August 30, 2014
Originally posted on Orlando Sentinel.
In the final days before Tuesday’s election, voters in Florida House District 31 got campaign mail aimed at thwarting 23-year-old Jennifer Sullivan, who had surged past her much older and better-financed opponents.
“Wisdom comes with age,” the attack ad read. “Can a 23-year-old, still living at home, truly represent us?”
Voters in the district that covers northern Orange and Lake counties answered yes at the polls, electing by six percentage points the home-schooled daughter of North Lake Tea Party founder Patricia Sullivan to a two-year term.
Jennifer Sullivan, who was 15 when she organized a Lake County 4-H project that gathered more than 3 tons of peanut butter for Central Florida food banks, will become the youngest female legislator in Florida history and the youngest of any gender since 1996, when Adam Putnam, then 22, won his first statehouse race.