The first election Jack Chrismon voted in was the May 4, 2023, mayoral and municipal election in Dallas, Texas.
“I was a week short to be able to vote in the 2022 midterms,” he says, with a slight sigh, noting that his 18th birthday occurred a week after the November 8 elections. But two short months from now, he will cast his first vote for a president of the United States.
A sophomore at the University of Texas-Austin, where he’s majoring in international affairs, the 19-year-old with a dazzling smile and a runaway mop of golden curls can hardly wait.
“I’m super excited,” says the young Democrat, who recently returned from the Democratic National Convention, where he served as an official delegate for his state as a member of his school’s University Democrats.
“UDems has a tradition, where before big elections, we wait in the polling center and sleep there all night so we’re the first to vote in the precinct or the county,” he says. “I’m going to be doing that. It’s very important to me, even though I’ll be falling asleep in my classes the next day.”
Personable, charming, and bright, Chrismon was raised in Dallas, and came out as gay at the age of 14 to an accepting family. Like much of his generation, he’s hyperactive on social media, where he is enthusiastically politically involved. And while he doesn’t aspire to a career in politics — law interests him at the moment — he is uniquely focused on the effect that politics and policy have on all of our lives.
Metro Weekly first approached Chrismon to craft a daily diary of his experiences at the DNC, but the task proved daunting, largely because he barely had time to sleep between dashing from his hotel to Chicago’s McCormick Center and, ultimately, United Center, where much of the DNC theatrics were held.
Instead, we decided to speak with him about his experience of attending the historic convention, in which Kamala Harris officially accepted her party’s nomination. In the interview that follows, Chrismon details what, for him, were the highlights of the week, as well as what is important to him as a young voter.
If young Democrats like Jack Chrismon are the true future of our country, it might be safe to say we can all breathe a little easier.
METRO WEEKLY: Before we get to the convention, I’m curious what made you decide, in eighth grade, at age 14, to come out? Why did you feel that it was the right time for you?
JACK CHRISMON: I went to a public school in Dallas, and the environment was right. Nowadays, especially in the cities of Texas, environments are very accepting, they’re very open. You’re allowed to come out as who you are. I wasn’t scared for my personal safety or my reputation, and so I was able to come out and be who I am.
MW: A lot of people at 14 — myself certainly among them — were afraid of how our friends and family might react.
CHRISMON: I feel like everybody is nervous about coming out. It’s tumultuous and stressful for just about anybody, even if they have the most progressive family in the world.
MW: Even though you were living in Texas? We write dozens of stories about homophobia and transphobia in your state.
CHRISMON: I feel like, in America, it’s not a state-by-state divide — it’s urban-versus-rural. You’d be safer in Austin, Texas, or Miami, Florida than you would be in rural Michigan or rural Minnesota. It’s because of these local governments — and the types of people and the voting records of these cities — that show you that you, as a gay person, are safe here.
My city council [Austin] has made it illegal to discriminate against LGBTQ people, when that is no longer the case nationwide. [Austin] has also done other progressive local-level things that try to subvert state legislation that may harm LGBTQ people. I feel safe knowing that my city is a safe place for gay people — and Austin is continuously named as one of the best cities to be a gay person in the United States. Dallas is, as well. We have our own Pride flag version of the Dallas flag that flies every June at City Hall.
MW: Your family lives in Dallas, but you were a delegate from Austin, where you go to college, to the convention. What motivated you to want to attend the Democratic National Convention?
CHRISMON: I know it may seem like I’m scratching my own back here, but I cannot thank the University Democrats enough. Our University of Texas-Austin Democratic Organization is just called the University Democrats, and we’re a very, very active group. And they are the reason why I was able to attend the Democratic National Convention.
I ran as a delegate from Texas 37 — we’re basically LBJ’s district from when LBJ represented Texas back when he was a member of the House. The thing about the Texas Democratic Party is that they have very progressive rules. They try to represent their delegation as the state’s demographics. They want a certain percentage of people to be LGBTQ, to be disabled, to be young, to be Black, to be Latino. And so I was also running as a young, gay, disabled — because of my cerebral palsy — delegate.
MW: Do you remember how it felt when you first found out that you were going to Chicago?
