- [Announcer] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

- Coming up next, the youth vote is one of the key demographic groups both parties are chasing this year, the silent generation and the boomers are becoming a smaller and smaller part of the electorate.

What do the next generations think about the issues and the Presidential campaign?

Whether it's the economy, abortion, preserving Democracy, or Taylor Swift, we'll discuss what's motivating young people on a special edition of "Florida This Week."

(bright music) Welcome back.

The decision by Joe Biden to drop out of the Presidential race and designate Kamala Harris as his successor has galvanized young people to vote in this November's election.

A poll by US News and the Generation Lab found that of 2,000 people ages 18 to 34 in battleground states, the number of respondents who said that they were very committed to supporting a Presidential candidate more than doubled from 14 to 30% after Biden suspended his campaign on July 21st.

Getting young people to the polls has been difficult in the past.

As a percentage, they tend to vote in smaller numbers than older generations.

Going back to the 1972 election, the percentage of people under 30 who voted rose above 50% only four times, when George McGovern ran in 1972, when Bill Clinton first ran in 1992, during Barack Obama's first try in 2008, and Joe Biden's win in 2020.

As the population ages, the Depression, World War II, and Baby Boomer generations are being replaced by younger people.

Generation X, the folks born from 1965 to 1980, and Millennials were born from 1981 through 1996.

Also Generation Z, those who were born from 1997 to 2012.

And for many of them, this will be the first Presidential election in which they are able to vote.

Still, the older you are, the more likely you are to vote in any election.

According to a Tufts University study during the last Presidential election, turnout by young people in Florida made up just about one in five voters.

That puts Florida in the middle of the pack with Minnesota and Michigan having the highest youth turnout as a percentage, and Tennessee having the lowest.

Also, the older you are, the more you tend to vote Republican.

And for younger people, the opposite is true.

Well joining us now on the panel this week, Brittany Jean is the President of the Tampa Bay Young Republicans.

Jonathon Chavez is President of the Hillsborough County Young Democrats.

Jake Hoffman is the Executive Director of the Tampa Bay Young Republicans.

Marley Price is a community activist, a member of the Democratic Socialists, and also a Democrat.

Grace Tabor is the President of the USF College Republicans.

Richie Floyd is a St. Petersburg City Councilman and a Democrat.

David Moscrip is Chair of the Hillsborough County Libertarian Party, and Bree Wallace is a nonprofit director and community activist, and also a Democrat.

Nice to see all of you.

And thank you for doing this program.

It's so important that you're here.

Let me see a show of hands.

How many people here are excited about this November's election and are gonna vote and excited about the Presidential candidates?

Raise your hand if you are.

Bree, you kind of were slow to do that.

Did I read that right?

- I mean, I wouldn't say I'm excited.

It's kind of our duty to vote and I'm happy to vote, but I don't think you have to be excited to vote.

- Not excited.

Why not?

- I mean, I just don't see excitement in voting.

Like it's just something you should do if you care about issues.

You don't have to be excited about who's running, but are they good is the thing behind it.

- Was anybody here attempted to vote for a third party candidate at all?

David?

- Yeah, I'm voting for Chase Oliver.

He's the Libertarian Presidential nominee.

And not just that, I think he is the best candidate in the race.

He's also the youngest candidate in the race, and I think that the excitement that we're seeing is due to there being a younger option that is not a Trump or a Biden this time around.

- And what makes him the better candidate?

- I believe that his policy more well reflects what younger voters wanna see.

He wants the government to take their hands out of our lives.

He wants to decentralize it and give that authority back to local communities, cities.

And he stands on social issues as far as it's your choice what you do with your body, it's your choice how you wanna live your life, as long as that doesn't interfere with somebody else's rights.

- I want to ask about endorsements.

We saw recently that Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris for President, but we've also seen other endorsements, Kid Rock, and we've seen Hulk Hogan and Oprah Winfrey have endorsed.

Does the Taylor Swift endorsement make any difference to you, and do these other endorsements make any difference to you?

And who would like to start on that question?

Yep?

- I think the Taylor Swift endorsement, it does not change who I am going to vote for.

I decided before her endorsement, and it's like my opinion has still not changed.

But I do think she does have a very young audience who are voting for the first time.

And I think that could motivate people to go to the polls.

And that's from like both sides, like Hulk Hogan, he also endorsed Trump.

And that could also bring out other people to the polls who might not before.

- Grace, have you heard from young people that are gonna sign up to vote because of the Taylor Swift endorsement?

