RALEIGH — Newly elected 22-year-old Rep. Wyatt Gable will be the youngest and first Gen Z member elected to the General Assembly House in modern history.
Clyde R. Hoey, North Carolina’s 59th governor, was 21 when he was first elected to the N.C. House of Representatives 126 years ago and served from 1898-1902.
“It feels awesome,” Gable told North State Journal of becoming the youngest member of the General Assembly. “It’s a little weird just thinking how many people have been in the General Assembly in North Carolina, that I’ll be the youngest one, but I am looking forward to it.”
Gable was elected with more than 66% of the vote to the House District 14 seat, which covers all of Onslow County.
Gable defeated Democrat Carmen Spicer by more than 8,100 votes and won in all nine precincts.
Gable said that while his district trends Republican, his team didn’t take that for granted and had knocked on more than 500 doors this election cycle as well as running ads on social media platforms and contacting voters through text messaging.
During his campaign, Gable ran as a “staunch conservative that will always stand up for your rights in the N.C. House.”
Gable said the COVID-19 pandemic is what spurred him to run for office.
“I just think kind of back in high school and college with the COVID itself, it really felt like no one at any level of government was really interested in trying and helping people, and I just kind of remember how that felt,” said Gable. “So I just want to make sure that no one felt the same way I did.”
Gable said he decided to run for the legislature because it had a broader reach, covered a wider range of issues, and he felt he could make the biggest impact there.
In the March primary, Gable stunned 10-term incumbent Republican Rep. George Cleveland by just 95 votes.
Gable, an only child, is a senior at East Carolina University and began his pursuit of the Onslow seat as a junior. He is studying business management at ECU with a minor in political science. Additionally, Gable has been an attendee and graduate of the Leadership Institute’s Youth Leadership School.
The next session of the legislature in 2025 will overlap with Gable’s final semester at ECU, but Gable said school officials had been “very helpful” on how to make it work.
“In the first part of January, we’ll get a lot of work done here at school, so then the rest of the semester can be as easy as possible,” Gable said. “But luckily, it’s not that far to drive either from Greenville to Raleigh. We’ll make it through those first few months and do the best job we can.”
When asked about his main priorities heading into his first term, Gable said jobs and infrastructure.
“Specific to Onslow, definitely trying to increase the amount of jobs that we can bring to the county,” he said. “And then on top of that, the infrastructure we have and trying to improve that because we have a massive population influx right now and just making sure that people have jobs and, again, the infrastructure to hold all of them.
“And then on top of that, with more jobs, we have Camp Lejeune. You might have the skilled workers that live on the base and work for the Marine Corps., but their family members don’t really have a whole lot of job options. So making sure that they have something to do is another.”
A Jacksonville resident of 15 years, Gable graduated from White Oak High School in 2021. He is a past president of the ECU chapter of Turning Point USA, a nonprofit that advocates for conservative causes. In his free time, Gable has a passion for paintball and has traveled around the state playing in various tournaments and events.
