The unearthing of Democratic congressional candidate Nate Blouin’s decade-old offensive online comments highlights a new reality for the next generation of politicians: their digital footprint doesn’t fade with time.
“Thank God my 20s were lived long before you could post anything,” said Leah Murray, the director of the Walker Institute of Politics and Public Service at Weber State University. “There were no [online] pictures, right? And I wasn't, like, taking a selfie with a joint, right?”
Washington, D.C.-based Punchbowl News first reported the comments that Blouin, now in his late 30s, made when he was in his 20s. The story detailed various internet forum posts where he mocked members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and repeatedly used vulgar language, appearing to joke about sexual assault.
Blouin apologized, but despite calls from fellow Democrats to drop out of the race, he told The Salt Lake Tribune he doesn’t plan to abandon his campaign.
The situation highlights a new reality. For many people born after 1980, their digital footprints are extensive and sometimes questionable. After all, popular social media platforms like Facebook and Reddit are not only digital gathering spaces, but places where everything from what happens at college parties to the political rantings of teenagers is documented forever. So how will voters react to those candidates?
“We're in a really interesting time because a lot of younger people are stepping up to run for office, to make a difference in their communities, to make a difference in the country,” said former Utah Democratic operative Theo Gardner-Puschak. “With that comes people who have been digital natives for their entire lives.”
It’s a pretty safe bet that in 2026, most people have made a mean Instagram comment, questionable forum post or cringey Facebook status update. For Gardner-Puschak and others who live and breathe political campaigns, this is uncharted territory. He thinks people could be grappling with it for the next “10 to 20 years.”
“I don't think we can answer right now what the impact will be when people who are running for office have an enormous digital backlog, often with a lot of negative and checkered records that can be made public with the right amount of money and opposition research,” he said.
For students in K-12 schools today, it’s not uncommon for educators and counselors to discuss their online presence when talking with them about their futures.
Counselor Adasa Jorgenson-Pascual at the Academy for Math, Engineering and Science, a Utah charter school, works with high school students to prepare them for their next steps, whether that’s a job or higher education. While she thinks young people today are more aware of the potential consequences of what they post online than their counterparts a decade ago, Jorgenson-Pascual said, “I feel like kids nowadays don’t really realize the lasting impact that posts can have.”
In her experience, it can create problems in the present and down the road. She’s seen kids struggle to get jobs based on their social media history or get in trouble at school for posting about their classmates.
Students might have a limited view of what they can accomplish in the future, Jorgenson-Pascual said, so they think what they post doesn’t matter. They might not see themselves as future professionals or leaders. But a lot can change in 10 years.
She said she tries to help them see their future as open-ended and look at their posts from a different perspective. If they were an employer considering hiring them, how would they view these posts?
Emotional regulation can help, too. Jorgenson-Pascual encourages students to take a deep breath before posting and write what they want to say down on paper. That way, they can read it back to themselves and ask if they really want that online forever.
Like Blouin, Maine Democratic Senate hopeful Graham Platner has also come under fire for past inflammatory internet activity, where he made online comments suggesting political violence and mentioning sexual assault.
For a political scientist like Murray, those instances, combined with the recent political downfall of Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell after allegations of sexual assault, raise the stakes for politicians.
“You cannot be a Democrat right now and have this kind of scandal and be running for office, period,” she said. “End of story. No matter how young and stupid you were. That's just not, I think, gonna play.”
Still, Murray thinks the public likely has a threshold for some degree of questionable internet behavior.
“I think most of the world kind of gives some grace for, ‘That's me when I'm 22, and I'm an idiot,’” she said.
Scandals are “as old as politics are in this country,” Gardner-Puschak acknowledges, but since almost everyone today has a digital footprint that can be interrogated, he thinks there could be a cultural shift in how much we accept the past online indiscretions of people looking for our votes.
And as people grapple with a digital space that rewards negative behavior, he said there could be a richer, more nuanced conversation on the way about what it means to exist online, “especially when you're someone in politics who is engaging with the political process to represent yourself, your community and a generation that's really pushing for a change.”
