E-Mail This Article to a Friend Age matters The youth vote remains vital BY IAN DONNIS

TUESDAY, JULY 27 -- A little serendipity is part of the beauty of a political convention.

Such was the case when I was looking for a charter bus to get to a Rhode Island delegation event and wound up sharing a cab yesterday with three venerable veterans -- Allene Maynard, 65; Kathy Hinckley, 65; and Edna O’Neill Mattson, 68 -- of Democratic politics in the Ocean State. The lifeblood of each of these delegates is imbued with politics, and they can spin tales and crack wise with the best operatives.

Hinckley, for example, grew up in South Providence, where her father was involved in 10th Ward campaigns. It was a time, she recalls, when the names of additional voters would be gleaned from tombstones, and while working the streets in a soundtruck, "People would throw tomatoes at you." Hinckley, who recalls shaking John F. Kennedy’s hand at Providence City Hall as a young woman, now works for the late president’s nephew, US Representative Patrick J. Kennedy, as his director of constituent services. Lest one think Hinkley is concerned only with public affairs, she -- like O’Neill Mattson -- remained quite tickled by her passing encounter Monday with Ben Affleck.

For this trio of old friends, the convention, as Maynard puts it, "[is] like the realization of a dream." Speaking before the opening night at the FleetCenter, she said, "I can’t wait to get out there and rah-rah."

Such enthusiasm steels the backbone of Democratic politics, but both parties are striving mightily to reach out to young voters in the 18-to-30-year demographic -- a potentially decisive bloc -- this election season. Since young adults have increasingly walked away from voting participation since the highwater mark of 1972, the danger is that few people will be left to one day take the role played by old-time party activists.

Some academic experts, such as Harvard’s Tom Patterson, author of The Vanishing Voter, believe that youth voting will be up in this year’s election, particularly because of concern about the war in Iraq.

Certainly, young people were in evidence during the runup to the DNC, and one of the convention speakers on the first night, Michael Negron, was chosen to symbolize the youth vote. During a Rhode Island delegation event Monday afternoon aboard the yacht Ibex, the youth flag was represented by the likes of Meghan McBurney, whose family has a long history in state politics (her father is a state senator from Pawtucket), and Bobby Gondola Jr., 20, of Needham, who was at the convention as part of an internship for Salve Regina College in Newport. As McBurney put it, "This election is key to the future of young people," on issues ranging from college loans to Social Security.

For the most part, though, the relative lack of young faces at the DNC suggests just how far the Democrats still have to go.