This is Matt Hughes.

A recent Harvard poll of 18 to 29 year olds, folks who are classified as millennials, showed that many within my generation do not want to run for political office or engage in politics. And that’s dismaying.

Unfortunately, many within my generation are turned off from politics and to a degree and I don’t blame them. Politics in North Carolina and nationally have become vitriolic and caustic with not a whole lot getting done as it relates to everyday people. The constant back and forth can be just as present in party politics as well. It leaves one to ask, but what about the people?

What’s troubling is that young people don’t have the ambition to run for office nor do they see government as the only vehicle to bring about change. However, the millennials in this poll cited justice, national security, the economy, the environment, and racial and gender equality as issues they cared about and issues that require government action. Often the most impactful change on some of these can even occur right here close to home on local boards and commissions, or on town councils and county commissions.

We need more young people who are involved in government at the bottom as well as the top who are work horses and not show horses. Young people who are committed to improving the lives of everyone, yet have a realistic expectation that politics at any level can be rough and tumble, but it doesn’t have to be a blood sport. In fact it can be rewarding and positive experience knowing the good that can be achieved.

We have many examples of young people running for office and winning for all the right reasons as well as becoming leaders in partisan organizations. Four years ago my friend Lee Storrow and I did just that when he ran for Town Council and I was elected to lead the local Democrats. But we’re the outliers, not the norm.

I know that the folks reading this might not be millennials themselves. But we must be encouraging young people to not just get out and vote, but to become the change they want to see in our body politic. Often young people are called the promise of the future; but instead they can and should be the promise of today working no matter the role or responsibility because we need them.

Matt Hughes is chair of the Orange County Democratic Party and presidents of the Democratic Chairs Association.