In the midterm Congressional elections taking place in November, the Democrats stand a chance of gaining majorities in the House and the Senate. A lot of seats are hotly contested, and a lot of new leaders are emerging in the Democratic Party to challenge Republican incumbents.

In Tennessee, Senate Majority leader and prominent Republican Bill Frist is vacating his seat, creating an opportunity for Democrats to pick up one of the six seats they need to win control of the Senate. Facing the challenge is Democratic Congressman Harold Ford, who was elected in 1997 to represent Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District– the seat his father held before him.

Polls at this point show no clear favorite. A recent SurveyUSA poll shows Ford leading his opponent, Republican Bob Corker, 48 percent to 45 percent, while a recent Rasmussen Reports poll showed Corker leading Ford 45 to 44 percent. However, in both polls, the lead is within the margin of error, making it a statistical dead hear.

The race has also garnered national attention because of Ford’s age -- he’s 36. If elected, he would be the youngest member in the Senate.

Ford took time during a recent fundraiser in New York to speak with YouthNoise about being a young politician, and to discuss his agenda for change in the Senate.

Ford was particularly interested in garnering the youth vote in his campaign. His campaign is making an "all out, concerted effort" to attract young voters, organizing on college campuses and even in college bars across the state. "I’m 36," Ford said. "I remember going to those bars and how much fun it was."

It’s important for young people to be involved in the political process, he said. "What the U.S. Senate votes on this year, next year, the next few years will impact 18-35 year olds just by virtue of our age more than it will impact people 50, 60, 70 year olds."

If young people don’t stand up for their interests, they’ll be slighted, he said, and the country will suffer for it.

"I could witness the first generation of Americans to not surpass their parents in terms of wealth and prosperity."

Ford said young voters should be especially engaged in the issues of national security, the Iraq War, and education.

In Ford’s opinion, an agenda for education reform would include investing in a plan for children under five.

"The brain develops in ways that it has never developed at any other time in our lives between birth and four," he said. "When kids are read to, hugged, loved, told they can be whatever they want to be when they grow up, they tend to believe it, and it impacts them and it influences the way they behave going forward."

As for K — 12 education, Ford said the greatest measure of how well students do is based on the quality of they teachers encounter. Ford proposes a federal initiative to attract new teachers by paying them more, while placing more demands upon them.

Ford sees attributes of a good educational system as a necessity for competition internationally.

"If, indeed, we’re going to compete with China and India globally, we’ve got to improve our education system, and find a way to graduate more engineers and scientists."

Because the benefits of good education are felt nationally, Ford said he also supports more federal initiatives to pay college costs for students who demonstrate they are willing to give back to the country. In addition to providing financial assistance to those who enroll in the military, Ford would create new national service programs, like an emergency preparedness corps.

"God forbid we face another Katrina or natural disaster, we could have professionally-trained nurses and emergency medical personnel that could travel anywhere in the country and actually know what they’re doing."

Though a Democrat, Ford falls farther to the right on the political spectrum than most Democrats. Ford supports a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, voted for the Iraq War, and voted for the PATRIOT Act.

In terms of the military, "I’m a little bit of a hawk," he claims. "I believe that we’ve got to have a strong military. We have to invest in it heavily."

This hawkish attitude informs his position on the Iraq war. Democrats are divided between those who want to establish a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq and those who think a timetable would force America to leave before the job is finished.

Ford is firmly opposed to a timetable.

"We’ve got to win," he said. "By my estimation, winning means giving the Iraqi government the ability to defend itself and the ability to grow."

Ford said his plan for Iraq resembles that of Democratic Senator Joe Biden from Delaware and Republican Senator Chuck Hagel from Nebraska. Per this plan, Iraq would be divided into three semi-autonomous regions: a region for Shia Muslims, one for Sunnis, and one for the Kurds – all united under a central government.

This approach, he said, would segregate Iraq’s warring factions in order to quell conflict in the region and foster unity.

"It’s a challenge to do, but heck, the whole experiment is a challenge," he said. "Those who oppose this idea suggest it’s too hard. Well, staying the course seems pretty difficult as well."

Ford’s Iraq position also informs his education policy. He said we need to emphasize math, science, and engineering programs to have smarter soldiers and better-trained technicians.

"The irony of the battle in Iraq is [the enemy is] using 20 year-old technology, and they’re frustrating us in that war," he said. "All these roadside bombs that they’re detonating 2, 3, 4 feet away – we don’t have the technology to disarm that device, or even to detect it before our soldiers find themselves in the vicinity."

Ford said it is also to the benefit of young voters to pay attention to other national security issues, such as finding new sources of energy. "Our national security policy – particularly our policy in the Middle East – is motivated by a dependence on a commodity that we need to make the lights in this place come on," Ford said.

"If we find ourselves less dependent on foreign oil, we won’t actually finance the people who are building nuclear weapons today," he said. "If we really want to spread democracy and liberty, we’ve got to stop funding the dictators that suppress it."

Until we find new energy sources, he said, we will remain dependent on countries that don’t have America’s best interest at heart.

Finally, Ford said he hopes to build coalitions internationally, and improve relations that we’ve allowed to deteriorate.

"America is made stronger when our allies actually support and believe in what we’re trying to accomplish," he said.

Ford ended by quoting Ronald Reagan, saying that if America wants to remain the "Shining city on the hill," we have to continue to be the prime example of the power of democracy.

"If America loses a step economically and loses a step in the competitiveness race in the world, I contend the world is worse off, because when America is strong and vibrant, and our freedoms and liberty are evident for people to see around the globe, the world’s a better place.

"Otherwise people wouldn’t be sneaking across the boarder and risking life and limb to come here, if this country wasn’t the greatest in the world. And our challenge is to make it even greater, and I think we make it greater by strengthening our liberties, strengthening our freedoms, and, frankly, by making our military as strong as it can possibly be, finding new energy sources, and building coalitions of support around the globe."

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David Idol is a junior at New York University and writes for the student paper, the Washington Square News.