The Next Generation: Hayden Padgett on Growing the Young Republican Movement

Hayden Padgett, Chairman of the Young Republican National Federation, joins us to discuss the growing role of young conservatives in today’s GOP. We dive into how the organization is expanding its reach, modernizing its approach, and building a stronger pipeline of future leaders. What does this next generation mean for the party heading into 2026 and beyond.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

This is the Digital Politics Podcast, presented by Frontline Strategies.

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Hello and welcome to the Digital Politics Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Hahn, president of digital at Frontline Strategies. Every month we promise to break down what matters to the GOP digital industry, talk to the people driving the change, and give you the insights you won't find anywhere else. This month's episode focuses on the next generation of Republican leadership. Young Republicans have long been one of the most important pipelines for talent in our party, from grassroots activists and campaign staffers to online influencers and party leaders. At the center of that effort right now is today's guest, Hayden Padgett, chairman of the Young Republican National Federation. Hayden has been deeply involved in growing and modernizing the YRNF movement and helping expand the organization's reach, energize young conservatives, and build the next generation of Republican leaders across the country through robust online fundraising efforts that we have the pleasure of doing for him here at Frontline. Hayden, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on, Mike.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Good to talk to you.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Of course. Thanks for doing it. I know you are incredibly busy, so I promise not to take too much of your time. Um YRNF. Let's talk about it. You guys have obviously been around for decades. I mean, can you give us a look into um the state of the chapter, uh what you guys are working on right now, and really what consumes your day-to-day is the head of it?

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Uh well, first, uh a couple clarifications for folks listening about what the young Republicans are in and what we're not. We oftentimes get a bit of confusion. That's understandable. Um, so a tiny history lesson. Forgive me for doing this. I am a history nerd, but I won't bore you with too much of that. If you go back to 1936, um sorry, two, nineteen thirty-two, the young Republicans were starting to form. We had some chapters and places going back to 1856, but really the National Federation formed back then. And the core of it was trying to create an offshoot, an official youth wing for the party. And that worked pretty well for about 40 years. And then we had some campaign finance changes that occurred in the 70s, and that required the RNC and the DNC, they had their own youth wing, to formally spin off their youth wings and no longer have any real legal affiliation with them. Uh so the Young Republicans became its own entity in the 70s. And at the time, that was actually inclusive of college Republicans, high school Republicans role in this one big group. Um, and in the late 70s, early 80s, the organization realized that we just needed to separate those out into their own distinct areas. So you got high school Republicans as this own entity, and then college Republicans as its own entity, and then us. Um, and we kind of were the catch-all for post-grad. It's kind of the right way to think about us. 18 to 40 is the age range, but sweet spot is really 22 to 35, somewhere in there. And the the demographic we're going after is not college kids necessarily, though we welcome them as members. We're going after people who are trying to start their lives, start their careers, plant some roots, but are also trying to build a community for themselves. So in some ways, we're kind of like a small group at a church where it helps people to ground themselves and become better people and better participants in their community and prepare for what com comes next in life. So all that background to say um where we are right now uh is in a really strong spot, which is very encouraging for the party. Um, as you said, we've spent a lot of time, both under my term and and my predecessor, building out a lot of mechanisms to modernize us, to have us be more professional. And the net result is over the last three years, we've grown by an average of five to 10% per year. We're around 25% increase of membership today from when I started, um, and added over 30% uh new more clubs, pretty large increases across the board.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

