'We're not going to wait our turn:' What Democrats can glean from new Ohio millennial mayors
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Shammas Malik, 32, says that Akron voters could have viewed his age as a weakness.
But in electing him mayor earlier this month, they agreed with him that it actually was a strength.
“Often it was older people who said, we do need younger ideas and fresh ideas and generational perspective,” Malik said in an interview.
Malik, city councilman with a Harvard law degree, won Akron’s Democratic primary earlier this month. He defeated a more conservative, older Democratic candidate, Marco Sommerfield, and others, running away with a decisive 42% of the vote in a seven-candidate race that had polled more like a three-way tie.
Since no general election candidate qualified for the ballot, Malik now is in line to be the city’s next mayor. When he enters office next year, he will be the youngest person and the only person of color ever to hold the office, according to local media. He will replace Dan Horrigan, who last decided not to seek a third four-year term.
Malik is just the latest millennial person of color to get elected mayor of a big Ohio city. In 2021, voters elected Justin Bibb, 34, in Cleveland and Aftab Pureval, 40, in Cincinnati.
https://www.cleveland.com/news/2023/05/were-not-going-to-wait-our-turn-what-democrats-can-glean-from-new-ohio-millennial-mayors.html