CHRISMON: I was with my friends, Achyuth and Tony. I got a text from another of my friends. “Don’t say anything, it’s not official yet, but you got elected to be national delegate.” I was in disbelief. I was like, “There is no way that this is real.” Achyuth also made it at the congressional district level — he just didn’t know until later.
MW: Had you ever been to Chicago before?
CHRISMON: Once. I was really interested in some schools in Chicago when I was applying for college — it didn’t pan out. But I love Chicago and was super excited to be able to go again.
MW: Tell me about your first day there.
CHRISMON: There really wasn’t a lot of convention stuff the first day. But I remember the delegate welcome party on the first night. That was amazing. It was beautiful. It was just this huge party with all these people. There were constant rumors about different politicians being out and about. They’re like, “Oh, Nancy Pelosi’s over there!” Never saw Nancy Pelosi, but there were rumors like that circulating all around.
And then I met a bunch of online friends who are delegates — a lot of really, really way more successful young people than me, like Christian Figueroa. He is super involved in California politics and is just really brilliant and amazing. He’s my age, 19, and doing a lot of stuff with Mayor Karen Bass, among other things.
I had a blast just talking with them and seeing them in person for the first time, talking about our state environments. I met somebody that I know from West Virginia. They have a lot fewer people in their delegation, and their state’s a lot harsher to [LGBTQ people] than, say, Texas is. And so it was great to talk to them and see how our different states are doing.
MW: Take me through the first day of the convention.
CHRISMON: I woke up at 6 a.m. and got all my credentials. The line was super long for your credentials the first day. It probably took 20 minutes to get through it just in my hotel.
Each hotel had its own set of speakers. I got to hear from some very important, very cool people — Doug Jones, Andy Beshear, and Maxwell Frost. They all had differing messages about how to win the election and what they were really focusing on. Representative Frost, of course, focused on getting out the vote for Gen Z and gun violence, because he came out of the “March For Our Lives” movement.
Doug Jones, being a senator from Alabama at one point, I feel like he really does have a big distaste for some of the Republican leadership. He instilled how important it is to win the election against Republicans. And Governor Beshear focused more on a message of bipartisanship — we have to unite together to defeat Donald Trump and make sure that our country moves forward, whether you’re a Democrat, you’re a Republican, or you’re somewhere in between.
I was able to get a picture with Senator Jones, which is super cool. Got a selfie with him. U Dems got a picture with Governor Beshear, but we don’t know who took the picture. We never got in contact with them again. So there’s a picture of us somewhere out there in somebody’s phone somewhere.
MW: I remember seeing on X that the route to the United Center was delayed by protestors.
CHRISMON: Yeah. We are on our way to the United Center and our bus stops. We were like, “Why has our bus stopped?” And I’m scrolling through Twitter and see that protesters have gone through the first barricade and it’s chaos over at the United Center. I think it got resolved within ten minutes, but they still didn’t want us moving until they had deemed it safe. And so there were a lot of delays on the first day. People joked about trying to exit their bus and walk all the way to the United Center.
MW: But you didn’t.
CHRISMON: Every bus had different rules. And it depended on the jurisdiction under which the bus was rented. For some buses, all of [the delegates got off], for some buses, some of them got off, and for buses like ours, none of the delegates were allowed to leave. Ultimately, I think that turned out better for us because I heard that pedestrian delegates were being turned away from the bus entrance and had to walk all the way around the United Center to the pedestrian entrance.
MW: Did you see the protestors?
CHRISMON: They sent us through to the back of the United Center to avoid seeing protestors, which was the theme throughout the week. They don’t really want the delegates to see the protesters.
MW: Why do you think that is?
CHRISMON: I think they were worried about the number of them, and were worried about optics and also safety for delegates. I heard from different groups that they were expecting 30,000 to 40,000 protestors. Those numbers didn’t seem to have panned out, but still, there was the perceived threat to the DNC that those protesters would be there and that there could be even some sort of minor damage that would occur that would be detrimental.
MW: Did you feel safe throughout the week?
CHRISMON: I felt safe 100% of the time. The DNC — I heard a number thrown out — spent $100 million on security. And I don’t know if that includes the Secret Service, but the DNC spent a lot of money trying to keep us safe. Unfortunately, that did have some effects on other parts of the city that I may not necessarily agree with.
