Young gun

Freshman lawmaker Aaron Schock could be a potent weapon for worn-out GOP | Emily Belz

Adam Gerik/Peoria Journal Star/AP

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The one thing people in Washington already know about freshman congressman Aaron Schock is that he is young. At 27, he meets the age requirement for serving in the House established in 1787 by James Madison and the Founders with just two years to spare. He is currently the youngest serving member of Congress (House members must be 25 while Senators must be 30 years old), and the first to be born in the 1980s—and already he has scored a leadership post in Congress working with the No. 2 Republican. For fellow Republicans looking to shake up their party's bruised image, that's a good thing, especially in the oldest Congress on record, where the average age in the House is 57 and in the Senate, 63.

Schock, the youngest of three children, always has acted older than his age. As a boy he worked a strawberry business with his siblings on the family farm. At 14 he invested in his own IRA. By the time he turned 19, he was a member of the Peoria, Ill., school board. He finished his four-year college degree in two years then ran for the Illinois state legislature, winning a seat at age 23 as a Republican in a strongly Democratic district. It's a feat he says he accomplished through lots of knocking on doors.