Aging Of The Freshmen
Parties prefer Supreme Court nominees no older than 55, to protect the ideological lean for decades to come. Why doesn't the same logic apply to choosing new U.S. Senators?
In recent times, when Presidents choose Supreme Court Justices they use a pretty narrow age window. Old enough to seem serious and qualified, but young enough to keep the lifetime appointment for decades—to forestall, in short, the opportunity for the other party to fill the seat any time soon.
In practice, this has resulted in a current Supreme Court nonet who ranged from age 43 (Clarence Thomas) to 55 (Samuel Alito and Sonya Sotomayor) at swearing-in, with average and median right at 50.
Parties and voters could, rationally, apply the same thinking to open or competitive U.S. Senate seats, especially in so-called purple states. Sure, we don’t know whether a given state will still be competitive in six or 12 years—or 18 or 24—but a seat figures to have a better chance of staying in the party’s hands with an incumbent still alive and healthy enough to keep running for re-election.
To hit that SCOTUS sweet spot of 45-55 years old at first swearing-in, this year parties would want to elect Senators born, give or take a little, in the 1970s—good solid Gen-X stock—to take office in January 2025.
We figure to have between nine and 14 new Senators chosen (barring surprises), and we now know the nominees for almost all of them. By my count, I see no more than four ‘70s babies headed to possible victory, with a few close on either side and several older.
Two in the 45-55 window appear definitely on their way to the Senate: Republican Jim Banks (b.1979) in Indiana, and Democrat Angela Alsobrooks (b.1971) in Maryland. A third close enough to count is Democratic nominee Andy Kim (b. 1982), assuming the desperate independent bid of incumbent Bob Menendez, currently on trial, doesn’t prove too much of a curve ball.
Democrats are teeing up Ruben Gallego (b. 1979) and Elissa Slotkin (b. 1976) to try to hold open seats in Arizona and Michigan, respectively. Republicans will likely counter Gallego with Kari Lake (b. 1969), but in Michigan they’ve nominated an over-60 candidate, Mike Rogers (b. 1963).
Two other apparent sure things for Democrats are, like Rogers, north of 60 and barely below the Senate’s ever-increasing median age of 65. That’s Adam Schiff of California (b. 1960) and Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware (b. 1962). The polling leader for the Republican nomination in Utah, John Curtis (b. 1960), is in the same range—solidly ahead of more youthful GOP options in that primary, including Trent Staggs (b. 1974).
There’s one other shoo-in for an empty seat: Republican Jim Justice of West Virginia (b. 1951), who will be nearing his 80th birthday at the end of his six-year term.
Of course, that just means that Justice will fit right in with his peers. Of the 25 Senators running for re-election this year (not including Menendez), 11 were born in 1955 or earlier; just six were born more recently than 1963. Their median age at the start of the coming term is 67.
All five Democrats running in what are considered close re-elections this year were born between 1952 (Sherrod Brown of Ohio) and 1962 (Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin).
None of the five elected or expected Republican nominees challenging for those seats were born in the 1970s. Three were born in the mid-1960s (Bernie Moreno of Ohio, David McCormick of Pennsylvania, and Eric Hovde of Wisconsin) while two were born in the mid-‘80s (Tim Sheehy of Montana and Sam Brown of Nevada).
My very Gen-X (b. 1967) take on all this is that of course nobody’s going to elect Gen-Xers if they can help it; we’ve always expected to leave no mark on the world the Boomers made. But I will toss out another speculative theory, for others to ponder: that it has a little to do with money. Most of the strong candidates for U.S. Senate seats this cycle got access to the large sums of cash needed to run by either A) being a U.S. Representative for a good chunk of time; or B) making a lot of money in business. Both paths typically require a pretty full, multi-decade career to get where they are now. Rochester started as an aide to Tom Carper in 1989; Schiff first ran for office in 1994; Moreno started in the auto business in the mid-’90s; David McCormick joined McKinsey and Co. in 1996. It’s tough to get there by age 45.
Interestingly, for whatever reason, things went differently two years ago. Of eight new Senators elected in November 2022 or in special elections during the preceding term, all but one were younger than 55 in January 2023. The exception was a big one: Peter Welch of Vermont (b. 1947).
Welch’s age, along with all the incumbents getting a couple years older, pushed the Senate’s median age up a half-year from the start of the previous session in January 2021—and three years higher than January 2017—despite the selection of those mostly young freshmen. Given the nominees being chosen this cycle, it looks like that median age is heading higher still.