying in office, Foxx says the conversation around age is far overdue.

“Age is a defining factor in our political system, like it or not, it just is,” Foxx said. “This seat has opened up because somebody passed away while in office.”

U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., died in March at age 77 after a battle with cancer. He was the eighth member of Congress to die in office since 2022 and the third House Democrat to pass away in 2025, according to Business Insider. 

Those deaths have sparked a larger national conversation about the need for younger representation in Congress. The rest of Arizona’s congressional delegation is relatively young, with U.S. Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, both Republicans, tied for the oldest at age 66, while U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari, a Democrat, was the youngest at age 33. 

At the state Capitol, all of Arizona’s statewide elected officials are above the age of 50. Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne is by far the oldest, at 80, while Gov. Katie Hobbs, Attorney General Kris Mayes, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, Treasurer Kimberly Yee and Mine Inspector Paul Marsh are all in their 50s. 

In the Legislature, lawmakers have a much larger age range. Democratic Rep. Anna Abeytia is the youngest member in the House, at age 29, and Democratic Sen. Flavio Bravo claims that title in the Senate, at age 31. 

But still, based on the Pew Center’s definition of Gen Z, there isn’t a single person representing that generation in any legislative or statewide office. And the average age for legislators skews far older.

In the Senate, the average age is 57, while the House’s average age is slightly lower at 51. A few lawmakers are older than 80, including Democratic Sen. Lela Alston and Republican Rep. Gail Griffin, which pulls the average age up. 

Republicans in state government have an average age of 57, while Democrats’ average age hovers around 50. 

Hurdles for young candidates

Sen. Analise Ortiz, D-Phoenix, is one of the Legislature’s younger members at age 32 and calls herself an “elder millennial.” She ran her first legislative campaign when she was 27 and said her age was often a hurdle she had to overcome when speaking with voters.

“When I first ran, I definitely experienced voters at the door who were taken aback by my age,” Ortiz said. “I had a lot of people say that they thought I was a high school student selling candy, and that’s why I was coming to their door.”

Ortiz said those issues did not stop when she was elected. She said she’s had to deal with pushback from her older colleagues in the Legislature since she first took office in 2023.

“I experience people that try to discredit me because of my age, and that’s something I’m used to,” Ortiz said. “I’ve had to experience that in a lot of different workplaces, and it’s challenging in this environment in the Legislature, but what has given me a lot of hope is all of the young people that have told me that they are so appreciative that I’m there at the table.”

Age can be an issue that impacts Gen Z candidates regardless of party affiliation; however, some of the struggles faced by younger candidates appear to be unique to the Democratic Party. Both Ortiz and Foxx spoke about the difficulty in getting support from the upper echelons of the state party and its leaders.

Ortiz said she has seen the state’s Democratic establishment be reluctant to hire young people as campaign managers or support their campaigns for chairmanships for local legislative districts. Foxx has seen top Democrats in Arizona — like U.S. Sens. Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly — endorse her competitor.

“When newer and younger comes around with 10 years of experience (running for) an open seat of a safer, bluer district, (electeds) put their thumb on the scale and make it even harder for somebody like me when we deserve a free, fair and exciting primary,” Foxx said.

That issue does not seem to impact young Republican candidates though. 

Ari Bradshaw, 26, ran for a House seat in Legislative District 2 in 2024, but ultimately lost to Democratic Rep. Stephanie Simacek. He said support for his campaign from the state GOP was easy to come by.

“I cannot be more grateful to the help I got from (House) Speaker (Steve) Montenegro, from (Arizona GOP Chair) Gina Swoboda,” Bradshaw said. “I remember Steve had said multiple times, ‘We need to get this guy in, he’s the future,’ and that meant so much.”

But Bradshaw said he did experience other hurdles that candidates like Ortiz and Foxx also mentioned. Both Bradshaw and Ortiz spoke about how low pay for lawmakers and busy campaign schedules create barriers to entry for Gen Z candidates. 

“I made less money in the two years I ran for office than I did in a quarter of the year that I did before,” Bradshaw said. “I own (a) business, and my own business took a big hit because I couldn’t focus on clients as much, as I was doing campaign work.”

He said he also felt like he went into his campaign a bit naive about how dirty state-level political campaigns can get. Bradshaw ran in one of the state’s swing legislative districts last year, making his race incredibly high stakes for both parties. 

“I was just so caught off guard by it, I wasn’t expecting any of that,” Bradshaw said. “And so I think that’s a hard thing, because young people go in bright eyed, thinking, ‘I can be the change I want to see.’”

The case for younger elected officials

Ortiz said she thinks it is time to have the age conversation at the state government level. Not because her older colleagues aren’t capable, but because they do not have the same experiences as younger candidates even if they share the same political views.

“There are many of us young people who feel like it is up to us to turn things around because the folks who’ve been in power for so long have not done a great job at delivering on the issues that our generation cares about most,” Ortiz said.

Foxx is hoping her campaign will help rewrite the script for Gen Z candidates who come after her, showing those currently in power that doing things the way they’ve always been done isn’t good enough anymore. 

“Some of them are wary or even a little bit frustrated that we’re able to skirt around some of their traditional gatekeeping, because we go straight to people, and we’re able to fundraise largely off of social and Substack, and are reaching voters that way,” Foxx said. “So, there are new tools that I think are a little bit outside of the reach of some of those establishment folks, and the way we’re using them is to go past having to ask for permission.”

And though Bradshaw lost his race in 2024, he said voters in LD2 can expect to see him on the ballot again next year. He hopes other Gen Z-ers also consider running for local or state office, especially if they feel like they’re struggling to make a difference.

“(Young people) feel like, ‘If I get involved, I can’t move the gears that I want to move in order to change the system,’” Bradshaw said. “What they have to understand is, you may not be able to move the gears all by yourself, but you can move them a little bit, or you can oil them up so that way a whole team can move them.”