Young Wisconsin Republicans at RNC say they’re ready to lead next generation of GOP

Dixon Wolfe of Green Bay got interested in politics nine years ago at the ripe old age of 14.

“I was super passionate about Trump, and I used to watch Megyn Kelly on Fox all the time,” Wolfe recalled while waiting for a shuttle to take him to the grounds of the Republican National Convention Tuesday. “I was a political nerd and ended up getting involved in August of last year, wanting to make a difference.”

Wolfe, 22, is now a Brown County Board supervisor, a member of the county Republican Party’s executive committee and a delegate to the Republican National Convention, who had a hand in nominating former President Donald Trump in hopes of leading the party to victory in November.

He’s hardly the only young activist to find his way into politics, but it’s a story that’s becoming increasingly common among Republicans.

One week before the RNC, data buried within the Pew Research Center’s sprawling National Public Opinion Reference Survey was catching the attention of polling and political experts. In essence, the data show younger Americans, specifically those between 18 and 29, were leaning more Republican than Democratic, a break from past trends. 

A social media post from Harvard University Associate Political Science Professor Matt Blackwell said Pew’s raw data showed Republicans leading Democrats in that age group by seven percentage points among registered voters.

It was unexpected for some, but if you ask the young members of the Wisconsin Republican delegation in Milwaukee this week, it’s not that surprising. 

“I think Gen Z is quite conservative,” Wolfe said.

“I think a lot of young people are searching for a better future,” he said. “We want to buy homes. We want to pay less for our groceries and be able to raise strong families in the future. And right now, that’s really hard for us, and so we’ve become very conservative.”

Some conservative critics of Trump have chided what they see as a GOP moving away from a focus on conservative policies to populism and personality. Wolfe said he’s ok with populism. 

“It’s a party of the people,” Wolfe said. “I don’t think it’s going back, and I hope it doesn’t, because we do need to focus on the forgotten man and woman of America.” 

Brandon Maly, 24, is another young member of Wisconsin’s GOP delegation in Milwaukee this week. He serves as the Dane County Republican Party chair and Midwest manager for the grassroots organizing group, Turning Point Action, which was founded by conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk. 

Maly said his journey into politics traces back to his family’s history as Jewish refugees fleeing the former Soviet Union in search for a better life and more political opportunity. 

“By political opportunity, I mean just being able to freely express yourself without fear of being labeled a dissident and sent to a gulag,” Maly said. 

In 2012, Maly said he watched the Republican presidential primary debates with his grandfather and took a liking to former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, who addressed the delegates Monday morning in Milwaukee.

“I fondly remember watching Obama-Romney debate too, back in 2012,” Maly said. “And my dad sent me back to my room because I was cheering for Romney, and I had to watch the rest of that debate on my phone, on my bed with the lights off.”

As a teenager, Maly said he watched Donald Trump enter a crowded GOP field for President in 2015 and became a supporter from “day one.”

“The entirety of the current Republican base wasn’t behind him at that point,” Maly said. “Some of them were for Ted Cruz because they saw Donald Trump as insufficiently conservative. But other people just saw a fighter in him and were willing to agree on only 80 percent of things, not 100 percent because he would fight for the 80 percent. And I really felt the same way.”

Trump lost Wisconsin’s Republican presidential primary in 2016 to Cruz, the U.S. senator from Texas. That year, some GOP leaders from Wisconsin like former Gov. Scott Walker were leery of Trump. But Maly said he thinks the Republican party is becoming “less rigid” in terms of purity tests of conservative ideology. He said an example of that is seeing speakers like rapper, model and TV personality Amber Rose as featured speakers at the RNC. 

Maly said he hopes the Republican party “can still appeal to seniors,” but it’s time for the “next generation of Americans, not just conservatives” to show leadership in politics.

“And older generations, those 65 and over especially, have to be willing to pass the torch,” Maly said. “I mean, you’ve got a very, very high median age in Congress right now. In some ways, that provides us wisdom. In other ways, some of them appear to be no longer capable of serving to their full abilities, which is sad.”

Milwaukee County Republican Party Chair Hilario Deleon, 23, said he started focusing on politics nine years ago. 

“Then-candidate Trump, you know, came out, and I was watching live when President Trump came down the escalator with his family and gave a speech,” Deleon said. “I was 14 at the time, and after the listening to the entire speech, I said, ‘That man is going to be the next president of the United States.’ And I got a lot of flack for it.”

When asked if he thinks young blood is fostering a transformation of the GOP, Deleon didn’t hesitate.

“Hell yeah, it’s changing,” he said. “I mean, think about it. One of the largest county parties in the entire state of Wisconsin, with a very large population, the most population in the entire state, went … to this young guy. I was 22 at the time.” 

Wisconsin Rep. Nik Rettinger, R-Mukwonago, is the vice chair of the Young Republican National Federation and an alternate state delegate for the convention. The 34-year-old lawmaker said it feels like “Democrats have taken our demographics of the millennials and the Gen Z’s for granted for long enough,” and he echoed the sentiment that young people are looking for “a new positive message, a new direction” and are finding that with the GOP. 

“With the American Dream being ripped away from them, it’s been a shocking reality and a wake-up call for them,” Rettinger said of young people finding favor with the GOP. “So, they’re looking for a new positive message, a new direction. And a lot of them are going, ‘You know what? Things were going really well for us under President Trump.” 

And now, with 39-year-old Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance being nominated in Milwaukee this week as Trump’s vice presidential candidate, Rettinger said he expects more young people to be inspired by the Republican brand. 

“I think it’s a huge deal,” Rettinger said. “Because for a very, very long time, a lot of folks were, like, decades older than them. And so I think the Republican Party becoming younger and younger is absolutely to our advantage.”