(Photo from FrostForCongress.com)
ORLANDO | Maxwell Alejandro Frost became the person who will most likely serve in Congress representing Florida’s 10th District after he won the Democratic primary Aug. 23. While he will face Republican Calvin Wimbish in the general election, District 10 — previously held by current U.S. Senate candidate Val Demings — is a fairly progressive district that is favored to go to the 25-year-old Democrat when voters head to the polls Nov. 8.
Barring an upset, when Frost is elected he will become the youngest member of the House and will be the first member of Generation Z to serve in the Congress.
“When I was first deciding to run, that had nothing to do with why I wanted to run,” Frost says. “I wanted to run because I believe in a better future where everybody has what they need. I believe in these progressive values, that’s why I wanted to run. But I do think that it is an important part of the story, the fact that I will be the first member of my generation and I will be the youngest member of Congress next year. I believe that we need younger people in government. I believe we need a government that looks like the country.”
Frost, who would also be the only Afro-Cuban member of Congress if elected, was born and raised in Central Florida. He attended Osceola County School for the Arts for seven years where he played jazz drums, then started to get involved in politics after the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut that killed 26 people, mostly children.
“Ten years ago, I made the decision to dedicate myself to fighting for a world where no one has to feel the pain of losing someone due to gun violence,” Frost says. “What I’ve learned as I continue doing that work, is that type of pain — that avoidable pain — exist in many different issues.”
Frost says while he has been active as a political organizer and an activist for years, running for political office never appealed to him.
“I was actually asked by some organizers that I had been arrested with during the Black Lives Matter uprising to run for Val Demings’ seat, and the first thing I said was ‘hell no,” Frost says, laughing now. “But little by little I talked to people in the community and people were excited about having a young voice in Congress. But what ultimately changed everything for me was connecting with my biological mother.”
Frost, who had been adopted at birth, says he learned a lot from speaking with his birth mother about the situation she was in when she put him up for adoption.
“I was learning that she had me at the most vulnerable point in her life, I was learning she didn’t have health care, just learning about her life and the fact that my organizing has always been about seeing the world through the eyes of the most vulnerable, I hung up that phone and said ‘I have to run,’” he says. “So I’m running for people like my biological mother. For people like my mother, who came here from Cuba in the 1960s; my dad, who is a self-employed musician; my sister, who is an artist here locally and my community and the world I believe in.”
Frost has been endorsed by more than two dozen organizations including the Florida LGBTQ+ Democratic Caucus, Congressional Progressive Caucus, BOLD Democrats, Voters of Tomorrow, several groups dedicated to gun control and more. He has also been endorsed by dozens of elected officials and community leaders, both local — such as state Reps. Anna V. Eskamani and Carlos Guillermo Smith — and national — including Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, Dolores Huerta and Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Frost hopes that his historical run for Congress will inspire other people of his generation to get involved, whether it be in politics, activism or whatever avenue they think they can do the most good.
“Now I’m not one of these people who says we need to clear house and put only young people in,” Frost says. “I think it’s important that we have different perspectives, people who come from different parts of the country who have been through different experiences. But I come from the generation that has been through more shooting drills in school than fire drills. I come from the generation where the leading cause of death is gun violence. So I come to this issue with a certain urgency, all these issues with an urgency, because this turmoil is all we’ve ever known and I think that is a valid experience and I think we need more from my generation, not just in Congress, but in state and local government, business leaders, media, clergy; we need to be in every facet of society.”
Frost says he plans to go to Washington to address all of the urgent issues that are plaguing not just his generation but all generations here in Florida, but adds that one of the top issues he hopes to tackle is the country’s gun violence epidemic.
“For me, obviously as a survivor of gun violence myself and as gun violence has ravaged our community, that’s an issue that is in my top three,” he says. “It is something I want to be a vocal advocate for, talking about how do we end gun violence, ensuring we don’t get guns into the wrong hands, but also how do we create a world where people don’t feel the need to use a gun to solve their problems in the first place. I think there are so many different aspects to it that are not really spoken about.”
Other areas Frost says are urgent to address are protecting democracy and climate change.
On protecting democracy, Frost says ““This is something that has so many other issues that are a part of it. When we talk about ‘protecting our democracy,’ we’re talking about things like securing voting rights, things like getting rid of the filibuster, voting reform to ensure that voting is, yes it’s a right, but that it’s an accessible right. There are certain parts of this country where it’s easier to buy a gun than it is to vote for certain communities, so I want to make sure that voting is one of the easiest things we ever do. We need to ensure that are election process is not hindered due to big money and dark money. I believe in getting money out of politics and I believe in publicly funded elections. These are all things that are North Stars for me, that are all related to protecting our democracy and voting and making sure that everyone gets to do it.”
“We just had one of the worst hurricanes hit us recently,” he says. “We have such a need for climate friendly infrastructure because a lot of our vulnerable communities are still under water right now. They’ve lost everything that they own. There are two aspects of this. There’s one that everyone likes to talk about: resiliency and taking care of people now, which is important and we need to. But we also need to talk about how we are going to prevent this from happening again with good climate infrastructure. I’m not saying we are causing the hurricanes but signs show that we are contributing to their horrible effects. The climate crisis is something that is so important to me.”
To learn more about Maxwell Alejandro Frost and his campaign, go to FrostForCongress.com.
