Andrew Yang, Beto O’Rourke.

Chris Riotta, The Independent

Jeffrey Clemmons, a teenager from Rockwall, Texas, says he originally became interested in politics because of Donald Trump.

But then something changed.

“I’ll go ahead and say it: at 16 I didn’t know anything about politics, but I was intrigued by Donald Trump,” he told me in October, while driving home from a Beto O’Rourke rally. “I would say that I was a Trump supporter at that time.”

Now 19 years old, Clemmons says his neighbors aren’t nearly as politically engaged as he would like them to be. His home county had a constitutional amendment election just two years ago that saw abysmal voter turnout, with less than 4 per cent of total registered voters participating in the election. One precinct only saw 14 voters cast their ballots. Still, the teen speaks about his community with pride and affection.

Clemmons starts nearly every morning with a news podcast and fresh pot of coffee. As a student at Huston-Tillotson University, the historically black university in Austin, he also works in his spare time at a consulting agency for electoral campaigns and helps lead a group called Young Adults Town Hall, which describes itself as a “non-partisan town hall series bringing young people together to discuss important issues in a time of division.”

Young Adult Town Hall “is working to increase engagement,” he says, “and I wanted to be a part of that.”

Clemmons can pull out facts about local voter attitudes in the region without a second of hesitation, as he sprinkles in quotes from George Washington and the like. He does this while explaining his own reasoning for undergoing somewhat of an unusual political transition following the 2016 elections.

When he goes to cast his first ever vote for president in 2020, Clemmons says he’s decided on a new man for the job: “I’m definitely vying for Andrew Yang.”

“I really agree with Yang’s campaign being about humanity first,” he said. “There are so many different interests against us as society changes and technology becomes more prevalent, and I think we need to be focused on that while working on solutions right now so that way 20 years from now we don’t end up in a scary situation.”

It’s hard to place Clemmons, a self-identified independent, on a specific part of the political spectrum. Not that he needs to be boxed into a political category: “I think partisanship is terribly destructive,” he says, adding that it’s part of the reason why he continues not to be associated with either the Democrats or the Republicans. 

However, while the teen used to be a fan of Trump, we spoke the day he attended a Texas rally for O’Rourke — who has since bowed out of the race — simply because the demonstration was countering a nearby rally held by the president.

Clemmons is now backing another Democratic candidate in Yang, who has promised to dole out $1,000 a month to every single American as part of his universal basic income plan called the “Freedom Dividend.”

What could cause such a change in political support?

“Several months ago I would not have said that I vote more in line with the Democrats,” he said. “But the Republicans are spineless. You look at the impeachment saga and the only thing they have been able to critique him on is the situation in Turkey.”

He goes on to describe Trump’s behavior and rhetoric as “detrimental” to the country, adding: “I’m black as well, and people who want to damage minority communities, communities that have been historically persecuted, I feel that they have been emboldened to go after us and act in ways they never would have, because in a previous era it would have been undignified for them to act out that way publicly.”