It’s hot election summer — at least according to young Democrats who are organizing behind youthful and progressive candidates in a series of off-year, summertime primaries.
First was Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old state legislator who won New York’s Democratic mayoral primary over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Now, a special election for a vacant congressional seat in southern Arizona is grabbing attention in part because of a young Democrat’s campaign.
After Rep. Raúl Grijalva died in March at 77, Deja Foxx, 25, is gaining ground in the special Democratic primary in Arizona’s 7th District, running on a message of generational change and hoping to leverage support from her almost 400,000 TikTok followers and 240,000 Instagram followers to win. But she doesn’t have a clear path against former Pima County Supervisor Adelita Grijalva, the late congressman’s daughter, and former state Rep. Daniel Hernandez.
Grijalva, in particular, with her endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., doesn’t give Foxx the same ideological opening that Mamdani exploited in New York. Not only did Grijalva’s father serve the district in Congress for over 20 years, but Hernandez also has siblings who serve in the state House.
Still, the race has become part of a broader nationwide conversation among Democrats about the ages of their party’s elected leaders and the desire for generational change.
‘We need to give young people real leadership’
In an interview last week, Foxx acknowledged that her age has played a role in her campaign messaging and the support she has drawn from young people across the country.
“We have lost ground with young people as a party for the first time in decades … and it’s not enough to just put our members of Congress on TikTok, right, or brief them on the trends or put mini-mics in their face. We need to give young people real leadership,” Foxx said.
“It’s the thing that people in this party say in every stump speech. They say we need newer and younger leaders, a new generation of leadership — and yet, when an open seat comes up and newer and younger comes around with a decade of advocacy experience and progressive policies, we’ve seen people put their thumb on the scale and pick the more predictable option,” she added.
Age has been a selling point for Foxx with little daylight between her and Grijalva on the issues. Both identify as progressive, and Arizona’s 7th District is heavily Democratic. Whoever wins the Democratic primary Tuesday is likely to win September’s general special election to represent a stretch from Tucson south to the U.S.-Mexico border.
But Grijalva emphasized in an interview this month that experience should matter more than age, dismissing suggestions that she is too old for the job at 54 — which makes her younger than more than half the voting members in the House, according to analysis by the Pew Research Center.
“Respectfully, I’m not old,” she said.
“It’s frustrating to me how experience is being seen as a negative,” she said later in the interview, going on to add: “I’m a little surprised that in a Democratic primary, in a party that really should be working to inform people and not spread misinformation — that was not something that I was prepared for.”
Grijalva’s experience has paid off in the form of connections local and national. In addition to Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders, she has also racked up support from Arizona’s Democratic senators, Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly; former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her pro-gun control group, Giffords PAC; and EMILY’s List and the League of Conservation Voters.
“This race, the people that have decided to be supportive and endorse — those are endorsements that I have earned,” Grijalva said.
Foxx has won support from former Democratic National Committee vice chair David Hogg and his group pushing generational change in Democratic primaries, Leaders We Deserve. She didn’t directly address the national figures who have endorsed Grijalva, but she pointed to Grijalva’s late father’s longtime presence in Washington as a reason for the support.
“The 7th Congressional District is one of the youngest districts in Arizona. It’s also largely working-class,” Foxx said. “It’s fair to say that there’s people in this race who have advantages that people like us would never have.”
“I don’t think it’s unfair or even antagonistic to point out the advantages that one candidate might have over another in this race, especially inherited advantages,” she added.
Grijalva pushed back against Foxx’s criticisms, saying her position “is making it appear as if I’m part of some establishment, when the national Democratic Party has not helped me in this race.”
“We’re not like the Bushes or the Rockefellers,” she said. “I literally live on the south side of town and have lived there my whole life.”
Hernandez, 35, didn’t mention Grijalva by name but said he has been hearing from voters that they favor electing a new generation of leadership.
“Recently, people are talking more and more that they want a new type of leadership. What we saw that happened in New York was not necessarily an ideological fight but more so a generational and a fight around the establishment,” Hernandez said in an interview last week. “And I think there’s been a lot of concerns around, you know, ‘are the people who we’ve had in power, who have gotten us into this mess, the same ones that we trust to be able to get us out?’”
Hernandez, who has been the top fundraiser in the race, said the No. 1 issue he has heard about from voters in the district is affordability — one of the main points Mamdani seized on so effectively in his campaign in New York, with some of his supporters feeling other Democratic candidates weren’t focused enough on the issue.
“The biggest things that keep coming up are the same things that came up back in March when I launched my campaign, which was what are you going to do to try and lower cost of living, and what are you going to do to protect Medicare and Medicaid,” he said.
A debate over ‘experience’
Kyle Nitschke, 28, who runs the Arizona Students’ Association, an organization with a strong presence on college campuses throughout the state, said, “One big difference between the New York City race and this race is that Deja doesn’t have a Cuomo to go against and attack.” Nitschke noted Cuomo’s resignation as governor of New York in 2021 after having faced allegations of sexual harassment.
Nitschke believes Foxx’s description of Grijalva as an “establishment” figure isn’t resonating with young voters in the district. “I wish they were attacking each other a little less about not being progressives, because they’re both awesome, great progressive candidates,” Nitschke said.
Grijalva’s name has long carried the weight of her late father’s legacy, but it has been bolstered by her own experience in the state, including time on the Pima County Board of Supervisors and the Tucson Unified School District Governing Board.
“She is not seen as someone who is just carrying a name in name only. She’s seen as someone who’s acting in her father’s footsteps, as well,” said Dawn Penich, an Arizona Democratic political consultant.
Grijalva said, “My dad left huge shoes to fill, but I stand on my own two feet, and I have more than two decades of public service in Arizona, and that is not, that is not a politician, it’s a public servant.”
Foxx, less than half Grijalva’s age, has had a much shorter time in the political limelight. She was a vocal advocate for abortion rights in the 2024 presidential election cycle, when Arizonans approved an amendment enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution. She hosted community events with celebrities like Jodie Foster and Chrissy Teigen to spread awareness about the initiative, which introduced her to much of the state.
Now, Foxx has leaned heavily on social media to supercharge her campaign.
Nitschke said that “literally any time I’m scrolling through my Instagram stories,” he’ll see Foxx’s content.
Penich said Foxx’s strategy could pay dividends in future elections even if it doesn’t this year.
“The base that she’s building and the people she’s having that organic connection with are probably closer to her generation and her age group than where the majority of the voting population is,” she said.
“For all the folks, myself included, saying, ‘Deja is an impressive woman, but this is not her race, this is not her time’… she put herself on a lot of people’s radars, she has shown she can be a powerful presence,” she said.
“Sometimes you lose a race, but you’ve gained so much footing for the next thing you want to do.”
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