Gen Z men, the pivotal swing voters under age 30 who helped elect President Trump in 2024, are supporting socialist candidates in shocking numbers. As many as eight members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) could be elected to Congress in three months.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has a sky-high approval rating of 58 percent, more than double his disapproval rating, after Gen Z voters elected him in a landslide last fall. None of the conservative criticisms of him have made a dent in his popularity.
Some Republican consultants hope the Democrats’ shift to socialism will make it easier for Republican candidates to win in the general election. But there is no sign of a significant migration of traditional Democrats or Independents to the Republican Party.
It would help if more voters understood what the DSA really stands for. Their platform includes abolishing the Presidency, Senate and the Supreme Court, while opening our borders and emptying our prisons.
DSA members seek to abolish corporations and impose government rent-controlled housing. They want a “single payer” government-run healthcare system, which would cause Canadian-style shortages, and vow to “finish Reconstruction” by imposing a race-based woke agenda.
But explaining the DSA platform to young voters has not deterred them from casting ballots for the socialists. Instead, Republicans need to recognize that many young Americans are in dire financial straits, and seek to alleviate that.
Annual college tuition and expenses can exceed $100,000 at private colleges, yet D.C. politicians continue to pump money into higher education while doing nothing to bring down this exorbitant cost. Likewise for healthcare, such that insurance premiums surpass even mortgage payments for many young couples.
The job of government is not to impose price controls, but to rein in inflation. Yet the cost of groceries has risen by 33 percent since 2019.
A new Texas Public Opinion Research poll on the Senate race in Texas, which Republicans must win to keep control of the upper chamber, shows Democrat James Talarico leading the Republican Ken Paxton by 45-40 percent. By far the top issue for voters there is affordability and the cost of living, about which Gen Z is particularly distressed.
Mayor Mamdani’s approach to this problem is doomed to fail, as happened in Chicago, where seven publicly subsidized Save A Lot stores are closing. Undeterred by this lesson, Mamdani promised that five city-operated grocery stores will sell a core basket of food at 30 percent less than privately owned stores, at prices fixed for an entire month to prevent the current sticker shock of many unexpected increases.
Mamdani’s first city-owned grocery store won’t open until next year in the Bronx, and the second one will not welcome shoppers until 2029, so this initiative is mostly symbolic. But to his credit, his stores will not sell lottery tickets, or alcohol and cigarettes.
The liberal Chicago Tribune, which supported the publicly funded scheme to address so-called “food deserts,” admits that “city-owned grocery stores … are not the answer.” Meanwhile, the German-owned Aldi chain, which somehow manages to sell a broad range of fresh foods and groceries at prices that average 30% less than other chains, recently announced a massive expansion with a target of 3,200 stores across the U.S.
But Republican officials have been creating an impression of pandering to oligarchs rather than making life more affordable for young people. Only 20 percent of Gen Z own stock outside of a retirement plan, and yet national policy seems devoted to what is good for the stock market rather than for the struggling consumer.
The Wall Street Journal recently published the best responses on this issue by members of Gen Z at college, and observations included the fact that wages have not kept pace with inflation since 2009. Rent eats up 40 percent of income, while medical debt is steep.
The debt that Gen Z men are incurring due to the growing addiction to gambling is staggering, too. Americans, mostly young men, are spending twice as much money on sports gambling now than they do on books, music, movies, and museums combined.
Congress held another ineffective hearing on the sports gambling crisis last week, again failing to make progress on this issue. Meanwhile, gambling interests are suddenly pouring many millions of dollars into elections, such that many politicians are afraid to stand up against them.
Enter the socialists with their promises to protect and help Gen Z, by improving affordability, ending the oligarchy, and stopping predatory business practices. Sometimes the socialists deregulate, as Mamdani recently did for small businesses in New York City by terminating duplicative licensing requirements.
There is still time for Republicans to announce a new “Contract with America” that was so successful in the 1994 midterm election that it became a GOP landslide. The agenda should start with what would be good for Gen Z, the key voting bloc that should not be ignored any longer by the Republican Party.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.
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