One is a democratic socialist and immigrant from New York City’s most diverse borough, a state lawmaker who inspired an army of volunteers and proved to be a social-media star. Another is a former C.I.A. officer from a purple state who offered outspoken criticism of efforts to pull her party to the left in Congress. A third is a suburban mother and former Navy helicopter pilot who presented herself as ready to run “toward the fight.”
As different as these politicians are, these winners of the three most important Democratic primary elections of 2025 have something important in common: For a party that is desperate for fresh leadership, they promise it.
In New York, a 33-year-old assemblyman from Queens, Zohran Mamdani, outpolled former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Tuesday to all but officially win the Democratic nomination for mayor. In Virginia, former Representative Abigail Spanberger, 45, cruised unopposed on June 17 to capture the party’s nomination for governor. And in New Jersey, Representative Mikie Sherrill, 53, defeated six prominent and well-funded candidates on June 10 to become the Democratic nominee for governor.
As Democrats grapple with how to rebuild a party demoralized after the victories by President Trump and Republicans last year, the results of the campaigns this month suggest a party reorienting itself not so much along ideological lines as toward a fundamental desire for generational change.
Democratic strategists, lawmakers and officials say their party’s voters are seeking leaders who were forged by the Trump era and can chart a path for their party in a political environment remade by the president.
“We no longer divide along progressive vs. moderate lines, I think that is very 2017,” Senator Elissa Slotkin, a moderate Democrat from Michigan, said on Thursday at an event hosted by the Center for American Progress, the party’s premier think tank. “The debate is how do you answer one single existential question: Is the second Trump administration an existential threat to democracy or is the second Trump administration bad but kind of like the first Trump administration — survivable, if we just wait it out?”
The fractures reach beyond the response to Mr. Trump into how the party should position itself on policy, tactics and messaging.
For months, younger Democrats have questioned the ability of their older leaders to effectively drive a message in a fractured media environment where legacy outlets like newspapers and broadcast networks are competing with podcasts and social media platforms like TikTok. They’ve pushed for bolder policies to address the economic pain of families struggling to afford basic necessities like child care, housing and groceries. And they’ve questioned long-held positions, like support for the state of Israel, asylum rules and government regulations around housing and energy.
All three candidates campaigned intensely on issues of economic affordability. And they devoted far less attention to the kinds of social issues — like abortion rights, criminal justice, climate change and transgender rights — that have animated divisions within the party’s primary contests in recent years.
“I don’t think it’s as much about age as it is about a recognition of the new reality that too many Americans face,” said Abdul El-Sayed, 40, a candidate for Senate in Michigan where three of his primary opponents are under 45. “There’s been a structural frame-shift in how hard it is to build a life in America. The shift in our economy hits youngest people harder and that empowers younger candidates to be able to speak to the realities that so many Americans face.”
But at least some of the appetite for new faces is fueled by the party’s electoral regrets. After an election where Democratic voters were repeatedly told to ignore their own concerns about President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s age and fitness for office, they’re no longer willing to accept candidates solely on the basis of seniority.
“We got the message that change is what people are looking for,” said Neera Tanden, Mr. Biden’s former domestic policy adviser who now runs the Center for American Progress. “A little late, but we got it.”
Mr. Mamdani’s stunning toppling of Mr. Cuomo, a thrice-elected governor and governor’s son who was appointed to his first position in government more than three decades ago, provided the clearest example of the diminished power of the old guard.
The endorsements of once-prominent older Democrats — former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, 83; former President Bill Clinton, 78; and Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, 84 — did little to bolster Mr. Cuomo, who resigned under pressure after sexual harassment allegations in 2021.
Unlike Mr. Mamdani, Ms. Spanberger and Ms. Sherrill are moderate women with national-security credentials who were elected to Congress in 2018, when Democrats won a wave of seats. They were both supported by top party donors and leaders.
Yet both women, who shared a Capitol Hill apartment while serving in Congress, have cast themselves as tough fighters, willing to take on Mr. Trump and their own party.
Ms. Spanberger attacked the Democratic left wing after nearly being defeated in 2020, suggesting that its talk of socialism and of defunding the police had cost the party seats. And on the campaign trail this spring, Ms. Sherrill argued that Democrats needed a “new playbook” to attack Mr. Trump.
“Democrats need to be willing to play hardball, disrupt norms and institutions, and put outcomes over process to make government work better,” she wrote in an opinion essay in April.
Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, who endorsed Mr. Mamdani on Wednesday for the November election, acknowledged that a hunger for generational change had played into his success. Still, he was not particularly concerned about his congressional seat, which he has held since Mr. Mamdani was a toddler.
“It doesn’t mean everybody should be younger,” said Mr. Nadler, 78, who was elected in 1992. “It’s a general desire.”
He isn’t the only older Democrat who is offering little indication of leaving his seat.
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, 74, has rebuffed calls to step down after enraging the party’s grass roots by moving to advance a Republican-backed spending bill in March. Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, the 88-year-old nonvoting delegate for Washington, D.C., has insisted she is running again — even as her staff repeatedly walks back her remarks. And Representative John Larson of Connecticut, 76, has given no hints of retiring after suffering a “complex partial seizure” that caused him to freeze and abruptly stop speaking on the House floor.
Efforts by younger Democrats to pressure their elders have fractured the party.
David Hogg, 25, became a lightning rod for criticism after he announced plans to spend millions of dollars on primaries to help bring generational change to the party while serving as a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee. He resigned in June, after members voted to make him run for his position again.
“There’s a bit more nuance than saying if you’re just old you need to be really scared right now,” Mr. Hogg said in an interview this week. “People are really tired of elected officials that they feel are incompetent and have been around a long time.”
Mr. Hogg and other activists say the victories this month will fuel an eagerness from younger Democrats to seize the car keys. Amanda Litman, who leads Run for Something, a progressive group that recruits younger and more diverse Democrats to seek local office, said she had received outreach from 1,100 new people since Mr. Mamdani’s triumph on Tuesday night.
Her group has registered more interest in the first six months of the second Trump administration than in the final three years of the first one, she said.
“The thing we have heard more so this time than in 2017 is, ‘I am done waiting my turn. I am not getting in the back of the line,’” she said. “They are unwilling to swallow the bad apple for the sake of democracy.”
Lisa Lerer is a national political reporter for The Times, based in New York. She has covered American politics for nearly two decades.
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