Rep. Maxine Waters said voter evaluation of performance, not age alone, should determine fitness for elected office as she faces a primary challenge from a younger candidate in California.
The 87-year-old California Democrat is running against 53-year-old Myla Rahman, a nonprofit executive and progressive candidate seeking generational change in the district. Waters is among Congress’s oldest serving members and has repeatedly defended her record based on accomplishments and effectiveness rather than chronological age.
Waters’s Defense
During a Thursday Capitol Hill discussion, Waters outlined her framework for evaluating elected officials. “What do they do? What can you document? What can you give them credit for? What can you criticize them for?” Waters said. “If you do what it takes to evaluate, then you can decide.”
She emphasized that performance metrics and legislative effectiveness should guide voter decisions on age-related fitness for office. Waters declined to directly address whether an 80-year-old president might be too old to serve.
The Challenge
Rahman has centered her campaign on bringing new leadership to the district, where the average age is 36 years old. “People want new leadership,” Rahman said, pointing to her experience as a renter grappling with housing affordability and raising children in the area.
Rahman argued that elections should focus on future direction rather than past accomplishments. She contrasts her position with Waters’s tenure, which spans decades in Congress.
Waters’s Record
Waters counters that her experience and demonstrated daily energy justify another term in office. In February, she appeared at an anti-ICE demonstration in downtown Los Angeles, standing before officers in riot gear as police deployed pepper balls and tear gas.
“What I see here at the detention center are people exercising their constitutional rights,” Waters said at the time. Thousands of protesters gathered outside City Hall before marching to the detention facility, where some agitators pushed a construction dumpster and blocked the building’s entrance, according to police.
