A concerted effort is underway to get youth voters to the polls in 2024 and beyond. Florida Gen Z leader and organizer Jayden D’Onofrio will visit Pensacola this week to speak on the political power of young voters and discuss strategies for how to engage and organize them.
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"With a real statewide youth organizing program, I think anything is possible," declared D'Onofrio. “The biggest thing that we have to do is let youth lead youth, youth organize youth, because at the end of the day, who understands youth more than youth.”
Bridging that gap is at the core of what D’Onofrio, a 19-year-old college freshman, is trying to accomplish as chair of Voters of Tomorrow Florida and chair of the Florida Future Leaders Political Action Committee, which was launched in January.
“With Florida Future Leaders, the PAC represents the Florida high school Democrats and the Florida College Democrats. So we have chapters all across the state, and we're going to be making sure that we're engaging in every college and high school that we possibly can,” said D’Onofrio. “In our first month, since the rollout of our PAC, we raised over $100,000 in our first month, which is going to allow us to fund opportunities and, programs all across the state, no matter how deeply red certain areas are.”
This means youth organizers and outreach programs will also be coming to college campuses here in the politically conservative region of Northwest Florida.
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“While our pack is very Democrat-aligned and very partisan in nature, we just also, in all of our capacities, we want young people to turn out just generally,” he said. “That's really the most important thing at the end of the day.”
Reflective of that mission, plans call for the deployment of some unique strategies to put the spotlight on those issues that seem to resonate with youth voters across the political spectrum.
“And we're doing things in order to raise awareness around the right to being pro-choice being on the ballot,” he began. “We've purchased and are planning to distribute thousands of custom condoms on the college campuses to raise awareness around it. With the recreational marijuana amendment, we're purchasing thousands of rolling papers to raise awareness around the recreational marijuana ballot initiative, which is also going to be at the forefront of the minds of many young voters who are going to be voting this election.”
The affordability and cost of living crisis in also important to youth voters. Another issue, curbing gun violence, is of particular interest to D’Onofrio, who went to middle school just 15 minutes away from the 2018 tragedy at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School.
When it comes to the political power of Gen Z, D’Onofrio makes the case with the most recent election cycles beginning in 2018.
“Young people are turning out en masse, in battleground states like Georgia, states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and they're making the difference time and time again in these elections,” he stated, pointing out the increasing impact of the youth vote in non-presidential election years. “For example, we saw it in 2023 in Wisconsin, in a judicial race. Janet Protasiewicz, who was running for the state supreme court, won her race as a pro-choice candidate simply because of youth voter turnout in 2023, an off-cycle year.”
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A Tufts University study of the 2022 mid-term election, shows Michigan had the highest youth turnout in the country (37%), with Minnesota, Maine, Oregon, and Colorado also above 30%. Tennessee, West Virginia, Indiana, Alabama, and Oklahoma recorded the lowest youth turnout at or below 15%. The youth vote in Florida was just over 22%.
D’Onofrio believes there’s room for improvement in the state with some effort.
“In Florida, we haven't seen that youth involvement, we haven't seen that youth voter turnout and I think it goes back to just a lack of outreach from our political sphere here in the state,” he declared. “We have to make sure that young people are involved. We have to make sure that young people have a seat at the table. And we have to make sure that young people and the issues that matter to them are being heard at the state level."
And, while his biggest goal is to make sure young people turn out to vote, D’Onofrio is also focused on rebuilding the Democratic Party in Florida, which currently has a Republican governor, an all-Republican cabinet, and a super-majority Republican legislature.
“Look, the biggest thing for the state party has always been they've always said they want to build the bench,” D’Onofrio stated. “They want to make sure that we have candidates that are reflecting the views of their community. Well, this is what we're trying to do with our PAC, making sure young people turn out. We also want young people to be candidates themselves. We want to make sure we're arming them with the resources to be able to become candidates themselves. And that's building the bench, that's making sure that today's voters could be tomorrow's Democratic leaders.”
For now, D’Onofrio is hoping to see the power of the youth vote in action in Florida in 2024, not only in the Presidential race but in some state races as well.
“There're three districts that come to mind in particular, but one of them is Carlos Guillermo Smith's old district, which is House District 37,” said D’Onofrio, noting that Smith, a Democrat, lost his seat to a Republican in 2022. “In the last election cycle, he lost his district by about 2000 votes and there ended up being, over 10,000, voters aged between 18 to 29 years old who did not vote in that election. Two thousand voters could have made that difference.”
D’Onofrio will speak about the power of the youth vote and strategies for motivating and mobilizing them at a public event in Pensacola on Wednesday evening. Hosted by Emerald Coast Equality, the program will be held at 75 S. Tarragona Street from 6:30-7:30 p.m.
“So I implore anyone to come out, hear what needs to be done, and make sure that you're actively involved as much as possible,” he said.
