Here are 14 young Democrats to watch

By Frank Bruni

Thursday, June 30, 2016 | 3:39 p.m.

One of the great myths of the 2016 presidential primaries was that Republicans had an uncommonly dazzling breadth and depth of young contenders. If that’s so, why is their presumptive nominee 70-year-old Donald Trump?

A related canard was that the showdown between Hillary Clinton, 68, and Bernie Sanders, 74, underscored how little youthful energy the Democratic Party possessed.

If that’s so, why was the following list so easy to pull together?

I combed the party’s ranks, questioned some of its leaders and quickly assembled the names of dozens of promising, buzzed-about Democratic politicians no older than 45, a cutoff I chose because that’s the age of Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, the two young Republican comers who made credible runs at the White House this year.

I’m showcasing these young politicians because they in particular are generating a noteworthy degree of excitement, have intriguing backgrounds or are well-positioned for more prominent roles. And because they caught my eye.

I bet that you’ll see at least a few of them onstage in Philadelphia when the party holds its convention there this month. They’ll undoubtedly be joined by youngsters not on this list, which is necessarily subjective and incomplete.

Stacey Abrams, Democratic minority leader, Georgia House of Representatives

How many tax attorneys also write romance novels under a nom de plume? I’m guessing Abrams, 42, is the only one.

I know she’s the first woman to lead either party in either chamber of her state’s legislature. And she’s the first black person to lead either party in the House.

She has collected a bevy of citations from an array of organizations and publications as a state lawmaker of extraordinary distinction, and she has a reputation — irksome to some Democrats, inspiring to others — for reaching across party lines.

She also has an uplifting life story, having at one point lived on food stamps during her childhood. She attended Spelman College in Atlanta and got a law degree at Yale.

The question is how broad a path to higher office the state of Georgia affords Democrats, and how many other Democrats, including Mayor Kasim Reed of Atlanta, are crowding it.

Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind.

He was elected to lead his state’s fourth-largest city, with a population of about 100,000, when he was 29, winning about 75 percent of the vote in 2011.

Some five months before his re-election in 2015, he disclosed that he’s gay. He was returned to office with roughly 80 percent of the vote.

A former Rhodes Scholar, he has worked as a consultant for McKinsey, plays piano well enough to have performed with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra and did a seven-month tour of duty in Afghanistan with the Navy Reserve.

And he’s a poised public speaker with clear ideas about how the Democratic Party moves forward. Buttigieg, 34, told me in a recent interview that it must stop participating “in the fiction that if we just turn back the clock and get rid of trade, everybody can get their manufacturing jobs back. There are a lot of people who think they lost their jobs because of globalization when they actually lost their jobs because of technology.”

Julián Castro, U.S. secretary of housing and urban development

Validation doesn’t come any clearer and bolder than his presence on just about every short list by anyone making predictions about Hillary Clinton’s running mate. He’d be the first Hispanic American on a Democratic or Republican presidential ticket.

His age, 41, is one of the marks against him, but he has been in the national spotlight for some time now. He was elected mayor of San Antonio in 2009 and was chosen in 2012 to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic convention in Charlotte, N.C.

The housing assignment forced him to step down as mayor after five years, and it clearly won’t be the last of his high-profile political jobs, even though he has endured the wrath of progressives for the department’s abetting of the sale of foreclosed homes to Wall Street firms at big discounts: something that began before his arrival.

He has an identical twin, Joaquín, a congressman from Texas who is also thought to have a big future but is slightly overshadowed by his brother.

Tulsi Gabbard, U.S. representative, Hawaii

More than a few of her colleagues on Capitol Hill will cringe at seeing her on this list because they regard Gabbard, 35, as someone whose balance of self-promotion to actual contribution is out of whack.

But she has undeniably made a name for herself since she entered Congress in 2013, in part by choosing some prudent battles. As a vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, she publicly took on its chairwoman over the initial paucity of presidential debates during this election cycle. Her complaints simultaneously grabbed headlines and drew attention to a legitimate problem.

She resigned from the DNC as she endorsed Sanders, and she quickly became one of his most vocal and visible supporters in Congress, a distinction that could serve her well if the party is indeed moving to the left.