And the core of those clubs, the reason that's important is the way we work is we go in and we plant a club in a city which covers county, but it's really focused in a community. And then that becomes the nucleus for building friendships and building relationships with elected officials and the party and for helping people train and feel like they have a community they can build with. That's how we work. And so the more clubs we have, the stronger they are, the more consistent they are, the better we are overall. And those growth compounds as the more people who are here, the more cool stuff we can do, the more we can show how fun it is to be a member, the more we attract more young conservatives into the movement. And that then helps us to create a flywheel where we're able to go and help electorally. We flew hundreds of people out all over the country in 24 and then again in 25, knocking a whole lot of doors. My favorite example of that from 24 cycle was in Montana. We went in to work for Tim Sheehe and Brian Zinke, and we knocked on the doors of 3% of all voters in the state of Montana in a weekend, um, which is pretty fun. And we're gonna do that same thing again this year, but it all comes from bringing more people into the party. But we don't only just knock on doors, we also are building the bench for the party's future. The these new people coming in, they learn how the party works, they learn how you work win elections, they learn how you do policy correctly. They meet all the people you need to meet in order to raise the funds or be really effective. Um and so where we are right now is is kind of the we're an upward trajectory from where we have been for the last several decades, and and we're hoping to continue that growth.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Sticking on the topic of growth, we're starting to see a surge of younger conservatives, of course, getting involved in the Republican Party. You touched on this well. Specifically, when I'm talking about that, we we throw around the term Gen Z, right? So these are folks that I believe are born in the late 90s, so would certainly fall into the 22 and up category that you guys are targeting at YRF. What do you think is driving these folks to the Republican Party as opposed to the Democrat Party?

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Um it's a fantastic question. I'll start by saying that nobody really knows for sure, partly because uh everyone's making their own individual choices around where they're wanting to spend their time politically. But there's a few factors that are very clear. Um The first is that it is becoming increasingly unaffordable uh to be a young person, and particularly a young man in this country. Uh and the reason that young men are particularly affected is that as we look at what they're they define as affordable, it's not just um can I afford groceries, but can I afford to save up for a house or an engagement ring? And if I can do either of those, can I afford to save up for having kids? You know, the they view themselves as the provider of the future family. And those are harder and harder to do. Uh and people are having to wait longer and longer to do those big milestones in their lives. Um I also find it harder to get opportunities, um, not just men, women too. It as you're coming out of college and into the workforce, jobs are hard to come by, particularly the kind of jobs that allow you to feel that every year you're getting better and better in your financial situation and more and more secure in what your future will look like. And they're comparing that to what they're they experienced their or their what they saw their parents experience when they were kids. And the dichotomy between those two is pretty vast. And I talked about this a lot during the 24 cycle, but the president in particular talked a lot about that in 24. And the fact that he not only talked about affordability and opportunity, but did so in a non-academic way. He wasn't just using those buzzwords. He was actually talking about the real specific pains that people had and the challenges, particularly in communities that are being hollowed out as manufacturing leads. That was a unique thing. So there's a policy focus, but beyond the policy focus, there was also a cultural change in the way the president campaigned, which carried into the way the party campaigned. The president, as we all know, is brash, he's unapologetic in his beliefs, and he's kind of in your face candid. Um that turns some people off. But for folks in my generation, millennials and Gen Z, that actually was really refreshing. Most of the politicians they know were stiff suits who kind of hid the truth or didn't really tell you what they believed. And so him coming out and being so open was such a radical change for them. And part of it is because a lot of young men want to be that kind of person. They want to be so confident in themselves that they can be candid and talk about what they believe openly. And so they found the president to be an encouraging figure for them and continue to find him to be so. Those are the two main factors that at a broad level push so many Gen Z, and particularly Gen Z men, into the Republican uh Party. So it's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

So I feel like as the digital sphere starts to grow, we're seeing a lot of, as you mentioned, Gen Z men really wanting to make their voices heard and they're tired of being censored and silenced. Um, you know, and I think that's followed the trends that the Republican Party has seen as the anti-censorship party. So can you talk a little bit about how YRNF has been utilizing the digital space to increase membership and how you guys are really honing into a lot of the anti-censorship messaging?

