Opie? We'll take him! Rep. Adam Putnam is on the rise

SHORTLY after his first swearing-in ceremony as a congressman from Florida, Adam Putnam tried to climb the steps of the Capitol. A policeman grabbed him by the shoulder. "Where did you get that pin?" he asked, referring to the small lapel button that members of Congress wear so that, for example, cops don't stop them from climbing the steps of the Capitol. "I worked very hard for that pin," replied Putnam, who was just 26 years old at the time--and looked it.

Today, Putnam is about to turn 33. He's no longer the youngest member of Congress--he's now the second-youngest--and most Capitol police officers recognize him instantly. But many other Washingtonians continue to think he's someone's legislative assistant or deputy press secretary. Just before a meeting with President Bush at the White House on June 26, a Secret Service agent blocked Putnam's way into the Cabinet Room and asked, "Who are you staffing for?"

Yet it may not be long before everybody knows Putnam. As head of the House Republican Conference, he's technically No. 3 in the House GOP's pecking order, behind minority leader John Boehner and whip Roy Blunt. No one knows for certain what lies in Putnam's future: Some say he'll eventually run for governor of Florida, while others think he'll continue to chart a course in the House, where he has risen so rapidly. About the only thing they agree on is that Putnam is an intelligent and ambitious conservative whose climb bears watching.

He comes from a family that has grown citrus and raised cattle in Polk County for five generations, and he speaks with the southern twang that's still common in the rural parts of his state. Visitors to his congressional office aren't offered water or coffee but rather ten-ounce bottles of Florida's Natural orange juice. Despite an interest in agriculture, Putnam realized early on that he probably wouldn't run the family business. "My older brother has the gift of being able to look at a leaf and know what a plant needs," he says. "I don't have that, and on a family farm it's easy to end up with too many chiefs and not enough Indians."

If he wanted to avoid that sort of environment, he might have chosen a career path that led to somewhere other than Congress and its multitude of chiefdoms. Yet he has managed to flourish, earning admiration from Republicans and gripes from Democrats. "He's full of energy and brings a fresh perspective to the table," says a top GOP leadership aide.

As if Putnam's youthful appearance weren't distinctive enough, he's also the only redhead in Congress--a striking combination that led at least one Democrat into a conniption fit on the House floor in 2005, when Rep. Marion Berry of Arkansas couldn't resist calling Putnam a "Howdy Doody-looking nimrod." The insult came during a budget battle. Putnam and other conservatives were trying to slow the growth of entitlements; liberals were forecasting the mass starvation of women and children. "I am absolutely amazed at you boys over there," sputtered Berry. "You can be cute, you can be smart, and you may even pull this off, son. But I tell you one thing: You are young enough that you are going to have to live with it." Their proposal succeeded: a reduction of nearly $40 billon in mandatory spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and student loans. "In historical terms, it was a small amount--but nobody had done anything like it in almost ten years," says Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation.

Berry's ad hominem assault wasn't the first time a political foe had tried to lampoon Putnam's age and looks. After graduating from the University of Florida, Putnam pursued a seat in the state legislature when he was 22. His 69-year-old opponent ran an ad that featured one of Putnam's high-school-yearbook photos and warned voters not to let Putnam move "from the frat house to the State House." Putnam prevailed, served two terms in Tallahassee, and then set his eyes on Washington. A writer for the Tampa Tribune quipped that "Adam Putnam is 26 and looks as if he's going on 13." That was the story's first sentence. Its headline: "Opie runs for Congress."

Opie was a character played by boy-actor Ron Howard on The Andy Griffith Show. If the comparison irritates Putnam, he doesn't let on. "It's actually been kind of an advantage," he says. "Every freshman wants to stand out in a body of 435. The fact that I looked like Opie helped me build relationships with senior members." It also forced him to put pressure on himself. "I have the attitude that I need to be better prepared than everybody else," he says. "If another member sends a letter to constituents and there's a misspelled word, people assume that his staff doesn't know how to spell. But if one of my letters contains a misspelling, they'll think that I'm the one who can't spell."

Putnam certainly is studious. In high school, he read The Discoverers, a work of popular history by Daniel J. Boorstin, the onetime Librarian of Congress. "After that, I tried to read everything I could find by him," he says. This quest soon led Putnam to The Americans, Boorstin's award-winning trilogy. "The way he described our country's diversity of faith, its pioneering and entrepreneurial spirit, its emphasis on self-reliance--that really rang true for me," says Putnam. "The vision of an ownership society and everything I believe in can be folded into that narrative." Following his first election to Congress, he contacted Boorstin, who lived in Washington until his death in 2004, and arranged to have lunch with the historian and his wife. "He signed my ratty copy of The Discoverers," says Putnam, as if he were talking about a prized autograph in a baseball-card collection.