Other distinctions: She did one 12-month tour of duty in Iraq with the Hawaii Army National Guard in 2004 and 2005, and another in Kuwait in 2008 and 2009. And she’s the first Hindu in Congress.

Eric Garcetti, mayor of Los Angeles

On the Sunday of the recent massacre in Orlando, Fla., I listened to many political leaders address what happened. None was more succinctly eloquent than Garcetti.

When he’s good, he’s good, and there’s plenty interesting about him to boot. Garcetti, 45, is the first elected Jewish mayor of Los Angeles. He has Mexican ancestry and identifies as partly Hispanic. He’s a Rhodes scholar who married a fellow Rhodes scholar; the two have been foster parents to more than half a dozen children. And he taught at Occidental College and the University of Southern California before entering politics.

For five of his 12 years on the Los Angeles City Council, he was its president, a post he relinquished to campaign for mayor.

Detractors find him more cerebral than dynamic, with a shortfall of ambitious initiatives for the city. But he has a playful side, manifest in appearances as the fictional mayor of Los Angeles on the cable TV dramas “The Closer” and “Major Crimes,” even before he held that post in real life.

Andrew Gillum, mayor, Tallahassee, Fla.

The son of a construction worker and a school bus driver, he stood out enough at high school in Gainesville, Florida, that the local paper named him one of its Gainesville Persons of the Year.

He stood out enough at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University to be voted the president of its Student Government Association and to be named the first student member of the university’s board of trustees.

In 2003, when he was 23, he was elected to the Tallahassee City Commission, becoming the youngest person ever to serve in that governing body.

Now 36, he has been the mayor of Tallahassee, a city of more than 180,000 people, since November 2014. During the current presidential campaign, he has been vocal and ardent about putting Florida in the win column for Clinton in 2016, and his efforts along those lines are giving him state and national political contacts that could come in very handy.

Hakeem Jeffries, U.S. representative, New York

There was extensive talk last year among New Yorkers disenchanted with Mayor Bill de Blasio that Jeffries should step up and challenge him in a 2017 Democratic mayoral primary — and could well prevail.

That now looks unlikely. But the chatter underscored the widespread confidence in his appeal and belief that the House isn’t his final political destination.

Jeffries, 45, serves as the whip for the Congressional Black Caucus. His district, which combines parts of Queens and Brooklyn, is overwhelmingly minority, and he has spoken out with particular force and frequency about police misconduct and abuses of power.

But his positions and his alliances don’t fit tidily into any one box. He has close ties to, and has raised significant sums from, wealthy New Yorkers. He has clashed with de Blasio and other progressives over education reform. And his law career before he went into politics included work for several large corporations.

Mike Johnston, state senator, Colorado

He has a national profile much larger than state lawmakers usually have, emerging as one of the most authoritative and impassioned advocates of such education reforms as less binding tenure protections.

His focus on education is rooted in his biography. His mother was a public-school teacher, as were both of her parents. In between college and graduate school, he worked with Teach for America in Mississippi, and wrote a well-regarded 2002 book about that experience, “In the Deep Heart’s Core.”

Johnston, 41, spent six years as a principal in public schools in the Denver area, including one whose practices drew enough positive attention that Obama gave a major education speech there during his 2008 presidential campaign.

Married to a prosecutor, he has also demonstrated a strong interest in criminal justice reform. His second and final term in the state Senate ends in January, and he’s mentioned frequently as a possible successor to Gov. John Hickenlooper.

Joseph Kennedy III, U.S. representative, Massachusetts

There’s something about the Bay State right now: It’s a mother lode of political talent. This list wouldn’t be complete without Kennedy, 35, who entered Congress in early 2013, in the seat previously occupied by Barney Frank.

If Jeb Bush’s early demise in the 2016 primaries doesn’t signal a spent appetite for dynasties, then Kennedy — the son of a congressman and the grandson of Bobby Kennedy — could be going places. Democrat after Democrat told me he’s the real deal, industrious and intelligent, with as much raw talent as pedigree.

He studied engineering at Stanford, where he roomed with Jason Collins, who would later be the first active pro basketball player to come out as gay. He then served two years in the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic — he speaks fluent Spanish — before attending Harvard Law. His political career was preceded by work as a prosecutor.