- I've heard of people who, not specifically because of Taylor Swift, but because of more celebrities that are speaking out about politics, they look into it more and therefore like have more of a motivation to vote.

- For everybody else here, was the Taylor Swift endorsement a wash?

That is, it didn't make any difference to you either way.

Is that pretty much the way you feel?

It's kind of a wash, everybody says that?

- I think that if you're taking your cues from a celebrity to endorse a Presidential candidate, maybe just sit this one out.

- Let me ask about some issues, and I want to lay out some issues to you.

And I want to ask you, which of these is most important, most motivating to you as we go into this election?

And I'm thinking about both the national races, President, Congress, but also the local races too.

So here's the issues that I've come up with.

Tell me which of these is most important to you, the economy, abortion, preserving democracy, the cost of housing, freedom, climate change, the Gaza war, student debt relief, guns, and immigration.

Which of those is most important to you would you say?

Jonathon, you wanna go first?

- Yeah, sure.

I would definitely say it's the economy.

Ultimately the economy is kind of the buoy that allows our country to be able to deal with most of those other problems, especially when it comes to foreign policy.

Ultimately, even if we're on a much stronger macroeconomic footing than we were under the last presidency, we still are kind of struggling to overcome this economic anxiety that a lot of people have felt, whether it was due to inflation or just the general sense that home prices are going up.

It's just difficult to cover your needs, especially as a young person participating in the economy for the first time.

And again, even while the macroeconomy is doing good, until we start kind of focusing more on kind of the everyday needs, I think people are still going to be seeing economy as like the top issue.

- Jonathon, is the economy a winning issue for Democrats?

Because the Trump campaign is putting out a lot of ads saying the Democrats have hurt the economy.

- I think it can be a winning issue.

I think the approach that the Harris campaign is taking with this opportunity economy, kind of focusing on what I was just talking about, can turn it into a winning issue.

If we kind of continue to, when we're messaging on the economy, focus on the actual household specifically.

Joe Biden did great when we had Congress in terms of like the CHIPS act, all the infrastructure we did, in the macro scale, great, but we do need to focus more on households, and I think we're going in the right direction with that.

- Brittany, do you think the economy is a winning issue for the Democrats?

- I do not think it's a winning issue for the Democrats, just because we have the last three and a half years as a track record to see what they have done.

And it's been pushed down our throats that the economy is great, the economy is great, everyone's doing well.

Okay, well, as a young mother, I have so many friends who are just now having kids.

They can't afford childcare.

They can barely afford to buy fresh fruits and vegetables to feed their children.

And it's just something that we've seen over the last year and a half years, it hasn't gotten better.

We knew that while President Trump was in office, things were better, they felt better, the families felt more secure in their station.

And so I think that Donald Trump running with the economy as his number one issue is definitely going to be a winning message for him.

- Richie, what's your take on the economy?

- I think we focus a lot on the macro level, and normally my number one issue is the cost of living for people.

And that's what I work on most at City Hall.

But I think neither party right now is speaking exactly how I'd like to hear them sound about these issues.

The things that are most expensive in our lives are the cost of living around housing, healthcare, and there hasn't been a whole lot of substantive conversation specifically around healthcare right now.

And I think we need to get more focused on the issues.

There's just been a lot of personality and back and forth lately, and so I'm looking forward to us getting more into the weeds about policy.

But of course I'm in politics, so I think that way.

- I talked about the big issues, the economy, abortion, preserving democracy, cost of housing, freedom, climate change, Gaza war, student debt relief, guns, and immigration.

Does anybody think that one of those other issues is more important this election?

- Yeah, I think it's freedom.

I think the answer is always freedom.

I mean, coming out of 2020 with the pandemic and everything, I want an administration that's not gonna tell me I need to wear a mask and sit in my house and can't go to work and all those other things.

I haven't forgotten about that, and I think most of America hasn't forgotten about that.

- Freedom's the most important issue to you, Jake?

- It always is.

Is there gonna be 30, 40% capital gains tax on investments in this country, things like that, that are gonna prevent this country from growing and being free.

And we are the free state of Florida.

I wanna make America Florida.

I want everybody to do what we're doing down here.

- Well I agree that I think freedom is a really important thing this election season, but more so with women's right to like choose and abortion access.

And we are currently living under a six week ban, so I wouldn't really call that freedom, especially for women at least.

So maybe for men, yeah, they have freedom right now.

