You’ve probably heard it before: Gen Z is a markedly progressive generation.
And there is some data that suggests a majority of young people do fall to the left on many policy issues. But Gen Z is far from a monolith.
And we were curious about how young conservatives have formed their own political identities as the broader Republican Party has shifted in recent years.
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Finding a place in politics
“Just seeing what Donald Trump did for our country made me realize that there should be more people like that in office,” said 24-year old Karson Young, a resident of Ottawa County.
Young’s conservative ideals might not be the norm for people his age in other parts of Michigan. But Ottawa County has been a reliable conservative stronghold in West Michigan for decades. It’s also one of fastest-growing of Michigan’s 10 most populous counties and is becoming more racially diverse.
That’s left young conservatives in West Michigan to figure out where they fit into both an age group that tends Democratic, and a Republican party that has schisms of its own.
In Ottawa County, those schisms became national news when the county board of commissioners made news for their reactionary COVID policies. Those were shepherded into law by a set of hard-line conservative commissioners, united as part of a group known as Ottawa Impact, which swept into power in 2022, winning 8 out of 11 seats on the county commission that year.
It was a sudden change at a scale that was appealing to some young conservatives.
“These days, I tend to think local government matters a lot more than the national government,” said 27-year-old Ethan Parcher, also an Ottawa County resident.
The experience of owning his first small business, Parcher explained, made him much more sympathetic to Republican ideas about a smaller federal government. And it made him shift his perspective on who would enact the kind of policies he wanted to see.
“When Trump ran the first time, I took the signs out of my dad's yard,” Parcher said. “The second time around, I left them in.”
Going through changes
Political identity is a personal and complex topic. It can be influenced by family, life experiences, economic status. And it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. To get some broader context on the sentiments we heard from people like Young and Parcher, we reached out to David Ryden. He’s a professor of political science at Hope College in Holland – Ottawa County’s biggest city.
Ryden studies electoral politics and the intersection between faith and political behavior, and says he's watched the political landscape change significantly since moving to Holland in 1994.
“It's evolved from what was a deeply Republican community, county, district, into one that is less so.” Ryden said.
He notes that although Holland is a far cry from a big city, it has taken on some characteristics of how bigger cities vote. The city of Holland itself has been increasingly voting for Democrats over the past 10 years. “That was never the case,” in previous decades, Ryden said. “Democrats were sort of a rare breed 30 years ago.”
At the same time as Ottawa’s more urban areas are shifting to the left, Ryden has been watching a split emerge in most of the rest of the county. “The weight of the county is still conservative” Ryden said, “but it’s nothing like what it once was.”
The groundswell of support for Ottawa Impact-aligned candidates suggests to Ryden that even in local elections, support for traditional “common-sense conservatism” is now hotly contested. Even as recently as the 2016 Republican Party primaries, candidates like Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio outperformed Trump in many precincts across the county.
In those primaries, Trump mainly resonated with more isolated voters – people who were less involved in their churches or other community organizations, Ryden said.
Now, he said, things have changed. “Those sort of more traditional Republicans, they've very quickly made their peace with Donald Trump.”
Defining Republican values
A striking example of this shift within West Michigan played out in the Republican primary race for the 4th Congressional District earlier this year. Although incumbent U.S. Congressman Bill Huizenga is a lifelong resident of Ottawa County and has been the area’s congressional representative since 2011, he failed to win the county GOP’s endorsement this election cycle. Instead, the Ottawa GOP endorsed far-right candidate Brendan Muir, Notably, Huizenga beat Muir by more than 40 points.
“I've been seeing that [tension] play out for the last two years, and it has been definitely interesting to watch,” said Steven Reenders, a 21-year-old who campaigned unsuccessfully for a township trustee seat in Grand Haven Charter Township this year.
Reenders described himself as a libertarian who leans right on many issues. He sees himself as a strong constitutionalist, and a Bill of Rights enthusiast. From his perspective, most members of Gen Z are drifting away from those views.
“It's kind of appalling to me that many in my generation, just from my experience and talking to, a few are more than willing to sacrifice those rights,” Reenders said.
Reenders’ first foray into politics was in 2021, when he decided not to pursue a career in law enforcement because many police academies were mandating COVID-19 vaccination, which he wasn’t comfortable with.
Instead, he ran for a precinct delegate position, hoping to make a change in his local community. A precinct delegate is a hyperlocal elected office that can often be a gateway into politics for someone who’s just getting their start in the field. Precinct delegates attend and vote at all county conventions for their party during the two-year term. They play a role in helping determine the direction of their party at the county and state levels.
While Reenders certainly leaned conservative, he also advocated for a large degree of economic and social freedom. Reenders recognized that no matter what position he holds, some of the people he’s charged with representing will disagree. He emphasized the importance of openness, saying; “just because someone disagrees with you, never kind of shove them down.”