Seth Moulton, U.S. representative, Massachusetts

He majored in physics at Harvard, gave one of the student addresses at his graduation, then joined the Marines and interspersed four tours of duty in Iraq with the successful pursuit of graduate degrees in business and public administration at Harvard.

All the while, he built a public profile with interviews with major news organizations about his Iraq experience. Moulton, 37, is deft with the media and unhesitant to speak out: In less than two years in Congress, he has attracted attention with comments likening Donald Trump to Hitler, questioning Obama’s strategy in the Middle East and chiding his state’s enormously popular Republican governor, Charlie Baker, for a reluctance to accept Syrian refugees.

For good measure he made last year’s list of the 50 most beautiful people in Washington politics, put together by the legislative publication The Hill.

Patrick Murphy, U.S. representative, Florida

Even before the Pulse nightclub shooting, he was the focus of much attention and the vessel of many Democratic hopes because he’s the likely Democratic nominee for Rubio’s Senate seat, which Democrats believe they can flip into their column as they try to recapture the Senate majority.

With the news that Rubio would in fact seek re-election, that Florida fight is likely to be even more expensive, acrimonious and breathlessly chronicled.

Victory would make Murphy a major national star, and it would send him to the Senate — from the most populous of the country’s truly purple states — at just 33. The youngest senator currently is Tom Cotton, 39, an Arkansas Republican. The youngest Democrat in the Senate is Chris Murphy, 42, of Connecticut (no relation).

Patrick Murphy’s professional history and legislative record aren’t wildly impressive, but his talent for winning, demonstrated by his 2012 election and 2014 re-election in a district that’s more Republican than Democratic, warrants note.

Ayanna Pressley, member, Boston City Council

Last year, political action committee Emily’s List honored Pressley, 42, with a rising star award, and her terrific acceptance speech charmed and moved those who heard it, significantly raising her profile.

It paid tribute to political trailblazers Shirley Chisholm and Barbara Jordan and to poet Audre Lorde, but most of all to Pressley’s mother, whose voice, Pressley said, “told a black girl growing up on a tough block in Chicago that she had a right to a life of her own choosing.”

“It was a voice of comfort for a little girl whose father was stolen away by addiction and incarceration,” she continued. And that voice, she added, still “comes to me when the walls close in, when the critics are loudest, when the doubts are greatest.”

Pressley’s successful campaign in 2009 made her the first woman of color ever elected to the council, where she has been a voice for women, minorities and progressive politics. She previously worked as the political director for John Kerry when he was in the Senate.

Gina Raimondo, governor, Rhode Island

The state she took command of in early 2015 was more economically troubled than most, and her most recent approval ratings from worried Rhode Islanders have been low, casting doubt on her political future.

But that could turn around, and it’s impossible to ignore her status as the youngest Democratic governor in the country and second-youngest overall, behind another woman, Nikki Haley, the South Carolina Republican.

It’s also impossible to ignore Raimondo’s energy, intensity and unusual breadth of knowledge. She has separate graduate degrees in sociology and law. She has clerked for a federal judge. She has worked extensively in venture capital.

Both as Rhode Island’s treasurer and now its governor, Raimondo, 45, has shown a willingness to cross interest groups that other Democrats don’t, and her pro-business bent places her to the right of some in her party. Her arc depends on the party’s trajectory.

Fun additional fact: She, Garcetti, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana were all Rhodes scholars at the same time.

Michelle Wu, president, Boston City Council

Her parents immigrated to the Chicago area from Taiwan; she has said that her mother learned English by watching Oprah Winfrey on TV.

She excelled in school, winning accolades and admission to Harvard. But shortly after graduating, she had to quit her consulting job in Boston and return to Chicago to help care for her mother, who was ill, and her younger sisters. “Everyone has had to make sacrifices for family,” she later told The Boston Globe, “and everyone has had to put aside what they were on track for to think about the people around them.”

While back in Chicago she opened her own tea shop. Then, so that she could attend Harvard Law, she moved her siblings and her mother to the Boston area with her.

One of her law school professors was Elizabeth Warren, whose Senate campaign Wu later worked on.

She’s the first Asian-American woman on the Boston City Council and its youngest current member, at just 31.

Frank Bruni is a columnist for The New York Times.