The U.S. has experienced a political facelift in the form of a new, charismatic president. But despite the Illinoisan head of state, the overall Congressional body is still made up of men and women who watched I Love Lucy as young whippersnappers: the average age in the 111th U.S. Congress is 58. That's where another Midwestern politician steps in. Aaron Schock is the 28-year-old U.S. Representative from Illinois' 18th Congressional District--Abraham Lincoln's old stomping ground--making him the youngest person in Congress. Like the log-splitting president, Aaron is a Republican, which further places him in the minority. But bucking against the trend has never intimidated him: at age 19 he challenged the school board old-timers to an election faceoff in his hometown of Peoria.

As a high school junior, Aaron tried to graduate early. He'd completed every necessary class except for a mandatory fourth year of physical education. His high school administration told him that he'd have to petition the District 150 School Board. So Aaron met with all seven school board members. "They basically shot me down and said, 'I'm sorry, we want the state aid that we're going to get for keeping you here for another year,'" Aaron says. "'We think you'd enjoy your senior year.'"

"I was very frustrated because I felt like I was being punished for being ambitious," Aaron says. "So, I found a way to take classes at my junior college in town while I was a senior in high school. But I also went to go vote for the first time as an 18-year-old."

Looking at the candidates, he realized that nobody was running against the incumbent school board members. So Aaron decided to take a chance and campaign for a seat.

He circulated petitions and received more than the 200 signatures needed to get on the ballot. But some of the signees used ditto marks in the address field. Living up to the nitpicky standards of the school board, its president--whom Aaron was running against--had Aaron thrown off the ballot for the technical infraction.

With only two months left in the race, Aaron adapted his campaign to run as a write-in. That meant walking door-to-door and knocking on 13,000 houses.

Aaron's message was simple: "We need diversity in government, and a school board is a perfect-case example of people making policy that directly affects the students' lives and how they're educated. Oftentimes, we get skewed government when we get too much of one thing: too many men, or too many women, or too many white people, or too many black people, and too often we get too many old people and not enough young people." Of the seven school board members, two were in their 50s, two in their 60s, and one in his 70s.

Aaron's experience illustrated that their policies weren't adapting to the needs of the students. The message struck a chord with the voting public, and 6,406 people wrote in "Aaron Schock" on their ballots. He unseated the school board president with 60% of the vote.

Four years later, Aaron was unanimously elected school board president by fellow board members. "I felt that demonstrated that age is no indicator of someone's ability," he says. It also established that he wasn't just a flash-in-the-pan and marked him as a Peoria politician to watch.

Peoria is one of the biggest cities in Illinois' 18th Congressional District, the oldest community in the state, and home to 112,936 Illinoisans. It's also the headquarters of Caterpillar Inc.--a company known worldwide for manufacturing heavy machinery.

As the headquarters of Caterpillar, Peoria has close ties to roadwork and excavation. No surprise then that Aaron got his first job in the scale house of a gravel pit. "I started at the end of my eighth grade year," Aaron says. He worked 50-60 hours per week in the summers, and 3-4 hours after classes during the school year. By his junior year of high school, he'd been promoted to running the business' accounting functions.

But Aaron wasn't spending the cash--up to $18,000 a year earned from the gravel pit and other ventures--on typical teenage fare.

In fact, Aaron opened an IRA and started trading stocks online in middle school. Throughout high school, Aaron saved and reinvested his earnings with the goal of purchasing real estate. At 18, he bought his first property--110 acres of farmland--and sold it two years later, reinvesting the earnings in the purchase of a duplex and two single-family homes near Bradley University in the heart of Peoria.

Aaron graduated from Bradley in 2002, earning a four-year finance degree in two years. During this time he also started a local branch of the GarageTek franchise, which specializes in customizing and installing garage organization and storage systems. Aaron's branch employed three people by the time he sold it to run for the Illinois Legislature in 2004.

While running his GarageTek store and serving on the school board, Aaron and other school board members attempted to meet with state Representative Ricca Slone to discuss education policy. She represented the 92nd District, which includes most of the Peoria school district. Despite the regional ties, Slone avoided the delegation, according to Aaron. She also sidestepped another meeting request when the school board traveled to Springfield (Illinois' capital).

Much like his dismissal by the school board, this inspired Aaron to challenge Slone for her seat in the state House. In the most expensive state House race in Illinois history, Aaron defeated the eight-year incumbent--despite being outspent by $200,000. He went on to serve back-to-back two-year terms from 2005 to 2008.

In the Illinois House, Aaron found that "the most important quality in an elected official is their ability to work with people." In a 2006 interview with peoriamagazines.com, Aaron further explained, "I couldn't have passed 13 bills in my first two sessions without working with both Democrats and Republicans." Because of his ability to work across party lines, Aaron passed a total of 18 personally sponsored bills in his time as the 92nd District's representative.

The retirement of Ray LaHood, the U.S. Representative from the 18th Congressional District, opened the next door for Aaron. His victory in the 2008 general election made Aaron the youngest member of Congress--63 years the junior of the oldest member, 91-year-old Senator Byrd from West Virginia.

Aaron's age caught the attention of media outlets such as tmz.com (published a photo of his poolside abs), thehuffingtonpost.com (ran a poll of "Who's The Hottest Congressional Freshman," which Aaron won), The Colbert Report (typical Stephen Colbert interview insanity), and Time (feature profile).

Aaron doesn't mind this newfound notoriety. He says, "The first job of an effective leader, whether you're in an elected office or whether you're in the private world, is to get the attention of your constituents." Mainstream media attention helps Aaron get young people to "pay attention to important budget issues or important policy decisions that are happening on Capitol Hill."

This is key to Aaron's goal of making his message, issues, and the bills he works on relevant to our generation. "The decisions that we make [in Washington DC] are not so much going to affect the 60- and 70-year-olds of this country, but they're going to affect the 20- and 30-year-olds for decades to come," he says. "Young people will get involved when they see a correlation between their lives and the decisions that are being made out here in Congress."

"To me the real debate that's going on in Washington right now is making sure we keep that opportunity alive [to achieve the American Dream] and that incentive real for people who take a risk, make an investment, who stick their necks out on the line," Aaron says.

Through at least November 2010 (when his term is up), Aaron will be part of that debate. By then he'll be the ripe old age of 29. If the past is any indication of the future, he will be on to something even more challenging.

"I'm an entrepreneur at heart," Aaron says. "I've always enjoyed the private sector and the free market. So what really drives me to public service is trying to improve people's lives… and to create an opportunity where people's energies and their risks are rewarded."

Whether his future lies in the private or public sector, Aaron is focused on doing something worthwhile. "Teddy Roosevelt once said, 'Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is to work hard at work worth doing,'" Aaron says. From the gravel pit to Capitol Hill, Aaron has embodied that adage.
 

Sources: ci.peoria.il.us; usnews.com; schock.house.gov; senate.gov; ilga.gov; huffingtonpost.com; men.style.com; gop.gov; cnn.com; time.com; washingtonpost.com; aaronschock.com; peoriamagazines.com; whitehouse.gov; bradley.edu; nytimes.com; pjstar.com