Jace Laquerre

“Growing up, I always liked watching the results come in for the elections on TV with my dad,” Jace Laquerre recalls, thinking back to his earliest memories of U.S. politics.

Although Laquerre remembers supporting presidential candidates Senator John McCain in 2008 and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in 2012, he was just a kid at the time. His first call to action, he says, came from Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky during a speech Paul made in Vermont in 2015.

“I got to meet him and I heard him speak, and I think his principles of liberty and limited government really inspired me to get involved,” Laquerre says.

Today, he says the views he shares with Senator Paul can be easily summarized: “I just think that if you’re not hurting anybody and you’re not taking any of their stuff, you should be able to do whatever you want in society.”

But even before he heads to the polls, the young Vermont native has already made his mark on national politics. At this year’s Republican National Convention in Cleveland, he served as its youngest elected delegate.

Laquerre, a high school senior, turned 18 on August 21, making him eligible to vote in the general election on November 8.

“I'm a ‘go big or go home’ guy.”
One of Laquerre’s goals this election, he says, is to give a platform for young millennials – now the nation’s largest voting bloc – to express themselves and become more involved in the political process.

“I think young people really have a strong opinion about what should be done in their country, but I think a lot of them don't really know how to create a change,” he says. “Being involved in politics is how change happens in a country.”

Laquerre’s first choice wasn’t Trump. Nor his second. When asked at the Republican convention in July whom he supported, Laquerre looked around the convention floor cautiously, and smirked, “unfortunately, Trump.” By that time, the RNC convention was nearly over, and any hope of a late Republican alternative had fizzled.

Rand Paul was out. So was Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Laquerre’s backup choice. And he said he wasn’t ready to back Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, a former governor of New Mexico.
So that left one option. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was the candidate he liked least from the very beginning, he says.

“My generation, if she gets elected, is going to be overseas fighting in senseless wars that we don't need to be involved in.”

“I think it will be more of an anti-Clinton vote more than anything,” Laquerre says. “I was never a big fan of [Trump], I have a lot of reservations about him still.”

He says he sees Trump as an opportunist who lacks principle. “He says whatever is politically advantageous at the moment.”

Still, he says he believes Clinton is far worse, calling her a “neoconservative.”

“She is going to get us involved in senseless wars that we do not need to be involved in,” he says, pointing to her vote in favor of the Iraq War and her support to overthrow Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

“[Senator] Bernie [Sanders] said it the best: She is untrustworthy, she has bad judgment,” Laquerre says. “I just don't think she would be right for America, and I think the Republicans offer an alternative to that that would be better.”

VOA’s Yulya Yarmolenko contributed to this interview.