Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) is the latest Democrat to face a reckoning over her age, after a generations-younger primary challenger entered the race.
Waters, 87, is facing a challenge from nonprofit executive Myla Rahman, 53, after 35 years in Congress and 50 years as an elected official. A star of the resistance during President Donald Trump’s first term, known for her inflammatory rhetoric against the president and his administration, Waters has largely taken a back seat from the limelight in Trump’s second term. Part of the reason is a wave of dissatisfaction with the advanced age of members of Congress, something Rahman is looking to exploit.
“The community has said that they’d like new energy, a new perspective,” Rahman told Politico in an interview. “And the reality is, the average age is 36 years old in the district. The average person is a renter in the district. So we’ve got a lot of issues that are relatable to my life experience.”
The new political upstart is painting herself as ideologically aligned with Waters, but “more energetic, younger, more relatable in terms of the experiences that people face in the district.”
Rahman faces a daunting challenge in breaking Waters’s hold on the district. Since first entering her current office in 1990, Waters has handily won every election with nearly 70-80% of the vote, winning her most recent election with three-quarters of the vote at age 86.
The new challenger acknowledged the difficulty of breaking Waters’s hold on power, speculating that voters’ attachment to her could be a problem.
“I’m sure I’ll get a lot of calls. I’m waiting for ‘how dare you? The audacity of you, who do you think you are?” Rahman said. “And what I can say is that there’s a choice, and this is a democracy. That’s why we have elections, and the voters can decide.”
Despite her overall less active role, Waters remains influential as the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee.
Rahman was previously noted as an elected city clerk, though she had to resign her first day on the job after receiving a second breast cancer diagnosis. She’s looking to channel this experience into a focus on healthcare.
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The congressional hopeful filed the FEC paperwork to run on Feb. 3, but only announced it to Politico on Tuesday.
Though much less active in Trump’s second term, Waters has still won her fair share of headlines through verbal sparring with the Trump administration. She was dismissed as a “lunatic” by White House assistant press secretary Liz Huston after the congresswoman said Trump was leading the United States into a “civil war,” and more recently got into a heated verbal sparring match with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
