AKRON, Ohio — After winning the Democratic primary Tuesday for Mayor of Akron and facing at this time no challenger, Shammas Malik is looking at what is likely a clear path to the job come November and seven months to build a transition.
"Hopefully in the next week or so, we're going to make some initial announcements about the structure and what that can look like and some of the people that we want to be involved," Malik said.
Focus from day one of this process, he tells us, will be safety.
"Safety is the biggest issue in the community. Everybody deserves to feel safe; without safety, you can't do much of anything else. It's hard to hold a job, it's hard to get a good education, and so we're really going to be focused on that," he said. "Both really implementing community policing, focusing on youth violence prevention and some of those upstring things, dealing with some of the behavioral challenges that our students and our young people are dealing with."
Akron is going through a turbulent time following last year's police shooting of Jayland Walker and the decision last month not to charge the officers involved. Malik says he will not hide from the difficult conversations ahead.
"We have to understand that there is real anger and real pain in the Black community, in the whole community, but particularly in the Black community, for a reason," he said. "We have to tackle the trust gaps that are there."
The victory for 32-year-old Malik falls in line with a developing trend in Ohio — the millennial mayor. Consider this in a year where the two leading party candidates for president next year, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, are currently 80 and 76, respectively.
Malik's ascension would mean the mayors of three of Ohio's five largest cities are now millennials born between 1982 and 1994, with Justin Bibb, who just turned 36 last week leading Cleveland, and Aftab Pureval at 40 leading Cincinnati.
They're not alone. Last fall, Ohio voters elected 38-year-old JD Vance to the U.S. Senate, while Northeast Ohio voters also sent 37-year-old Emilia Sykes and 34-year-old Max Miller to Congress.
Gen Z voters like Natalie Vrobel from Akron say age is something they're taking more and more into consideration.
"We want to have people who are more our age because there is an age divide. Like I was talking to my grandma the other day, and you can just sense the difference in generations," Vrobel said.
Others, like Jeffrey Rucker, believe there needs to be a mix.
"You need some young people, some older people for some wisdom as well, so if we can get some more different types of people as we can, the better," said Rucker.
The energy of the young voters is something Malik said he rode to his victory and he'll ride into office.
"It was great yesterday to see the energy that people shared at the polls last night at our watch party," he said. "I think it speaks to the fact that we tried to build a campaign that was not just about me as a leader but was about everybody in our community having a place or having a part or being part of the solution."