- So when I drive into the state of Florida and I see those signs at the border when I'm coming down 75 and they say, "Welcome to the free state of Florida," Governor DeSantis's slogan, when you hear that slogan that you're living in the free state of Florida, do you agree or do you disagree?

Brittany, you agree?

Why?

- I agree, yes.

I started law school in the middle of COVID and it was so nice to be able to be in person in class and not have to deal with all of these Zoom options and different things that were going on across the country.

And as a young mother, I already have one son.

I am 38 weeks pregnant right now.

This baby also has a right to life.

So it's a life, it's not just the mother.

When you make the decision to participate in sex, then there are consequences.

And I know that not everybody, there are exceptions and there are exceptions to the law, but every child deserves a life.

And so in the free state of Florida, this baby that is inside of me right now also has freedom.

- Bree, would you agree that we live in this free state of Florida?

- No, not at all.

I mean, abortion being number one, the exceptions are, they're not a thing.

They're very hard to get.

I work with people every day who are getting abortions who now have to go out of state.

People who, I mean, are in bad health.

It still can't be seen here because doctors are scared.

So we wouldn't call that freedom.

And just everything going on here right now, I mean, we have so many people who are unhoused, we have pretty much homelessness being illegal starting October.

I wouldn't call that free.

- Anybody else wanna weigh in on the free state of Florida, Richie?

- Yeah, I mean, first off, freedom means different things to different people.

And it's funny, conservatives think freedom means no taxes on their business.

They think it means I can do whatever I want to you and own as many guns as I want.

And they don't think it means though that you're free to live with a roof over your head, that you're free to have food on the table, that you're free to love who you love and take care of your body in your own way.

And I think that that's a big difference between what freedom means to different people.

And so I think that this is the conversation that's playing out in this election as two different versions of what freedom really is.

- Freedom is something that both Democrats and Republicans at the national level talk about.

And Grace, what do you think about freedom?

Do we live in the free state of Florida?

Which party better delivers freedom?

- I do believe that we do live in a free state of Florida.

We have many people coming in and moving into Florida because we are more free.

I was in high school when COVID hit.

We were like the first state kind of to be able to be able to go back in person school.

I was only online for one semester and I think the Governor and everyone involved that we were able to learn back in person and do things more freely.

- [Rob] Jonathon, what do you think?

- I think we're really far from being a free state.

And I think that's actually expressed very strongly politically.

If you're a duly elected state attorney, you are apparently not free to express yourself in Florida without being removed by the Governor.

If you are a duly elected city council or mayor, you're not free to make policy without being preempted by our Republicans in Tallahassee.

You are preventing them from kind of running their own localities.

If you are someone who just cares about voting rights, you're not free to go and help people sign up to vote without being harassed by the Governor's election task force.

So I'm 100% behind what has been said about the fact that our personal freedoms in Florida are very limited, especially with abortion, but we also can ignore the fact that politically, we are really moving towards disenfranchising voters with this kind of suppression.

- Let's talk about news sources for a little bit.

Are there news sources that you trust that you go to and you look at and you say, "I feel good that I've read this or I've watched this because I know that they're telling the truth.

And are there news sources that you don't trust because you think that they lie all the time?

And I wanna hear from everybody on this, news sources that you trust, and David, you want to go first?

- Sure, I would say there's no news sources that I would just blanket trust, but what I encourage everybody to do is look at what they're using as their reference.

Like if you're looking at a college paper or anything else, those blue hyperlinks are supposed to lead you to something that supports what that journalist is saying.

And a lot of times if you follow it, it may not support what they're saying.

So I tell everybody, it's not so much about the source.

I don't care if it's MSNBC or Fox or whoever.

Look at what they're using to support what they're saying.

- Marley, what news sources do you trust?

What don't you trust?

- As someone that doesn't have cable, I mostly use independent media, but I think all news is biased to some extent, obviously.

So it mostly boils down to having media literacy and being able to distinguish what to take from a story and what to not take away from it.

- What's the key to understanding media literacy?

I mean, David talked about go to the footnotes and check those out.

- Just knowing what drives the reporter or the news source in general, knowing what their motivation would be, things along those lines.

- [Rob] Jake, what about you?

What do you trust?

What don't you trust?

- I think that I speak for most young people when I say that we don't trust any media anymore, we don't have cable.

Most people I know have cut cable a long time ago, so they're not doing that.

They're not reading newspapers.

And we don't really trust any sources, that's probably left and right.

And so what I encourage people to do is believe their eyes and ears.

