Last August, Taliek Lopez-Duboff walked onto the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

“You’ve seen Modern Family? Jesse Tyler Ferguson? He was right there,” said Lopez-Duboff. “Nancy Pelosi is right there. These political giants that I’ve always seen on TV that are larger than life are here, and I have the same access to this convention hall that they do.”

Lopez-Duboff was visible on television screens across the nation when the Oregon delegation cast its 78 votes for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Taliek Lopez-Duboff, 20, is a junior studying political science and public policy at the University of Oregon. He serves as the president of the school’s student senate.  His summer job was serving as the captain of his state’s delegation to the 2024 Democratic National Convention. His job was to “keep delegates in line with the Harris campaign,” he said.

Lopez-Dufoff learned about the opportunity while participating in the 2022 “National Democracy Summer School,” a program through Representative Jamie Raskin’s office. During the program, Lopez-Duboff had lunch with Oregon congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici and asked her how to become a delegate.

“I said, ‘You know what, I’m gonna try, I’ll run, throw my name in the hat,’” said Lopez-Duboff. “So I waited until this year, and I was in all these Zoom calls leading up to it.”

Lopez-Duboff entered the race to be a delegate for Oregon’s first congressional district, representing his hometown of Beaverton and won.

When voters vote in primaries for their party’s nominee, they actually cast their votes for delegates pledged to support that candidate, according to the Associated Press. Initially, Taliek was a pledged delegate for President Joe Biden, who won the Oregon Democratic primary on May 21. But following President Biden’s much-criticized performance during the first presidential debate, Taliek said there were internal conversations about who could replace the president.

“Of course, it happened, and I’d been talking to a lot of journalists,” said Lopez-Duboff. “Oh my God, the Washington Post called my office phone. The New York Times called my cell phone. I had Axios and the Associated Press, and I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is bigger than me.’”

When Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Kamala Harris, Taliek Lopez-Duboff said there was no real question that Harris would be the next in line. Had Biden not endorsed Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee, Lopez-Duboff says he would have either voted for Harris, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, or Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who later became Harris’ running mate.

“I would think either a moderate figure, like Governor Walz, or somebody that would be history-making, like Governor Whitmer,” said Lopez-Duboff. “Right now I think the Democratic Party has a really strong bench of people they could have brought up.”

Union activist April Milan also served as a DNC delegate for the first time, in 2024. Milan, 51, said described Lopez-Duboff as a “politician in a college student’s body” and saw him as a future leader. Young people tend to feel disillusioned by politics – but not Taliek, she said

“We don’t normally understand that age group’s perspective on the government. So it was interesting to see Taliek’s perspective,” said Milan. 

As Oregon’s second-youngest delegate in history, Lopez-Duboff said he felt a sense of responsibility to young people around the country.

“I felt a new dawn in our nation. We have the first woman of color as a presidential nominee. I felt alive.”