Three new-generation, millennial mayors reaching across the US political divide

1.
Mattie Parker, Republican
For the first millennial mayor of a major US city, all politics is local.
Fort Worth

Upon taking the oath of office in June 2021, Mattie Parker, who was then 37 years old, became the first millennial mayor of a major US city. It wasn’t a claim to fame that the lawyer sought. “I have an old soul,” she tells Monocle. But having cruised to re-election in Fort Worth in 2023 and 2025, she concedes that her “age and generation have been a strength on most days”.

Now 42, Parker has overseen a generational shift in governance in Texas’s fourth-largest city. Though the cattle town has grown into Dallas’s twin city, with a population of more than a million residents, its charter stipulates that its mayoralty is a part-time role, with a modest salary of $29,000 (€25,000). “My husband jokes that it might cover my dry-cleaning bill,” she says.

Before Parker’s election, it was common for a retiree to hold the office. But social media and the 24-hour news cycle have “turned this into a full-time type of job”, she says. “There’s no off switch.” Despite this, Parker, who has a chief of staff, holds down another part-time role as chief of staff to the CEO of a children’s hospital. The juggling that this involves hasn’t gone unnoticed by Fort Worth’s residents. In May they approved the doubling of her salary.

That vote of confidence has come as she attempts to stay focused on local issues at a time when municipal politics is becoming more national. “People are moving to our city because we have a very commonsense approach to governance – streets, streetlights, parks, libraries, public safety,” she says. “Cities that are well run fend off partisanship and ideological breakdown.”

Though Parker is a Republican, she admits that her party’s brand is “increasingly messy”. A former Texas mayor chief of staff and congressional district director, she had a front-row seat to the growing polarisation of US politics. She cherishes the chance to serve in an officially non-partisan elected office that allows her to break with party dogma. She complied with the White House’s dismantling of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) initiatives but still touts Fort Worth’s diversity. And she isn’t afraid of government spending, leading the charge for the largest bond issue in the city’s history.

“I have principles and beliefs but my job is to build consensus and improve quality of life for every single resident, regardless of the party that they belong to,” she says.

However, she’s not afraid to draw a line between her position on public safety and those of her rivals. While her 2021 opponent, the chair of the local Democratic Party, dabbled in “defund the police” rhetoric, Parker made hiring more officers (as well as firefighters) a central part of her manifesto. “‘Back the blue’ doesn’t have to be partisan terminology and we can reject the ‘defund the police’ movement,” she says. “Any American city that wants to be successful has to adopt that philosophy.”

That conviction is paramount for the mother of three. She speaks to Monocle via telephone while dealing with her shirtless 10-year-old son. Higher office, for now, holds little appeal. “I can serve as mayor and be home for my family,” she says. “Public service needs to be treated as a calling, not a stepping stone.”

Parker’s modesty recalls the writer and intellectual Gore Vidal’s famous line: “Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.” Perhaps – who knows? – higher office does beckon for Parker. At least she knows that time is on her side.

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2.
Justin Bibb, Democrat
The political moment demands energy and decisive action, says the 39-year-old Midwestern mayor.
Cleveland

Justin Bibb understands all too well the key concerns of his fellow millennials. “Our generation of voters is frustrated with the pace of change and the status quo,” he tells Monocle. The Democratic mayor of Cleveland, Ohio’s second-largest city, lists the climate crisis, the cost of living and housing affordability as his cohort’s principal worries – and his own too. “I’m one of them,” he says. “I can’t afford to buy a home yet.”

The connection that Bibb has with the US’s largest electoral group helped him to sweep to power as Cleveland’s second-youngest mayor in 2021, when he was 34. Cleveland native Bibb was previously an intern for former US president Barack Obama, then moved into strategy for finance and tech start-ups before returning to public service with his run for mayor.

His 2021 slogan, “Cleveland can’t wait”, promised energetic renewal for the metropolis of more than 360,000 people, tapping into younger people’s frustrations during the coronavirus pandemic and offering a sense of hope for the future. But while it was Cleveland’s younger voters who helped to propel him into office, Bibb quickly understood that their problems didn’t exist in a vacuum. Addressing generational inequality meant dealing with various interlinked economic and social issues. Without safe streets and streamlined processes, businesses wouldn’t want to invest. And without the solid, well-paying jobs that come with investment, people couldn’t afford housing.

“The through-line of my campaign and our governing agenda has been prioritising a core set of issues that affect every Clevelander, whether you’re a working-class black senior on the East Side or a new Gen-Z graduate from Ohio State,” says Bibb. His first term was an exercise in transforming the city into an attractive destination for businesses, while taking on the scourges of the property market, including a crackdown on predatory landlords and investing $2m (€1.7m) to tackle homelessness. Clevelanders clearly felt that he was making good on his promises. Last year, he was reelected for a second term, increasing his share of the vote from 63 to 74 per cent.