Reenders was also very focused on staying true to his local community, and the issues he could influence directly. “There’s a lot of work to be done in [Grand Haven Charter] township, and I plan on getting a lot of work done here in the township.”
Reenders said too many other people entering politics are in it for a different reason.
“I see that in a lot of politicians today is, when they get elected, they decide to go wherever the money and power leads them, and they forget where they came from and who their community is. That's something I don't want to do. I want to continue to work for the people, by the people,” Reenders said.
Others among the Gen Z conservatives in Ottawa County were much more nationally focused.
“My biggest leap towards politics was probably actually seeing how far our country has fallen,” said Karson Young.
As Young sees it, the choice facing Gen Z this election is between a return to the “great nation that the Founding Fathers set up” or a “plunge into a country that is nothing anymore.”
When asked about the tension playing out in the GOP at the local level, Young described people concerned about that tension as “blinded to what’s really going on.”
So, what are they missing?
“They're missing that our country is falling apart,” Young said.
This kind of ominous, foreboding language is echoed by groups like Ottawa Impact, whose website calls the group the “tip of the spear” and says control of Ottawa County is “critical” in Michigan and “pivotal to our nation.”
The backlash
Sarah Leach, a journalist covering Ottawa County, sees an appetite for something new as a key reason this particular brand of conservatism appeals to younger voters.
Leach said Gen Z conservatives can find Ottawa Impact’s willingness to have confrontational discussions about the political establishment “refreshing,” especially in an area long dominated by a “traditional conservative vibe.”
Although plenty of headlines have focused on Ottawa’s controversial county commissioners, Leach also had her eye on other county-wide races in the August 6 primaries while trying to gauge Ottawa Impact’s influence. The results of those primary contests show that the fight to define what it means to be conservative in west Michigan is far from over.
All three of those county-wide positions – sheriff, county prosecutor, and treasurer – saw moderate Republican challengers beat Ottawa Impact opponents by double-digit margins. Those margins fit with how David Ryden described the attitude of many county residents before the primaries: “appalled” at how OI candidates had “just made a hash of governance.”
Even so, theories about the primary results before the election were far from certain.
“I personally was surprised by the margins, in terms of the traditional candidates beating out the OI-backed candidates. I thought it was going to be a little bit closer,” Leach said.
The August primaries weren’t a complete reversal, though. Ottawa Impact lost its chance at a majority on the county commission, but several commissioners, including chairman Joe Moss, won their races. Those candidates will now advance to a general election, alongside Democratic and non-OI-affiliated candidates for the incoming county commission.
“From a local standpoint, I think that things are going to get weirder before they get better in Ottawa County, because there's a four month lame duck session that we're looking at for a lot of Ottawa Impact-affiliated commissioners, and they've got to go through a budget cycle, and we don't really know what they're going to do now that many of them have lost,” Leach said.
That means the internal party schisms facing Gen Z Republicans as they figure out how they fit into the political climate are still present, even after a primary election that saw traditional conservatives make big gains.
New challenges for the Grand Old Party
Becky Steele, an outgoing Republican on the Georgetown Township Board, called the primary results a “more fair representation of our county as a whole,” noting that there are “certainly districts where the Ottawa Impact type of Republican beliefs are very strong. And in those districts, the Ottawa Impact candidate came out victorious in their primary.”
Steele is a millennial who’s keenly interested in how people a generation behind her are beginning to vote. In addition to her duties on the township board, Steele has been campaigning extensively to help Republican candidates win local elections. She said usually, centrist groups will have a better chance.
But like Leach, Steele believes young voters might be looking for something new and exciting. Steele said Gen Z conservatives are wrestling with ideas in their youth that many older adults didn’t: sexuality, gender identity, and the meaning of marriage.
“There are certainly younger voters who are pulled towards the extremes. … And, as these kids leave home and become voters, the experiences that they have in those life changing moments, I think do push or pull them to one extreme or the other,” Steele said.
Even as Steele will be ending her term on the township board next year, she’s excited for the way the recent primaries recalibrated the local GOP. She’s looking forward to what the blend of new voices on the board could do for the “common good of the community.”
The new set of commissioners won’t be decided until the November election – but Steele and Leach said it’s not at all assured that the results will clear up the divisions within the local Republican party, or that Gen Z conservatives will feel represented.
There are some common threads across Gen Z voters though – even some that cross party lines. Young conservatives across Ottawa County interviewed for this story occasionally struck a tone similar to the more progressive rhetoric most often associated with the youngest generation of voters.
“Gen Z is inheriting a great nation, a great nation with definitely a broken system,” said Steven Reenders, the Grand Haven trustee candidate. “Gen Z needs to either choose to continue down this path that's already set forth for us, or continue to switch a direction to a more, to something more positive.”
A “great nation” with a “broken system” – it’s an idea that could motivate young voters thinking about their future, regardless of their political affiliation.
