17-Year-Old Becomes Second Teenager To Enter Kansas Race For Governor

Tyler Ruzich, a 17-year-old high school student, has decided to run for governor of Kansas.

Ruzich, who’s running as a moderate Republican, isn’t the first teen to throw his hat in the ring — he isn’t even the latest. Ruzich’s entry into the race comes just one month after 16-year-old Jack Bergeson entered as a Democrat. In September, 17-year-old Ethan Randleas also announced a run for governor.

Kansas has no age or experiential requirements for their gubernatorial candidates.

On Saturday, Ruzich appeared on Fox & Friends to discuss his run for Kansas governor.

On why he decided to run:

I’ve been a great friend of Jack Bergeson for a while, a few years – the teen running as a Democrat in Wichita. …

We both knew that we have a love for debate, politics, and government. When I found out that he was running, and he got in touch with me, one of the first things that he told me is that: “Tyler, you’ve gotta run; you gotta run as a Republican; you gotta get young people excited about this election.” And so it was really, I think, a bipartisan decision … to get young people involved in this political campaign, in this election.

On his parents being supporters of Bernie Sanders:

The great thing is that they’ve always encouraged me to explore new ideas, read literature that challenges my current views, whether it was reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead, or something from Noam Chomsky. It really doesn’t matter what the viewpoint is of the literature, the books I read, the media that I watch, wherever it may come from, they’ve always emphasized that it’s important to get all different viewpoints. …

Ruzich currently has no official website.