A changing of the guard in Gainesville and beyond

“Youth is wasted on the young,” George Bernard Shaw famously wrote.

He may have been right. But, really, by now we’ve left them with so little to build on that begrudging youth their years seems churlish.

Last year, on the heels on the Great Trump Triumph, I wrote a column apologizing to my millennial children for all the dirty tricks my generation has played on theirs.

We crushed millennials with college debt. Left them a job market where wage growth is non-existent and benefits a joke. Our Great Tax Swindle will take away their health care and  home ownership prospects.

Oh, and that nuclear warhead of a deficit we just launched: You’re welcome.

“They call us coastal elites,” my son, Andrew, once told me over dinner in San Francisco, where he works in the start-up world and pays usurious rent for the privilege. “But most of us are two paychecks away from being homeless.”

Happy New Year, millennials. But don’t dwell on the past. We’re just a hiccup away from 2018, and this may be your year.

Yours is now the largest generation in American history. You have the numbers, which means you have the power. If you have the will.

Run, millennials, run.

And not just for Congress. Run for the legislature, the city and county commission, and the school board.

Run as if your future depended on it.

Run For Something (www.runforsomething.net) is a progressive organization that, since Trump’s inauguration, has been recruiting under 40-somethings to run for office. About 15,000 potential candidates have signed up so far.

If there ever was a year set up to be a political game changer, this is surely it.

Assuming enough millennials take an interest, get involved, go to work and vote.

And run.

Up until now, they haven’t been so inclined.

“I won the Young Democrat Of The Year award in 2014, partly because there weren’t a lot of other young Democrats around,” recalls Bryan Eastman, co-founder of the Gainesville political consulting firm Everblue Communications.

Now, he said, “a lot of young people are deciding to run for office because of Donald Trump. We started our firm because of Donald Trump.”

As it turns out, Gainesville is fertile ground upon which to launch a young political career. Always had been.

Doyle Conner, the late, longtime Florida Agriculture Commissioner, was in his early 20s and still a University of Florida student in 1950 when he was elected to the Florida House.

Closer to home, Perry McGriff, Pegeen Hanrahan, David Coffey, Thomas Hawkins, Jeanna Mastrodicasa and, most recently, Adrian Hayes-Santos and David Arreola were all in their 20s or 30s when they were elected to the City Commission.

Few expected Arreola, 26, to come out of nowhere and beat an incumbent who seemingly had a lock on a reelection. But he did, mostly by running an energetic, knock-on-every-door campaign.

“Part of my inspiration was to set an example for other young people,” he said. “Not only to show that we can be the change we want to see, but also to show older generations that young people are ready to rise to the challenge.”

And he did. Some 85 percent of city voters were 45 or older when he ran, and more than 48 percent were 65 or older.

“He talked to voters about things that mattered to them, and I think they were excited to see a young, fresh face,” said Eastman.

It isn’t hard to imagine Gainesville on the cusp of a generational changing of the guard. “It goes beyond just politics,” Arreola said. “You are seeing younger people in Gainesville taking the lead in business, non-profits and government.

He adds, “I think politics is the great last undiscovered country for the millennial generation.”

After the dirty tricks my generation has played on his, I surely hope they discover it soon.

Ron Cunningham is former editorial page editor of The Sun.