Today, Bibb is excited about a huge waterfront development project on Lake Erie, industrial rejuvenation and pushing forward his innovative housing programme. He has seen other millennial mayors approach these issues with similar gusto. “We’re bringing a different level of energy and excitement, as well as a ‘Let’s get shit done’ attitude, that’s speaking to this political moment right now,” he says. He wants politicians in Washington to sit up and pay attention. “Americans don’t trust members of Congress,” he says. “They don’t trust whoever’s in the White House right now. But in many cases, they do trust their mayors.”

With crucial midterm elections in November, when the Democrats have a chance to win back the House of Representatives and the Senate, Bibb thinks that highlighting the successes of Democratic mayors is key to flipping red seats blue. “If the Democratic Party wants to win more elections – if it wants to expand its map and be more credible – what better champions than Democratic mayors in red states who are fighting a good fight and solving problems?” he asks.

Bibb is the president of a coalition of Democratic mayors in Republican-run states that brings them together “so that we can work across the aisle to solve some of the biggest issues facing America”. He is also a co-chair of the bipartisan National Housing Crisis Task Force. The issue of affordable homes dominates chat groups with other millennial mayors in cities across the US, says Bibb. In Cleveland, he is continuing to forge innovative solutions, including a $100m (€86m) fund aimed at creating thousands more units of affordable housing, a new portal to streamline development permits and investment in modular homes.

He is also optimistic that the $5bn (€4.2bn) “Shore-to-Core-to-Shore” project that will redevelop and connect the Lake Erie shoreline and Cuyahoga Riverfront to Cleveland’s downtown can boost jobs, investment and housing stock over the coming years. Then there’s the $1.6bn (€900m) renovation of Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. All of which is leaving Bibb hopeful that cost-of-living and climate refugees abandoning the large coastal cities will choose his Midwest home to put down their roots. “I want Cleveland to be the new capital for jobs and investment as we enter this next chapter of America’s economic story.”

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3.
Matt Mahan, Democrat
The mayor bringing a fresh sense of ‘compassion with accountability’ to his city.
San Jose

Matt Mahan steels himself as he heads into neighbourhoods in San Jose, California, with a hard proposal to sell: to build homeless shelters where the median house price is $1.5m (€1.3m). Homelessness is a pressing political issue for US mayors, as the number of people sleeping rough hits record highs. It’s acute on the West Coast, where big cities and state governments are dominated by the Democratic Party. Many perceive tent encampments – associated with litter, crime and fires – as a symbol of the failures of blue-state governance. The 43-year-old Mahan wants to change his party’s reputation.

The California native brings a data-driven approach to governing the Golden State’s third-largest city. Convinced that he could effect such change state-wide, in June he ran to become California’s new governor. He was the youngest candidate by almost a decade in a field that included former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Joe Biden-era cabinet member Xavier Becerra and billionaire Tom Steyer. Though Mahan lost the June primary, the fact that he polled well enough to make the debate stage proved that he is among the vanguard of a nationwide millennial cohort with less ideological fervour. “There’s a politics of pragmatism that younger leaders are bringing to the table,” says Mahan.

He describes his approach to homelessness as “compassion with accountability”. Shelters built on his watch provide security and case management, while enforcing rules such as no drug use or weapons. They prioritise beds for rough sleepers in the vicinity so that neighbourhoods quickly see improvement. The city enforces a camping ban for a two-block radius around them to make it clear that taking help and heading indoors are the only options.

This walks the fine line between fed-up residents who want a magic bullet and activists who see enforcement as criminalising poverty. “No, we can’t just ban camping and make thousands of people magically disappear – that’s not a practical or ethical solution,” says Mahan. “But also, no, we can’t allow people to camp anywhere they choose. If you have an unmanaged tent encampment, you have made it harder for people in interim housing to turn their lives around.”

At community meetings, Mahan has endured irate members of the public shouting at him. But lately the tone has changed. “Now I have people thanking me,” he says. The reason for this is that his proposal works. The number of unsheltered homeless people in San Jose has fallen by a third since Mahan took office in 2023. (Critics suggest that the figure is closer to a quarter.) Left-leaning forms of government that deliver measurable results are in the zeitgeist, partly thanks to books such as Marc Dunkelman’s analytical history Why Nothing Works and Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson – and Mahan has seized that mantle. “My generation and younger voters do not have the luxury of performative politics.”