A growing number of young Democrats have launched primary bids against the party’s old guard in recent months, underscoring generational tensions that burst into the open following former Vice President Kamala Harris’s defeat in November.

Former House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) last week drew a primary challenger 50 years his junior in Harry Jarin, who cast the incumbent as representative of “a bygone era.” He follows a number of other young candidates who have launched primary bids against veteran Democratic lawmakers.

The trend comes amid renewed anxiety within the party over the issue of age, spurred by new revelations about former President Biden and the recent deaths of several older House members.

“A lot of politicians in Washington, they stew in this environment in D.C., sometimes for decades at a time, and they lose touch with young people and working people and people outside the beltway,” Jarin told The Hill.

“I think that's the reason for the sudden surge of primary challengers: We've now spent our whole lives seeing the same Democratic leaders do the same unproductive things in Congress and not actually deliver results.”

Jarin, a 35-year-old volunteer firefighter and former “Jeopardy!” contestant, is vying for the seat in Maryland’s 5th Congressional District that Hoyer, 85, has held since his election in 1981. Hoyer, who won in November by more than 30 points, hasn’t announced whether he’ll seek reelection to a 24th term in 2026.

In California, 39-year-old tech millionaire Saikat Chakrabarti, a veteran of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) 2016 campaign and former chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), is challenging 85-year-old former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D), who........

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