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Well, not just anti-censorship, but also just leaning into the way that young people talk. You know, we talk in memes, we talk in uh gifts, we talk in uh emojis in in some ways. And uh corporate does emojis in a silly way, but like in an in an ironic, funny way is an authentic way. Um we uh uh as millennials and young Republicans, we've been digital natives for as long as we can remember. Uh certainly Jed Z has been. Uh and so Facebook, Instagram, TikTok were all part of how we communicated anyway. So that wasn't really a a sea change for us. The two things that have been different, though, is one, we found it uh really a lot uh easier to engage in the debates of the day by using X in a more targeted way, kind of leaning into the candid meme-making approach and being able to respond to stuff really quickly. That's been one change we've implemented. But the really important digital change in the last few years has been shifting to digital fundraising, which, as you said at the beginning, is where we've been working with you guys so uh effectively. Prior to the last few years, we really weren't able to reach out um to individual donors, the hundreds of thousands of people who can't give a thousand bucks, but they can give five or maybe ten at a time, uh, or they can give five, maybe ten every month. That's what powered the president's uh elections. That's what powers a lot of the really successful uh insurgent campaigns the Republican Party's been so good at the last few years. And we, for the first time, are able to tap into that same demographic, that same uh movement. And the consequence of that, the benefit has been that we are able to have a more predictable finance base. We know roughly what's coming, we can plan on things, we have a recurring donor base. And that has allowed us to make bigger bets as we look at elections and what we do with deployments, allowed us to do more with our events so that they're bigger, they're flashier, they have more capacity so we can bring more people in, all of which, again, referencing the flywheel I talked about earlier, has allowed us to grow more, bring more, use those to knock on more doors, and to run better training so we have a better bench for the future.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Yeah, I mean, I think without question, you guys have the broadest uh support amongst the donor class. I mean, we're talking people in their 20s to folks that may even be uh in their 80s and beyond, which most of our other clients are in that upper echelon of of age. You guys are just you guys just run the gambit. Um, and it's funny because we hire a lot of folks, you know, their first, second, third jobs, and all of them want YRNF. They all know who YRNF is, they want to work with you guys, they understand you guys the best. So it really is amazing to see how you guys are able to make impacts really just across the spectrum of the donor class, uh on the small dollar donor class, I should say. Um, for the younger folks that do listen, the ones that may work at a frontline or just listen in the industry. Um if someone wants to build a career in politics and and they're younger, how do we as marketers reach out to them in the ways that you guys are reaching out to them at YRNF? Where are these folks and what is the messaging we have to use to get a hold of them?