So if you see a video of something, you hear somebody say something, don't let the media try to pretend that something didn't happen or they try to twist it and turn it so it's something else.

And and I think that you young people understand, we grew up with the internet a lot more than older people did.

And we understand when we see something that looks fake or AI or this or that, like we know, okay, that's fake, that's a bad story.

And older generations don't necessarily have the same savviness online to be able to distinguish those things.

- Ray, what about you?

What do you trust?

What don't you trust?

- I mean, media is of course biased, all of them.

There's ones I enjoy more than others.

So like NPR, WSF, Washington, New York Times.

Like I enjoy those more than I would CNN or Fox, to say the least.

- Yeah.

Grace, Jake said that he doesn't read newspapers.

Do you read newspapers?

- No.

- Why not?

- It's just not something I'm in the habit of.

I like to look at what all the biases have to say.

I like to look at like more like far right media, far left media.

And I like to kind of like see what they both have to say and formulate my own opinion after exposing myself to all different ideas and conversations.

- Richie, your name's in the newspaper a lot.

Do you trust newspapers?

- Yeah, I do read the newspaper.

I think, like discussed before, media literacy is super important.

And I think a big part of that is understanding the motivations behind what's written and behind the editorial lines specifically.

One thing that I do is I make sure I'm well aware of who's funding the news, how they profit off of the news, and who's the ownership of the news.

And so like there are things that make me trust non-profits, independent journalism.

Things that make me not trust, which is like anything owned by Rupert Murdoch.

- Anybody else wanna weigh in on this question?

- I think local news is really important.

I love reading the newspaper.

It's one of the most like important things that we have in the community.

Someone to be able to shine a light on things that are happening.

- And what do you think about the disappearance of local news sources?

- It's really disappointing.

I do enjoy that there are more reporters that are turning to like grassroots movements to do like investigative journalism on their own.

I think that's inspiring.

- Yeah, and David, you wanna jump in?

- Yeah, I just wanna say I do enjoy local outlets the most because especially today, it's easy for somebody to try to do journalism the right way inexpensively.

And maybe they'll start out with a site and then it turns into a local paper.

But I think you need to treat every outlet with some form of skepticism because a lot of them are being bought up by large corporations and a lot of the, or not independent, but a lot of the journalists before, they would've been supported in investigating some of these stories more deeper, they've turned into just lazier and less expensive forms of getting their stories.

- So gun violence has been in the news a lot recently.

There was a terrible shooting in Georgia at a high school just a few days ago.

We know that a man was on the golf course where former President Trump was a few days ago, possibly aiming to kill President Trump.

What can be done about gun violence in our society?

Does anybody have a solution here about what to do?

- Well I think it first starts with mental health.

There is clearly a mental health crisis in the United States that we're not really seeing across the world.

It's really just here in the United States.

I'll never say that taking away somebody's guns is the answer, right?

Like, we have the Second Amendment for a reason, but we really need to look deeper and we need to look in, especially to the younger generation as to why so many people are on antidepressants.

Why are so many people on ADHD medication?

Like what is happening in our generation and in our country that is making mental health have this effect on everybody?

- Jonathon, what do you think about that answer?

- I think that's part of the answer, no doubt, we do have a lot of issues with mental health and especially for young people, many of whom are actually having dealt with the effects of a global pandemic, which really disrupted their education.

This is a big issue.

I do think it is only part of the answer though.

One of the biggest things we are missing, not just in the country, but particularly in Florida, is a much more robust gun registration regime, basically equivalent to that of automobiles where we just don't do a very good job tracking guns, making sure people have proper training and licensing to have the gun, to have the attachments for the gun.

Of course, we shouldn't be taking people's guns away that they have lawfully purchased, but we also need to be making sure that we're moving in the direction of having better background checks, having better screening, all sorts of things that for folks who are just trying to be a regular old gun owner, no problem, it just takes a little bit of time.

But things that would also prevent stuff like this gentleman who was attempting to assassinate Trump who came over here and with an out-of-state license, purchased this weapon very quickly and just went out to try to assassinate the former President.

- Grace, some people think that there should be a ban on semi-automatic weapons that can be transformed into automatic weapons pretty easily.

What do you think about those people that say there should be a ban on weapons like AK-47s?

- I am a firm believer of the Second Amendment.

I believe everyone has the right to bear arms, but I do agree that there should be more mental health screenings, more screenings that make it so there is more safety, like for who can purchase guns and more regulation, I think is important, but I do not believe in the ban of any firearms.