MW: Such as?
CHRISMON: I went on a train, and I saw a person yelling. They seemed like they were either intoxicated or something else was happening to them. Normally when I ride the train in Dallas or Austin, they may just get approached by one transit officer or something, but I saw eight DHS agents start walking towards them, which made me unsteady. But it really showed how secure the DNC was for delegates because they had people from DHS and Secret Service and the FBI. We not only had armed guards on our buses but there were guards in the hotels.
When we arrived at the DNC, they had bomb-sniffing dogs go under our buses for five minutes, trying to make sure that we didn’t have any explosives. I went through Secret Service, and I don’t know how many times I had to flash my delegate’s badge, but it was at least 50 times over the week. Safety was of the utmost concern to the DNC.
MW: Can you describe what it was like being in the United Center with all that energy?
CHRISMON: There is just so much energy from every delegation. And sometimes during the speeches, one state’s representative would come up, or one state would be mentioned, or something, and everybody from that state would cheer — and nobody else would, and it’d be funny.
But, at the same time, sometimes there was united energy all around one moment. And you’d see volunteers coming up the aisles with trash bags full of signs, cardboard poles sticking out, and you’re like, “Oh, something big is about to happen,” because they mass pass out these signs that we all hold before a big thing. They’d be “USA” signs. Or “We Fight, We Win” — that was a big one that I actually kept, and am going to hang up in my room, framed for the rest of time, because I just love it so much. But you’d know there were these big moments happening, and you’d get excited.
The speeches were really, really awesome to hear in person. I was only 12 when Obama left office in 2017, and so I figured that I’d probably never hear an Obama speech like the one he gave on the second night in person, but I did that night, and it was awesome.
There were always these organic, homegrown cheers that arose. It wasn’t like somebody from the party telling us, “Now cheer this,” it’d be like you hear somebody else chanting, “We Fight, We Win,” or, “U-S-A!” and then you’d hear other people doing it. It spreads naturally. Soon enough, you get the whole stadium cheering.
MW: How many different signs did you end up getting?
CHRISMON: We got probably at least 20 signs throughout the whole convention. Multiple different colors of the “USA” one. There was the “We Love Joe” one, the Kamala one, the “Vote” one. There were so many.
MW: How did you feel about Biden’s speech on the first night?
CHRISMON: I definitely felt like it had an energy, but it drew on a little long. It felt like it was maybe the longest speech at the convention, more so than Vice President Kamala Harris’s speech. I think people were ready to see the new face of the Democratic Party, and so when you have this hour-plus long speech, people were getting a little bit tired near the end, especially because it was late at night. But there was definitely energy for him, and people were excited to see him.
MW: How did you feel about him stepping aside?
CHRISMON: I admire what he’s done in stepping aside. I think that I was enthusiastic about him as a president, and I was ready for him to be our nominee. But I think that the debate really hurt us. And I know it took a while for people to accept that, but my congressman, Lloyd Doggett, was actually the first Democrat to call for Biden to step aside and let somebody new into the race. And I was excited to see that once everything crystallized, Kamala Harris would be the new nominee.
I definitely admire a lot of the legislation that Biden has passed. The Inflation Reduction Act has been phenomenal. Child tax credits have done some amazing, amazing things for children and young mothers around the United States. And I think that he’s handled Ukraine well. I do think that for young people, his handling of the war in Gaza has been contentious, but I do think that seeing him step aside for Kamala Harris, who is more progressive on that issue, has definitely soothed a lot of young people’s anger or frustration with that.
MW: Do you have empathy for the situation where Biden should have been speaking on night four as the man we were nominating and yet wasn’t?
CHRISMON: Absolutely. I can’t imagine holding the most powerful office, arguably, in the world, and you’re excited to be your party’s nominee for that office again, and then after a debate — where he does have a speech impediment, he has a stutter — you get pushed out. I think I’d feel horrible if I was President Biden. I can’t imagine how he must have felt shortly thereafter.
And I totally understand the urge to resist that push. I think that’s part of Biden’s nature as a politician — I think that is what propelled him to where he is nowadays. I think that his choosing to step aside for the good of the country, and voices like Nancy Pelosi really calling on him to do so, was really good for our democracy.