SPEAKER_00 13:21

There's a couple parts to that. So one is how do we find young people to be the leaders of the future? But then the second part is if you are interested in doing that and you are a young person, how do you go about doing that? Um I'll I'll address the that first question first. What would a young person do right now if they want to start a career in politics? Um first, I'd say take a job, even if it's a volunteer job, in politics, in the core of it, in the meat and the heart of what's actually happening. If you can, if you're listening to this and you have not yet, reach out to Frontline and try to work for them. They are doing this better than anyone else in the digital space, and this is crucial to being a really effective candidate. So um unpaid plug here for Thank you. Thank you. Um stop playing. But beyond that, i if you want to so that that's a great advice for if you want to work in politics as a campaign manager or in fundraising or anything else. Um and there's a whole lot of jobs in there. You you see some of the stuff on the news, and it looks like there's only a few jobs in politics that really matter. If there's a ton that really matter, and there's a lot of specializations, so get involved, learn about all those things, find what you like. That's one way. If you want to be a candidate yourself, the first saying uh piece of advice I'll give is don't rush it. You cannot plan when you will run for office. You can't plan when the right opportunity will come along. You can't say, I'm gonna run for office in 10 years from now, so I'm gonna do all XYZ to get there. All you can do is say, by five or 10 years from now, I want to be ready when the right opportunity strikes. And being ready means you invest your time in your local community because somebody in some other state can't vote for you, even if they like you. Only people can vote for you the ones in your city, in your county, in your district. So spend time in your city making your city better. Go find problems that are not being solved, even small ones like weird traffic stops that are just bad and need to be fixed. Find small stuff or find boards for nonprofits that you feel really interested in and go serve and make it better. And don't do it. This is a really important thing. Don't do it to get some kind of social media attention. It's not about sharing that for engagement. It's about making a difference for people in your community so that people know who you are. That's the most important thing you do. And then as you do that, more people will say, Hey, can you come help me this other thing over here? Because I see you're really effective. And they'll reach out and you just gotta keep saying yes to those opportunities. If you do that enough times, when an opportunity comes up for an open seat uh or for redistricting, you'll be the one that people look at to run for that office. So you won't need to be making a plan for yourself. People will make in plans for you. So much of it is being in the right place at the right time, right? That's right. That's right. Well, right place at the right time and with the right preparation. That's the key part. Um, the other thing that's obviously a bit selfish here, but if you haven't yet, go find the nearest younger publican club you have and join it. Um not just because we want more members, but because we have training programs and programming around meeting people and doing certain things that are kind of a cheat code to help you get that kind of local involvement and learn skills that no one else is gonna have. And if we all do that, our jobs correctly in the Interpublicans and you become a member of our group, not only will you be prepared to run for office in five or 10 years when the opportunity strikes, when you do and you get elected, you'll be the most prepared person to serve in that office in a generation, which means you're gonna be more effective and all of us collectively be more effective so that we can raise the bar on our party and our leaders going forward. So I want to talk about you a bit here. How did you get to where you are right now? Well, um, I kind of just did what I just described, actually, uh uh without really thinking about it. I was uh pre-law in college. Um actually back up a little bit further than that. So in high school, I I was a nerd and I loved politics and thought it was really interesting. And there was a special election campaign that I volunteered for my first time showing up at campaign office and doing phone banking. And I just started volunteering from then on, and uh that led me to want to go to law school. But I realized I didn't actually want law school. I really wanted just to be in politics, I wanted to contribute. Um but I also wanted a private sector career, I wanted to have a good living, I wanted to have a family, wanted to be rooted in a place. So I just started showing up at GOP meetings and and asking, hey, how can I help? And they told me that they needed a young Republican club. I didn't know what that was. I just found a couple young people and I said, Oh, let's figure this thing out, let's start a club. And we just kind of did it from there, helped on campaigns and helped elect first Republican in the Bay Area in like three years. Um and then I my wife and I moved to Texas and I when I got here, I said, Well, I need to have a community, how can I meet new people? And said, Well, I was a Yak YR in California, but why not join the YRs here and join the YRs and they needed somebody to do a certain task, so I volunteered and kept doing that. And I was asked to take different leadership positions from there because they I just showed up and raised my hand. Um, and it just spiraled from there. I just kept showing up, kept raising my hand, and people kept giving me more and more to do. That's what led to here. Uh there wasn't a plan. I I didn't actually have any desire to be the national chairman. It just kind of happened. Um, for me doing the work and believing in it and and learning enough about it to be good at it. Um that's just how you get here.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

Great point. Learning enough about it to be good at it. That's a really good point. Let's talk about the future of YRNF. Ten years ahead. What role do you think you guys are going to be playing in shaping the future of the party?

