A 19-year-old college sophomore who graduated high school just last year has been elected to oversee a major Arizona court office, sparking mixed reactions online as some questioned his qualifications while others pointed to his victory as further evidence of Tuesday’s overwhelming Democratic wave.
Democrat Sebastian Matta, an Arizona State University student, defeated former Republican state Sen. Jeff Dial in the race for Maricopa County clerk of the Superior Court. The teenager will now oversee an office in the nation’s fourth-largest county that handles approximately 15,000 documents and nearly $500,000 in transactions each day.
“I only got a campaign manager, like, three weeks ago,” Matta told ABC15 in a post-election interview.
Matta, who studies philosophy of law, politics, and morality at ASU, said his experience includes competing in four high school national debate tournaments, before admitting that he had been awake for 30 hours tracking the election results.
“I vehemently enjoy campaigning, I vehemently enjoy everything that I’ve done up to this point, and I’m sure I’m vehemently going to enjoy the clerk’s office,” he said, adding, “I’m a normal kid — who is running for office.”
Matta said he hopes to introduce electronic filing for probate cases and expand language accessibility in the courts, but emphasized that he does not want to rush things.
“I don’t plan on instituting some of my campaign changes for a couple of months, even a year in,” he explained. “The first long while of my tenure will be getting to be friendly with the staff. I mean, I understand that it’s very scary to have a 19-year-old be your boss, but I’m not just any 19-year-old.”