MW: Let’s talk briefly about the roll call, which was, for lack of a better word, vibrant. It was much more exciting than the Republican roll call, which was fairly mundane. What did it feel like to be witnessing this historic, jubilant roll call?
CHRISMON: The roll call was great. I think seeing each state doing its own thing was fun. I loved seeing Georgia. I loved seeing how each state had its own twist on things, like how all the Wisconsin delegates had those cheese hats. Then I also remember one of my friends from Ohio, a young gay delegate like me, he danced with like five other Ohio delegates during his roll call, and the Trump War Room posted a video of them and were like, “These guys are so weird.” And then [the delegates] capitalized on that energy and ratioed Trump War Room on [X]. It was an energetic time, even if Republicans tried to call my friends weird.
MW: How did you feel when it was your delegation’s turn?
CHRISMON: Really good. I do remember being just like, “I can’t wait for Texas to come next,” because Texas is so far down in the alphabet that just about every other delegation came before us. I loved seeing some of my friends’ reactions. A lot of them were surprised at how big the mustache of my party chair is. I got texts like, “Oh my gosh, your party chair has such a big mustache.” And I’m like, “Yep. He’s the cute, old guy with a big mustache.”
MW: When Texas was nominating, did you have any special pride that you were part of that?
CHRISMON: I think there’s a lot of pride in Texas for Texas. I think that a lot of people think of us as this really Republican state — we’re not big in Democratic politics. But Colin Allred is within the margin of error to overtake Ted Cruz in the Senate race. And Harris is within five points of Trump in the presidential race. I think there was a lot of pride among everybody in the Texas delegation because we have so many cool congresspeople. We had Jasmine Crockett, who spoke on the stage. We have Congressman Colin Allred, who also spoke on the stage. We have Greg Casar, who’s this big voice in progressive politics. And we had all these voices that were there, and we were so excited to see the roll call happen.
MW: But, you personally, what kind of pride did you take in your state at that moment?
CHRISMON: I think that our state is beautiful. It’s the second largest by land area, only behind Alaska. We have five different biomes. We have mountains, we have desert, we have swamp, we have these vibrant, big cities in the Texas Triangle. Dallas has a long history, and so does Austin and San Antonio and Houston. Houston has some of the best food in the nation. We’re this multicultural state where Vietnamese has to be on the electoral ballots in Texas because of how big our Vietnamese population is. We’re this big, diverse state with so many exciting people and so many exciting cities. And I think that a lot of people don’t think about Texas like that.
Right now, at the very least, I feel amazing as a gay person in Austin. My city’s mayor marched in Pride in Austin — not in Dallas because Eric Johnson switched parties — but in Austin at least, my mayor, marching in Pride is awesome. And in Dallas seeing my city council members marching at Pride. And so it feels great to be a Texan when we have big, accepting cities like this. It’s just a wonderful state.
MW: Any other speeches at the convention move you?
CHRISMON: I loved Dana Nessel, Attorney General of Michigan. She was the one who said, “You can pry this wedding band from my cold, dead, gay hands.” She was great. I loved seeing a gay person, or a gay woman have the energy to say what needed to be said and say it on the big stage, “Take my gay marriage from me. Try to.”
And I also loved seeing Jasmine Crockett. That’s a little bit of personal pride because of growing up in Dallas. It was personal pride for me to see my congresswoman when I was in high school on the national stage.
Both the Obamas were amazing. It was wonderful to hear Michelle Obama speak and just talk about how important it is to defeat Donald Trump again, how important it is to get out there and do something, and just what it means to be a Democrat and be enthusiastic about politics.
I loved AOC. She was a great voice for young people. She’s very popular. Young people love her. She’s probably the most well-perceived member nationally among all demographics of the squad. I think that she’s a rising star, and I think that giving her primetime speech on the first day was a really good move by the Democratic National Convention Committee and that she gave a great speech that had a lot of energy. And I like how she approached the issue of Palestine in the speech.
MW: When you’re there listening to speech after speech, do you get tired of it?
