Iron Man: The Story Of Alex Morse, A Gay 22-Year-Old Mayor In Massachusetts

www.out.com:

Alex Morse has a slick of red hair, crisp blue eyes, and a complexion the color of vanilla Häagen-Dazs. The hair is inherited from his father, Tracey, who retains a splash of it in his full beard. No one knows how he came by his eyes, shared neither by his Jewish mother nor Scots-Irish father, or either of his two brothers. "My mom always jokes around, 'I don't know where you came from,' " says Morse, who sits upright in his chair in the spacious wood-paneled mayor's office he inherited January 3, following an election that pitted the 22-year-old against the 67-year-old incumbent, Elaine Pluta, a veteran of city politics. It was a race that galvanized voters around youth and experience, roused the press, and shifted the balance of power from the old guard to the new in Holyoke, a blighted mill town of 40,000 people--among the poorest in Massachusetts.

"We were never supposed to win," says Morse. "I mean--22, openly gay, in an old Irish Catholic community." He has not wasted time, firing five staff and quietly persuading the city council to vote off the president who had held the position for 26 years. That was on his first day. "Unfortunately, a lot of folks in Holyoke City Hall assume they are going to be here for their entire lives, and my mindset is that if you want to be here, you have to live, eat, and breathe it--the job has to be your life."

Read the whole story: www.out.com

Comments

[TheNextVoiceofYouth]

12:41 PM on 02/20/2012

Whoa, he's not much older than me! Wonder if every state had a young mayor, would things improve? Politics isn't my thing, but maybe someone else could become mayor and change things. If we had ambitous, passionate youth in every industry it could make a big difference!

[rockysparks]

11:35 AM on 02/20/2012

More power to this young guy. He really worked against the odds. I don't know what it says about the veteran politician he defeated, though. She must have been really awful.

[timbohp]

09:45 AM on 02/20/2012

An amazing man. I'm looking forward to hearing many great things about him in the future!

[mjcc1987]

08:23 AM on 02/20/2012

This is a great story. I hope the next article is about a great mayor period. An ariticle that takes about his reelection victory party where he and his husband dance and is mentioned as a matter of fact, not as something unique, but simply is.

[Atwill]

08:10 AM on 02/20/2012

good for him

[SeanMartin]

11:34 PM on 02/19/2012

Great article, and I really like the photo above. Says a great deal about the guy in just one image.

[David Moore]

05:45 PM on 02/19/2012

He has made a difference. He got elected, and he eliminated waste. Not bad for day 1.

[outloud]

02:36 PM on 02/19/2012

While I am fully supportive of this young man, I do worry a little bit 'cause he sounds a lot like bill clinton at such a young age.

Folks, we may have just read about our first gay president of the USA.

[Vintage59]

01:30 PM on 02/19/2012

Did he really crash and burn on his first day? You have to be 22 to not realize that they will cut his legs out from under him before he realizes what is happening.

Still, he will have made a change. I hope he keeps his idealism while he nurses his wounds.

[Daniel Widrew]

09:08 PM on 02/19/2012

did you even read the article? he didn't crash and burn; he is doing fine.

[Vintage59]

10:25 AM on 02/20/2012

Have you ever lived in Massachusetts? The article clearly states that he made enemies of everyone in the town government on his first day. It didn't say how many of the five people he fired sued the town the next day.

They will all have jobs when he is gone. It's Massachusetts. He's toast. He's not even experienced enough to realize that you can't force people to "live their jobs." People will hate him in no time with that attitude and he will deserve their scorn.