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By Daniel Orton
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Like many people in political circles, Charlotte Alter watched in disbelief on Sunday as Democratic Representative Haley Stevens announced that she was endorsing Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee in the race for a U.S. Senate seat in Michigan.
“For as long as I’ve known her she’s prided herself on being a loyal Dem team player, and now she’s torching that entire career and reputation in a single day,” Alter, a journalist and author, wrote on X. “Absolutely wild to watch a political career implode in such a destructive way.”
Alter’s view on Stevens’ November surprise—a decision called “despicable” by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and brave by President Donald Trump—is worth paying attention to. She wrote The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For, a 2020 book that profiled 10 millennial rising stars in politics as a way of examining a generation beginning to take power in an America dominated by a gerontocracy apparently unmoored from reality and the needs of the people.
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Newsweek contacted Alter for comment. In the introduction to her book, Alter made clear she was not attempting to predict the future careers of her subjects but using them to offer a preview of what America could look like with millennials in charge.
Stevens was one subject of the book, alongside widely recognized names such as Pete Buttigieg, who was transportation secretary under President Joe Biden, and Republican Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, and less well-known local figures who seemed poised for bigger things.
Six years later, their fortunes have diverged dramatically. Some rose to national prominence, while others left elected politics and several saw seemingly unstoppable careers suddenly derailed.
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Careers Crashing Back to Earth
Stevens provides the most spectacular example.
The former Obama administration official was part of Democrats’ celebrated 2018 House class and won reelection three times before giving up her seat to run for Senate this year. After narrowly losing the Democratic primary to Abdul El-Sayed, she pledged to support him, only to endorse Rogers two days before Tuesday's general election following an increasingly bitter dispute over Israel and El-Sayed’s political allies.
Two of the book’s Republican subjects have also discovered how quickly political fortunes can change.
Former Navy SEAL Dan Crenshaw arrived in Congress in 2019, seemingly tailor-made for national Republican politics. Instead, he lost his primary in March to Texas state Representative Steve Toth, becoming the first congressional incumbent denied renomination this cycle. Crenshaw had supported Ukraine aid and rejected claims that the 2020 election was stolen, while President Donald Trump declined to endorse him.
While Crenshaw zigged, Stefanik zagged, transforming from a comparatively moderate Republican into one of Trump’s fiercest congressional allies. She replaced Liz Cheney in House GOP leadership and was nominated by Trump to become U.N. ambassador before he withdrew the nomination, citing Republicans’ narrow House majority.
And more setbacks were to come. She launched a bid for New York governor last November, abandoned it weeks later and announced she would not seek another House term.
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The Ones Who Rose
When the book appeared, Buttigieg was concluding his improbable campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. He subsequently served four years as President Joe Biden’s transportation secretary and is again one of the party’s most prominent national figures. This year, Buttigieg has campaigned across the country for Democrats while leaving open a possible White House bid in 2028.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, meanwhile, has evolved from insurgent newcomer into one of the most recognizable Democrats in America. The New York representative won her 2026 primary with nearly 87 percent of the vote and remains firmly entrenched in her heavily Democratic district. Ocasio-Cortez’s ascendancy has also brought speculation about a potential presidential run in 2028, which could put her in the same Democratic primary field as Buttigieg.
Lauren Underwood’s rise has been less flashy but perhaps equally telling. The Illinois congresswoman, who became the youngest Black woman to serve in Congress when she took office in 2019 at age 32, is now a member of the House Appropriations Committee and co-chair of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee.
Finding Power Elsewhere
Eric Lesser was a Massachusetts state senator and former Obama White House aide when Alter profiled him. He ran for lieutenant governor in 2022, lost the Democratic primary and left the state Legislature. He now works as senior counsel at law firm WilmerHale.
Max Rose didn’t stay long in Congress. The Army veteran flipped a Staten Island-based seat in New York for Democrats in 2018, lost it to Republican Nicole Malliotakis in 2020 and lost a rematch two years later.
He remains in politics, however, serving as a senior adviser to VoteVets and, in a distinctly 2026 turn, advising Leading the Future, a political group backed by AI industry figures.
Braxton Winston was a Charlotte city councilman in North Carolina when Alter wrote about him. He later became mayor pro tem and was the Democratic nominee for North Carolina labor commissioner in 2024, losing with 47.25 percent of the vote. Last year, he was elected president of the North Carolina State AFL-CIO.
Svante Myrick became mayor of Ithaca, New York, at just 24. He left City Hall in 2022 and now leads the progressive organization People for the American Way.
Winston and Myrick followed neither the traditional ladder from local government to Congress nor statewide office. Both instead found political influence outside elected government.
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A Generation Scattered
Six years is a long time in politics. The period since Alter’s book was published has encompassed the COVID-19 pandemic, two presidential elections, the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, the end of the Biden presidency, Trump’s return to the White House and profound changes in both major parties.
Those upheavals altered not only the country Alter was writing about, but the political paths available to the generation she profiled. Some climbed the traditional ladder. Others discovered it had been pulled away, chose to step off it or found different ways to wield influence.
And then there is Stevens, whose extraordinary break with her own party on the eve of the 2026 midterms prompted Alter to liken it to the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a film in which alien duplicates replace the residents of a small California town.
Taken together, the 10 no longer look much like a single political generation moving together toward power. They look instead like a snapshot of a generation scattered in different directions by six tumultuous years in American politics.
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Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Daniel Orton and Dave Siminoff.
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