Meet Keagan Roberts: 19-Year-Old Politician, Activist, And Brow Specialist

As soon as 19-year-old Keagan Roberts woke up on Tuesday (November 5), he wanted to go straight to the polls — after all, it was Election Day. Although because his vehicle wasn’t working, he had to drop it off at the mechanic, go back residence, and drive his mom’s vehicle to the town hall. If he finally got there, polls had been open for 15 minutes plus it was beginning to rain.


“Hi. My name is Keagan Roberts. I'd like to thank you for coming out and voting today. Have an excellent day,” he mentioned to each voter who walked up to the polling station in South Berwick, a town in Maine with a society of about 7,000.


Roberts was running for a seat on his city council, although he wasn’t on the ballot — he hadn’t actually determined that he wanted the role up until soon following the deadline to be on the ticket had already passed. Nevertheless rather than wait for the next election, he aimed for a more grassroots approach: The prominent write-in candidacy. Voters would have to manually print his name on their ballots in sort for him to garner any votes, so name recognition was key.


Despite knocking on about 200 doors, he was worried that his write-in candidacy may not succeed, which is why he made one last push at town hall. “I mentioned [hello] to nearly each person who walked in the door. [It was] rainy out there, so I had to go residence and dry my clothes off several times, although I spent 10 hours at the polls,” he told MTV News.


As for missing the deadline, he chalks that up to weighing his options. “I was a write-in because being 19, I have a bunch of different paths ahead of me that I may go on, and I wanted to be sure that I was choosing the correct one. And If I thought about it, I realized, ‘Yep. This is what I'm supposed to be doing. This is my calling,’” Roberts told MTV News.


Roberts currently works as a makeup artist and brow specialist at Ulta, a job he landed soon after taking a four-month volunteer trip to Bolivia following his high-school graduation. As soon as that trip ended, he returned to Maine, got his cosmetology license, and determined that he might attempt to do it all. He would take classes in town, continue working as a makeup artist, and even be a member of the Town Council. Just one month before election night, he declared his candidacy. “If I work hard, I can make it all work at once,” he said.


That mantra stayed in his mind on election night. At 9 p.M., About a hour right following the polls closed, he and other candidates learned who took house enough votes to land a space on the council. The town clerk reported that incumbent John Kareckas earned the best quantity of votes, and would serve because the council’s chair. Roberts earned 20.5 percent of the vote, enough to secure his victory as South Berwick’s newest council member.


“I was shocked,” Roberts mentioned. “I didn't learn that I had that much of an impact on people.”


As a council member, his objectives are, simply put, to learn.


“I'm sort of going in as a blank slate,” Roberts mentioned, adding that he wants to “see how the town feels” about issues ranging from tidy energy to the traffic caused by the lack of traffic lights downtown to planned medical weed storefronts. So far, yet, he’s just happy that South Berwick put their trust in him.


“The voter turnout just for write-ins — I was honestly just amazed at the dedication [and] the desire that people had for change and for a younger voice to be represented,” he said.


That’s key — “a younger voice.” He mentioned that there aren’t several young people in local government in Maine, and that as soon as his peers come back from college, “they don't really feel like they're being represented.”


“I wanted to define my generation because we are the future,” Roberts said.


Immediately after he is sworn in, Roberts will become the youngest city council member in South Berwick’s history and will join the ranks of some of the youngest elected officials in the nation. He also might be the opening brow specialist council member in South Berwick’s history, yet that information is harder to come by.