Illinois is going to elect a Republican governor in 2014 (and if we don’t, we should, because legislative redistricting has guaranteed us a Democratic House and Senate for the next decade). We could do a lot worse than Rep. Aaron Schock.
Crain’s Chicago Business ace political correspondent Greg Hinz reports that the Peoria fitness buff is considering running for governor.
“One top GOP funder tells me Mr. Schock recently came right out and asked if he ought to run,” Hinz wrote. “Other party sources say they’ve heard definite buzz that Mr. Schock, while far from any final decision, has begun to test the gubernatorial waters.”
Illinois needs unity. Just last week, two Republicans proposed dissolving the state because the city and the countryside have nothing in common, politically. Who better to bridge the divide between Chicago and Downstate than a metrosexual from Peoria?
Schock modeled clothes for GQ and bared his abs on the cover of Men’s Fitness, two magazines that can be found in the waiting area of every gym and salon on the North Side. He voted in favor of a balanced budget amendment and against federal funding for abortions, but he looks like a guy who shops on the Magnificent Mile. Schock is just as obsessed with clothes as Rod Blagojevich, although he buys designer fashions off the rack, rather than spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on tailors.
Those lifestyle choices are not unimportant politically, and Schock knows it. His youthful verve has a record of winning over liberal constituencies who might have rejected a paunchy 60-year-old Republican with equally conservative views. As a state representative from Peoria, Schock was preceded and succeeded by liberal Democrats. He would look especially appealing alongside Kirk Dillard, Dan Rutherford and the Bradysaurus, three middle-aged holdovers from the Age of Reagan, a president whose inauguration occurred while Schock was in utero.
If Schock were elected governor, he’d be only 33 when he took office. That would make him the youngest governor since Arkansas’s Bill Clinton, who was 32 in 1978. You know where the story goes from there.
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