- Richie, what do you think about a ban on AK-47 type weapons?

- I mean, assault rifle ban, we had one in the past, we could have one again.

I think there's a lot of issues with being able to own a weapon of war essentially in your own home.

But what I really think is funny about this conversation is like you have the more conservative minded people here saying we need to invest in mental healthcare when conservatives have been in charge in this state for my entire life.

And we are one of the poorest funding mental health care states in the entire country.

So it's one thing out of my mouth, another thing actually is what I'm doing.

And I think that's what we see going on is that the conversation around mental health, while important, is also a distraction from the fact that the gun lobby owns and controls Tallahassee right now.

- So who's excited about the US Senate race between incumbent Senator Rick Scott and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, the Democrat?

Raise your hand if you're excited.

Okay, so Bree, why are you excited?

- I mean, I think it would be great to get Rick Scott out of office.

That's pretty much it, yeah.

- [Rob] Grace, you raise your hand?

- I'm excited, I'm actually interning for the Rick Scott campaign, so I'm like working with like more voter contact, so I'm excited to see like the effects of that and see the results.

- And Marley, what do you make of those polls that show that Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is not that far behind Rick Scott?

That even though he's the incumbent, she might be one to four percentage points behind, according to some polls.

- I think all polls should be taken with a grain of salt, but I also think since Rick Scott is one of the wealthiest people in the Senate, that that is something that should be targeted by all of the people in Florida to see people more like them in office versus somebody that is more like their boss.

- Jake, are you excited?

- I'm not excited because Rick Scott's gonna probably win by the largest margin he's ever won by.

I mean that's just the reality, these polls are not accurate.

They're not, and Rick Scott has had a lot of very close races in his state of Florida where he was Governor, all these other things.

This will probably be his largest margin of victory.

I mean, I don't think I'm worried.

And he campaigns like he's running for city council.

I mean, he is on the ground and he is out there, and the campaign, it gets all the credit in the world for how hard they work.

And you know what?

I want somebody who's extremely wealthy to be in charge of trillions and trillions of dollars and will probably endorse them to lead the Senate of the United States.

Not just be our senator, but be the head of the Senate.

- Let me ask you about a couple other issues that are on the ballot, recreational marijuana and abortion rights.

Do you think that these issues, raise your hand if you think these issues are gonna draw out more young people to vote in this November's election?

Almost all agreement, except for David.

You don't agree?

Why not?

- I think that these issues have been talked about so much, I was joking around with them about it.

It seems like some of these issues have just been ongoing for so long that it's easy to forget that they're on the ballot.

And I think when it comes to the recreational marijuana ballot initiative, I think there's a lot of questions that are left hanging in people's minds.

So yes, it legalizes marijuana, which as a libertarian, it's not a secret, we're for that.

But on the other side of that, I wanna know what the solution is for the state legislature.

How are they gonna be dealing with issues we've seen in other states like Colorado where Chinese-backed cartels have crept in there and they've increased human trafficking by bringing people into work at these underground places.

- So you think our legislature might mess it up if it passes?

- They don't have a great record with doing a good job with ballot initiatives after we vote for them as far as I can see that, can I just weigh in on the mental health thing real quick though too?

I think that both of these, as Richie was saying earlier, I think that both parties have kind of created this climate where we've got all of this violence and then they're like, "Oops, why is all of a sudden somebody shooting at the President?"

And so I do think mental health is a big issue, but I also think we've gotta put the responsibility where it goes is there's been this heated climate that they've created to divide Americans.

And that's what I would like to see addressed.

- We only have 10 seconds left, but who thinks that recreational marijuana and abortion rights will pass this November?

Most of the people- - I think that the recreational marijuana one is going to pass.

I don't know about the abortion one.

I think that one's a lot closer.

But I think that Donald Trump coming out in support of recreational marijuana is huge, and I think that changes the whole game.

- Thank you very much for being on this panel.

It's great to hear your opinions, and I really do appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right.

Well thanks to our guests, Brittany Jean, Jonathon Chavez, Jake Hoffman, Marley Price, Grace Tabor Richie Floyd, David Moscrip, and Bree Wallace.

Remember, the deadline to register to vote in this November's election is just a couple weeks away, October 7th.

It's easy.

You can do it online using your county election supervisor's website.

If you have comments about this program, please send them to ftwwedu.org.

Our show is now available as a podcast.

From all of us at WEDU, have a great weekend.