Brandon Paulin, who was elected mayor of Indian Head at 19, arrives in Washington DC to urge millennials to run for public office
Brandon Paulin gazed at the cameras, notebooks and laptops resting on knees among rows of seats at the National Press Club in Washington. Ive never been at a press conference before, the mayor said. Its a little bit different.
Paulin is not your typical career politician, used to fending off questions from reporters ravenous for a gaffe. When he took office last year, he was 19, the youngest mayor in Marylands history.
Last Tuesday, he came to the US capital to express support for a program that means to recruit millennials into races for public office.
I had tons of people telling me it couldnt be done, that I couldnt do it. But I did it. And at the end of the day, thats kind of what counts, Paulin said.
Im still doing it, he added. I think hopefully Ive changed a lot of those minds within my own community. Yes, outside my community, theyre going to say, Thats that young mayor guy, but they dont know what Im doing inside the community.
He was elected last May in the town of Indian Head, population roughly 4,000, after winning 239 votes, more than double the total of the incumbent mayor, Dennis Scheessele. His teenage friends helped him campaign under the slogan New vision, new way, knocking on doors and handing out pamphlets.
Paulin turned 20 last December still too young to legally drink and does the job part-time while studying. He shares an office with full-time council staff but works long hours, and believes he is already making an difference in Indian Head, home to a US naval base.
Ive tried to take the bull by the horns in terms of economic development within my town, he said. Weve rebuilt tons of parks and we have a balanced budget for the first time in many years. I think weve done a really good job at that.
Paulin appeared with Action for America, a new national political group funded by more than a hundred grassroots donors across the country. It has launched a bipartisan effort to recruit 100 members of the millennial generation to seek state and local office in the next two years, contending that political dysfunction in Washington should be subjected to out of the box thinking, and a shakeup of the system in a spirit similar to that of startups such as Uber or Airbnb, which have changed the business landscape.
Paulins favourite president, James Madison, was just 29 when elected to the Constitutional Convention, the group noted. Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence at 33. Alexander Hamilton was 34 when he held the position of treasury secretary. The youngest president was Theodore Roosevelt, a tender 42 when he assumed the office.
Its a point of seeing change in your community, Paulin said, citing Mahatma Gandhis maxim be the change you wish to see in the world.
Thats a quote I took to heart because I saw things stagnant or in decline within my community, he explained. I think thats similar throughout the nation, so I decided to do something about it.
Read more: www.theguardian.com