CHRISMON: Yeah. It definitely is safe to say that you get a bit of speech fatigue. It depends on the speech, who it is, and what day it is. Even though it was so late at night, I was enthusiastic about hearing Kamala Harris’s speech and hopefully seeing a surprise guest — even though there was none.
But it depends on the speech. Some of those speeches were the same after the same speech, after the same speech, and you get a little tired of that. It’s only human when you’ve been sitting in the same seat at the United Center since 4 p.m., you start to wear out a little. But I think that’s why the DNC put those big names at the end of the night — the Obamas, Biden, Vice President Harris, and Tim Walz.
MW: Do they feed you while you’re there, or do you go out and get stadium food?
CHRISMON: You can go out and get United Center food if you want to brave the lines and brave the $20. And then you’re not allowed to bring it back into the arena. But I did not eat there. Some days I would not have eaten at all. I would’ve gotten a coffee in the morning, and then I would wait until midnight to get Zombie Taco.
MW: Spoken like a true 19-year-old. What was your assessment of Kamala’s big speech? Did she nail it, in your opinion?
CHRISMON: I definitely think she did. I think that it was a great speech. I think that it hit all the key issues it needed to. I think that she appealed to the left, and she appealed to maybe some Republicans that she’s hoping to win over. I think that she handled issues that affect young people with grace. She spoke about climate change briefly. She recognized that Israel has a right to defend itself, yet she also recognized Palestinian people as being a sovereign people that deserve a state of their own. And I think that that was important. That was a key first step towards resolving an issue that has been plaguing us not only since October, but before that. I’m mainly talking about the British mandate for Palestine. And so I think that that was good and I’m glad she did that. Overall, it was a great speech, and she did a phenomenal job. There were no fumbles. There were no stumbles. She spoke about everything she needed to, and she spoke about it succinctly.
MW: What was it like being in the room with who you hope to be the future president?
CHRISMON: Oh my gosh, it was beautiful to see and to think about as a concept. I think she has a phenomenal chance of being our next president. At the time, I was trying to get as many good pictures of her as I could because the Texas delegation didn’t exactly have the best spot in the arena. We were seated behind American Samoa and some other delegations. But hearing from her and hearing from our next president was phenomenal. There were just so many cheers and so much energy in the arena. We all had those Kamala signs. I thought that was great. Whenever she said something that really excited people, you’d see the entire crowd stand up and those vertical signs that just say Kamala on them sticking up throughout the crowd. It was beautiful to see.
MW: And do you think she’s going to be the next president?
CHRISMON: I certainly think so. She is polling miles and leagues better than how we were polling with Biden two months ago. I think that that’s really important, especially with swing voters. And Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz’s favorables look amazing.
We have a very strong ticket. I’m really excited to see where this takes us. And I hope that her strength can help carry Texas into maybe having a Democratic senator. Fingers crossed. Don’t know if it’ll happen, but if it does, that night would be amazing.
On campus, as the University Democrats, we will be trying to help elect her. Tomorrow, my first day on campus, the first thing I’m doing after unloading my dorm is registering new voters, and putting up posters we’ve made. We’re geofencing Instagram ads. We’ve launched a voter shuttle program because the university is shutting down our voting center and implementing a voting center with half the polling machines. We’re really trying our hardest to make sure that UT does its part.
I remember hearing from a friend that for the Harris campaign, out of all the locations in Texas, UT’s campus is one of the ones that they’re targeting. And I think it’s because we’re such a large campus. We have such a high turnout compared to other campuses around the nation. Travis County has a 92% voter registration rate. That is the highest of any county in Texas. Personally, I will be trying my hardest boots on the ground to get these voters to turn out even further.
MW: I have to ask, what does it feel like to have tens of thousands of red, white, and blue balloons showered upon you?
CHRISMON: Oh, my gosh, it is crazy. I kept getting mad because they weren’t hitting our section, actually. They were hitting a bunch of the other sections, and then finally, they hit our section.
You saw them since the first day — they were up in the rafters. And then, after Kamala’s speech, they were slowly released over you. They were released in sections from the ceiling. I might have a picture of the ceiling, but they were separated into sections. They’re all different sizes. There are these huge, giant ones, and so then a minute or two after they all release you just hear, “Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop” all over the stadium. People were taking them.
