History made as Kingdom Hearts fan elected to US Congress

Florida voters made history Tuesday by electing Maxwell Alejandro Frost to the House of Representatives, sending the Democratic candidate from the state’s 10th district to Congress. Frost, an avowed fan of Square Enix’s Kingdom Hearts series, may be the first member of Congress to know who could answer what a Xehanort is.

More importantly, Frost is the first Gen Z candidate to be elected to the House. He’s just 25 years old — only five years older than the Kingdom Hearts series itself and much younger than the average age of a U.S. representative, which is 58 years.

After Frost’s win on Tuesday, first reported by the Associated Press, a tweet of his from 2017, in which he noted his lapsed love of video games and the Kingdom Hearts series in particular, gained renewed traction. Frost tweeted at the time, “Haven’t played video games in years but I’ll always remember how awesome Kingdom Hearts is.” That tweet included a link to Yoko Shimomura’s “Dearly Beloved” from the Kingdom Hearts 2 soundtrack. (For what it’s worth, earlier this year, Frost also tweeted his sympathies in response to the news of Yu-Gi-Oh! creator Kazuki Takahashi’s death. So there’s at least one Yu-Gi-Oh! fan in Congress now, too.)

Frost, who is Afro-Cuban descent, did not run on a pro-Kingdom Hearts platform, of course. He is a progressive, running in a blue-leaning district in the Orlando area of Central Florida, which typically elects a Democratic candidate. Frost advocates for abortion rights, gun control legislation, addressing climate change, universal health care, and expanding the Supreme Court, among other progressive ideals. Over the past decade, he’s worked with the American Civil Liberties Union on voters’ rights and with March for Our Lives, the student-led movement for gun control legislation.

“I am Congressman-Elect Maxwell Alejandro Frost and I will be the first member of Generation-Z in the United States Congress,” Frost tweeted late Tuesday. “WE MADE HISTORY!!! Don’t count young people out.”