A Different Drum

Maxwell Frost, the youngest member of Congress, is marching to his own beat.

- By Suzy Exposito

Maxwell Frost has a stomachache. Or at least that’s the charmingly unguarded reason the 26-year-old Florida congressman has given me for his tardiness. I am sitting at Orlando’s oldest diner, the College Park Café, with his even younger campaign coordinator, Rayanne Anid, 23, on a gray, muggy day. It’s the week between Christmas and New Year’s, when most people are still hiding out in their pajamas, so we’re all permitted a little leeway when it comes to punctuality.

Anid, a recent political science grad from the University of Central Florida, is telling me how she met Frost, who, when he is sworn in (a week later), will become the first Gen Z member of Congress, presiding over Florida’s 10th Congressional District, which spans much of Orange County. Wedged within the metropolitan area’s sprawling, byzantine network of highways is Universal Studios and the people who run the tourist economy surrounding it.

Anid previously managed social media for March for Our Lives—a youth-led organization established in the wake of the Parkland, Florida, shooting in 2018—and Frost worked for the group for two years. When he announced he was running for Congress in 2021, he tapped several former colleagues for his campaign; for many, it would be their first. “I was still finishing up at UCF,” says Anid about those early days on the campaign, stunned by her beginner’s luck. “We basically never slept!” Frost, I will discover, has an innate charisma and warmth; when he finds people he trusts, he tends, with a little convincing, to bring them along for the ride.