A 19-year-old college student who plays video games with friends, listens to 1950s doo-wop music and lives with his parents is preparing to lead a county office with hundreds of employees after an unexpected election victory in Arizona. Democrat Sebastian "Seb" Matta was elected Tuesday as the next clerk of the Superior Court in Maricopa County over 50-year-old Republican former state lawmaker Jeff Dial. Tuesday's elections saw Democrats win control of both the House and Senate, as voters sent a stinging rebuke of President Donald Trump and his party.
Democrats defeated Republicans across the map, flipping states that have been reliably red for decades and ones the president handily won in 2024 amid voters' frustration over high prices and the Iran war. The victory landed Matta on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, where Kimmel dubbed him "Boss Baby come to life" and compared him to a political version of television child prodigy Doogie Howser. "I'm confident that I can do the duties of the job very well," Matta told Newsweek.
"I've got a good group of people here preparing me for the job and the office that I'm going to take. I feel confident that I can do the job well." The surreal sequence was highlighted by Dial's concession call, he said. "It was a very brief 30-second phone call while I was eating a bowl at Chipotle." Newsweek reached out to Dial for comment.
Now, Matta is making plans to balance his college courses with a new $ 97,000-a-year job overseeing a public office with 600 employees in the nation's fourth-largest county. Matta told Newsweek he's not the least bit nervous about the post. Matta's interest in the clerk's office began long before he could vote.
His father worked for a law firm and would sometimes bring his son along while filing documents for personal injury cases. "I had learned about the clerk's office initially because my dad is a car crash investigator, and he would take me to the clerk's office as a part of his duties when he was filing for personal injury cases," Matta said. After turning 18, Matta began studying offices that would be on the ballot.
"I saw the clerk's office. I read a lot into it, and I was reminded of my time when I had experience about it. You know, experience, air quotes, as a kid," said Matta, now a sophomore at Arizona State University majoring in philosophy, law, politics and morality.
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