18 year-old adjusts to legislature

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Rookie lawmaker Derrick Seaver's office walls are a bit barer than most, holding only his framed election certificate and the state of Ohio's pennant-shaped flag.

"I haven't been alive long enough to have accumulated any awards to put up," the 18-year-old said, only half joking.

A long-shot candidate in the Nov. 7 election, Seaver is believed to be the youngest person ever elected to the Ohio House. The Democrat beat a Republican businessman by 242 votes for the open seat in the highly conservative 85th District north of Dayton.

The enormity of his feat is just now beginning to sink in, two weeks after he was sworn into office.

"There's a lot of history in that building across the street," Seaver says about the Statehouse. "It's an honor, but at the same time it feels like a great responsibility."

Seaver is not the first 18-year-old to serve in a state legislature, but his election is fairly uncommon because only 18 states allow people so young to run for office and few teen-agers do, said Brenda Erickson, a National Conference of State Legislatures spokeswoman.

In Ohio, the youngest person to serve in the House before Seaver was U.S. Rep. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat elected in November 1974 at age 21 and sworn in the following January at age 22.

"I figured someone would beat it by three months, not three years," Brown said with a chuckle. "It's a heady time for him."

Seaver's interest in a political career started even earlier, at age 14 when he watched the Oliver Stone movie "JFK" during a class.

Around that time, Seaver also joined political groups and registered an e-mail address as seaverin2020.

"That's when I'll be old enough to run for president," he explains.

But he's no longer thinking that far ahead and probably will become a high school government teacher after leaving the Legislature.