Demo delegate champions concerns of young voters

Eight years after Sarah Mulhern first got involved in Democratic politics, she's headed to the party's national convention in Boston as a member of the Utah delegation.

Nothing too surprising about a longtime volunteer getting a chance to participate in nominating a presidential candidate. Except that Mulhern was just 10 years old when she started stuffing envelopes.

That makes her the youngest of Utah's 33 delegates and one of the youngest national delegates, period. Mulhern turned 18 on May 7, the day before she was elected at the state Democratic convention.

The candidate that Mulhern worked to elect all those years ago is also a first-time delegate to the national convention scheduled for July 26-29. But it's not really a reunion for Mulhern — that candidate was her mother, state Sen. Patrice Arent, D-Salt Lake City.

"It does add to the experience," Mulhern said. "It's going to be fun."

Mulhern said she decided to run for national delegate to make sure the concerns of young voters are heard. "We're worried about college educations and being able to finance college educations and being able to get jobs when we get out," she said.

She also worries about the continuing conflict in Iraq. "I just find it mind-blowing that I have friends joining the Marines. I have a friend who's going to be deployed to Iraq in September, a very close friend," Mulhern said. "Then I have friends who aren't even registered to vote."

That's something Mulhern hopes to change. She has already organized voter registration drives at Cottonwood High School as president of the Young Democrats chapter she founded there.

"If I was going to say I have one major goal right now in my life, it would be to fight . . . that perception among teenagers that politics is boring and that their vote and activity don't matter," she said.

That's just what local and national party leaders want to hear. They've long been troubled by the low turnout among young voters in the more than three decades since the voting age was lowered from 21 years old to 18.

"One of the sad parts of politics is that young people aren't involved to nearly the level that they could be," said Tony Welch, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C.

"For all the delegations out there, it's not only refreshing but, frankly, it's our future to have young people politically active," he said, adding that Mulhern and the other young delegates should expect plenty of interest from MTV and other media outlets.

"There's a lot of attention," Welch said. "It's rare to be young and at the convention."