Senior politicians discuss the Democratic Party youth movement

Barbara Boxer decided she was done. Entering his 70s, after being re-elected to the U.S. Senate, he decided that his fourth term would be his last.

“I felt like it was time,” Boxer said. “I wanted to do other things.”

He also knew that the Democratic bench was filled with many bright candidates; among them was California’s then-attorney general, Kamala Harris, who replaced Boxer in Washington en route to being selected as Joe Biden’s vice president.

When Boxer retired in 2017 after 24 years in the Senate, he walked away from one of the most powerful and privileged positions in American politics, a job that many clung to until their last breath.

(Boxer tried to gently nudge fellow Democrat and former Senate colleague Dianne Feinstein, whose mental and physical decline was widely chronicled during her difficult final years in office. Feinstein, who ignored calls to step aside, died at age 90, hours after voting on a procedural issue in the Senate.)

Now an effort is underway among Democrats from Hawaii to Massachusetts to force other top lawmakers to defer to a new, younger generation of leaders as Boxer did. The movement is driven by disgust for Donald Trump, as well as the usual turbulent ambition that haunts a political party every time it loses a dispiriting election like the one Democrats face in 2024.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi became the highest-profile target.

Last week, he drew his second major challenger to re-election; State Sen. Scott Wiener, who is running alongside tech millionaire Saikat Chakrabarti, who has been campaigning against the incumbent for the better part of a year.

Pelosi, who is 85 and has not faced a serious electoral challenge in San Francisco since Ronald Reagan was in the White House, is expected to announce whether she will run again in 2026 after the Nov. 4 special election in California.

Boxer, who turns 85 next month, didn’t offer any advice to Pelosi, but Pelosi pushed back against the idea that age necessarily equates to disability or political obsolescence. He noted Ted Kennedy and John McCain, two of the senators with whom he served and who continued to be vital and influential in Congress well into their 70s.

On the other hand, Boxer said, “Some people don’t deserve to be there for five minutes, let alone five years… They’re 50. Does that make it good? No. There are people who are 60 and old and out of ideas.”

Boxer said there is no “one size fits all” measure for when a legislator is past his or her expiration date. He suggested it would be better for voters to see what motivates someone to stay in office. Are they acting for a purpose and are they still capable of doing the job, or is it a matter of personal ego or something psychological?

“The last six years were my most productive years,” said Boxer, who opposes both term limits and a mandatory retirement age for members of Congress. “And if they had said 65 was going to come out, I wouldn’t have been there.”

Art Agnos did not choose to leave office.

When he lost his re-election bid after a single term as mayor of San Francisco, he was a youthful 53 compared to some of today’s Democratic elders.

“I was in the middle of my prime, so I ran for re-election,” he said. “And frankly,” he added with a laugh, “I still feel like, at 87, I’m in my prime.”

Agnos, a friend and longtime ally of Pelosi, was angered by the ageism he saw against lawmakers from certain backgrounds. He asked why this was acceptable in politics when it was deplored in almost every field.

“Which profession do we say we want bright young people who have never done before to take over, because they are smart, young and say the right things?” Agnos asked rhetorically. “Would you go and say, ‘Let me find a neurosurgeon who hasn’t done this before, but he’s very smart and young and promising?’ We don’t do that. Right?

“Give me someone who has experience, who has been through this situation and knows how to deal with a crisis or a particular problem,” Agnos said.

Pete Wilson also left office earlier than he wanted, but that was because term limits forced him out of office after eight years as governor of California. (Prior to that, he served eight years in the Senate and 11 years as mayor of San Diego.)

“I thought I did a good job … and a lot of people said, ‘Wow, it’s a shame you can’t run for a third term,'” Wilson said as the Yale class of ’55 traveled to New Haven, Conn., for its college reunion. “Actually, I agreed with them.”

Unlike Boxer, though, Wilson supports term limits as a way to inject fresh blood into the political system and prevent too many embattled incumbents from recklessly overstaying their terms.

Not that he was blind to the urge to endure. Strength. Advantages. And perhaps most of all, the desire to get things done.

Wilson, 92, maintains an active legal practice in Century City and did not hesitate: “Yes!” he exclaimed — when asked whether he felt capable of serving as governor today, even as he worked his way through his tenth decade on Earth.

His wife, Gayle, could be heard giggling in the background.

“He’s laughing,” said Wilson dryly, “because he knows there’s no danger of me doing it.”