Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) spoke about what it means to be the country’s youngest representative and how he went from school board member to congressman during an AU College Republicans-sponsored event Sept. 20 in the Mary Graydon Center.
Schock began his political career at 19 when he ran for a seat on the school board in his hometown, Peoria, Ill., against the incumbent president.
“I realized many of [the school board members] weren’t there for the right reasons, and they were making a lot of the decisions about how I live,” he said.
The school board president challenged his petition’s legitimacy, he said, saying the “ditto marks” used by spouses filling out the same information were in fact “stray marks,” rather than quotation marks that indicated identical information as the row above.
He hired an attorney to dispute the “stray mark” claim in court, but lost the case. When all of the “stray marks” were deemed invalid, Schock no longer had enough signatures for his name to be printed on the ballot. Instead of packing up and walking away from the race, he organized a group of campaign workers to help him run a write-in campaign.
“I had thirty angry moms who had contacted me and were furious about what the school board had done to me,” he said.
The group jumped into campaign mode and knocked on 13,000 doors, enough to secure Schock’s win with 60 percent of the vote.
After two years on the school board, Schock became the youngest school board president in Illinois history at 22 when he won the seat by a unanimous vote.
He then ran for the Illinois House of Representatives. Many people believed Schock didn’t stand a chance at winning the election, considering the high level of low-income residents in the 92nd district, he said. But he pulled out another victory and served for four years. During his time in office he sponsored 13 bills that became law.
“I knew I wasn’t going to get anything done [in a partisan way]," he said. "If I came up with a good Republican idea, it would just get shot down. But, if I came up with a good government idea, I could get it passed.”
Schock’s break into national politics came when President Barack Obama chose former Rep. Ray LaHood to serve as Secretary of Transportation. Schock won the congressional election with 59 percent of the vote, making him the youngest member of Congress and the first to be born in the 1980s.
Networking with more experienced members of Congress is key as a new representative, he said.
“I made it my mission to talk to and meet as many other representatives as I could, and then figure out who I could rely on to get stuff done,” Schock said.
In order to maintain these relationships, he established a strict personal philosophy regarding how he campaigns for support.
“In every race, I stayed positive,” he said. “I don’t make attacks on a personal level. I talk about where we differ on issues, but I never get personal.”
Forming these relationships can sometimes be difficult, given the nature of some of his peers, Schock said.
“There’s no shortage of egos [in Congress,]” he said. “When you get elected, that’s just reaffirmation that you’re pretty good, so everyone can has this little attitude, and likes being called Senator This, Congressman That.”
As for his future, he said it’s still up in the air.
“If I really wanted to stick it out, I think I could be Speaker of the House,” Schock said.
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