It’s crazy. I mean, I’ve never seen so many balloons before, especially just raining over you, so many different sizes. People are bouncing them all around, they’re landing by your feet. You’re having to step over them or pop them. It’s crazy.
MW: Seeing that this is your first year to vote in a presidential election, as a young voter, what issues are important to you on a national scale?
CHRISMON: I think my experience here is a little niche because I live in Austin, but housing is a big issue. Prior to 2020/2019, Austin was just becoming more and more unaffordable. But once our mayor was elected and our new city council has taken place, our rate of affordability is growing more than any city in the nation, because of our housing laws. As a student, housing affordability is really important for me. So, I would love to see that at a national scale, and I love that Obama mentioned it in his speech. Harris mentioned it in hers, talking about building more housing. That’s really important to me.
Another one is about regulating car size. I don’t drive, and I know a lot of other young people who don’t drive around here because it’s Austin. These massive cars, even though they may protect drivers marginally more who are in them, they wildly increase fatality rates — not only for pedestrians but other drivers. So, I’d like to see some more stringent regulations on car sizing.
MW: What about from an LGBTQ perspective? What do you want to see on the national stage?
CHRISMON: I’d like to see some better protections. I know of Texas County clerks who are suing because they don’t want to issue gay marriage licenses anymore, and those are working their way up through the courts. I’m worried about our right to gay marriage and gay people loving each other on the national level, especially in my state. I’d like to see some more protections passed through Congress.
MW: It’s going to be a close election. If Donald Trump wins, if the unthinkable happens, what do we do? What next?
CHRISMON: I actually have a tote bag right here. It says, “Local Elections Matter.” I really think that’s the message that we need to keep in mind there. Local elections matter. If Donald Trump were to win and heinous things were to happen nationwide, your local government can help mitigate the consequences of those negative actions. Abortion is illegal in the entire state of Texas. But the Austin City Council just passed a budget that gives women who are seeking abortions the funds to go out of state and get their abortions. That’s huge. That means that women in Austin can get abortions even though it’s illegal in the state of Texas.
I think that similarly, local government can mitigate risks for marginalized people in other ways if Trump were to get elected. I mean, we have sanctuary cities in the state of Texas, where ICE can’t necessarily impose deportations as rigorously. I think that that can similarly be applied to gay people, to trans people, to people who will suffer under a Trump presidency. So, local elections matter. Make sure that you elect people that will ensure your safety and your security at the local level.
MW: Conversely, if Harris wins, is she, in your view, going to be a transformational president for us?
CHRISMON: I think that she will be able to execute things through executive order that really do matter. But I think that it really depends on whether we win the Senate. In doing so, we will be able to pass some monumental amazing bills, through both Houses of Congress and to be signed by President Harris. But otherwise, we just have to be looking at her cabinet, and make sure that she does great things through executive order.
MW: What is the best thing about being a Democrat?
CHRISMON: The best thing about being a Democrat is honestly that we’re the party of not only the working class in America, with unions and with all that important legislation and action towards unions and a better minimum wage, but the party of people that are marginalized — and have been marginalized in the past — in America.
We’re the party that helped pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with LBJ, we’re the party that helped pass the Respect for Marriage Act most recently. We’re the party that helped appoint the Supreme Court justices that ruled on Obergefell v. Hodges. Joe Biden was the first major party nominee for president or vice president to publicly express his support for gay marriage. That was during the Obama administration and that really pushed the Obama administration to the left on that issue. I’m really proud of that in the Democratic Party.
MW: And finally, how patriotic do you feel after the experience of attending the DNC?
CHRISMON: America as a country, it’s great. We’re a great country. We’re a country of immigrants, where anybody can come from around the world and call themselves an American, and I think that’s a beautiful thing.
I think we’re one of the countries where our people live the best, and we help contribute to world defense so much. It’s phenomenal how much we’ve helped countries around the world from becoming a worse version of themselves, and I think it’s beautiful that we do that. I just think that we, as Americans, and we, as a country, are phenomenal. We not only help our own people but people around the world, and I think that’s great.
Register to Vote at www.vote.gov or www.vote.org.
Follow Jack Chrismon on X at @jacksotheracct.
Source: Metro Weekly – www.metroweekly.com