SPEAKER_00 19:36

This is my favorite topic. A little key for young people out there who haven't been involved in some of the larger political circles. But when you're talking to donors, large donors, um, and you're asking them to contribute to a campaign or to uh an organization, they're not actually interested in what you're doing next month or the next quarter or the next event you're having. What they're actually interested in is what am I investing in for the next five or so years? Where is this going? And more importantly, who is this person who's leading this thing and why should I believe them? And so this question is what I talk about when I'm asked that question. What the young Republicans has always done and will continue to do and hopefully do even better is build the bench for the party. And I'm not just talking about having uh a literal bench full of people who when an office opens up, we can just point to them and say, All right, it's your turn, go run. But what's really saying is how do we make a party in 10 or 15 or maybe even 20 years when there's a generational change and millennials become the dominant uh demographic in leadership positions and then Gen Z. But when that happens, how do we make sure those leaders are not only um Republicans, which is a obvious necessity, but but they're really good at it. They really understand what they're doing, they really understand what people need, and they're really effective at getting stuff done. That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to find as many people as we possibly can so that in all that that quantity of membership, we're able to find every future leader our party needs. And have those future leaders meet peers in various states and other parts of their own states who will also be the future leaders and who can help each other be better and kind of steel on steel, each of them making each other sharper. Um, but teaching them the the mechanic, the ins and outs, the really nitty-gritty details that you don't see on the West Wing or the whatever other show. So that when opportunity strikes, they are prepared and the obvious person to take over. And when they take over, they are the obvious uh leader in whatever the city council or state legislature or Congress, whatever it is. So they Become the next leaders of the party in every aspect of it. We're our commitment to the party is 20 years from now, we want you to have an even better stock than today of leaders. And it's not a knock on today's leaders, just we want to raise the bar continually. That's our commitment to the party. That's what we deliver. Who is your favorite most notable alumni? The most notable alumni uh is probably Kevin McCarthy. He was a former wire enough chairman, was Speaker of the House for less than a year. Uh the second most notable would be Steve Scalise, the majority leader in the House. He is a was a former, I believe, state officer in Louisiana. Um we've had a number of governors. There's quite a number of members of Congress right now who are members, and I cannot wait to see what those current members who are currently YRs do in uh congressional leadership going forward.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

I just wanted to give the audience uh some perspective into how far this organization can actually take you. You you you could be Speaker of the House one day, so it it is a really important and fantastic organization uh that you should certainly get involved in. So um We're gonna move on to the rapid fire questions now, Hayden. This is this is the fun part of the interview. Lightning round. So um I'll ask it. Brief answer, make it fun. Um most competitive state in the country for young Republicans right now.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Oh man. Well, we're making our we're working with all the groups and making our maps right now where we're gonna go. The obvious kind of boring answer is Michigan. And I don't mean Michigan's boring. I mean just it's I actually wasn't expecting that one. Enlighten me on that one. So Michigan has a governor election, Senate election, and a bunch of competitive House elections all at the same time. Uh there are only a handful of states that are have so many races all going at the same time. They're all uh both competitive and important to win. Um so that's why Michigan is gonna be a big focus for us. Um I'm actually gonna but that again, that's the obvious answer. I'm going to pick on a different state that's a little less obvious, and I'm gonna call out Iowa. Um Iowa has a bunch of defends. We we have the governorship, we have the senator, we have uh house seats. All of them historically have been pretty close. And there's a pretty strong Democrat who's really good at making people think he's more moderate than he is. Um and so there's gonna be a fight on our hands in Iowa, particularly to defend two House seats there. Uh so both of those states we're gonna spend a lot of time on. The Midwest just got a lot of action this next cycle.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

Very interesting. Okay. Um first political figure you remember really inspiring you.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

I mentioned a special election in 20, 2009 for Congress. Congresswoman at the time took a job in the Obama administration, and so there's an open seat, and a guy named David Harmer ran for that seat. No one knows who he is because he lost, unfortunately. It's the Bay Area. It's tough to win as a Republican. I first met him at a fundraiser at my in my neighborhood, it's family friend's house. And I remember thinking, wow, that guy not only is a really good speaker and he really understands policy, but he's a really good person. And he was what meeting him and his campaign was why I started volunteering in the first place. Um, I doubt David will ever listen to this podcast, but if you do, David, thank you for inspiring me back then. But he's the first person who really told me I need to get involved in this, I need to be in politics.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Well, if you got a cell phone number, you have to send it to him when it comes down. That's right. Yeah. Hayden, thank you for doing this today. Where can the audience find you? Plug your social media for us.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Well, first I'll give the YRs social media. So at YR National, across all platforms, that's the place you can find us. You can find me um at Hayden Paget. Uh that's the pretty consistent across all of them, but at YRNF's YR National is a big one.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

Awesome. Hayden, thanks again. And thank you guys for listening to the Digital Politics podcast. If you like what you heard, please share with your friends, like Hayden will. And be sure to like, follow, or subscribe to the show. That's gonna do it for us. We will be back soon for episode seven.