Max Frost and the Troopers – "Fourteen or Fight!" (1968)

Gettin’ old

Lookin’ old

That’s a drag now!

(You can say that again!)

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On November 8, Maxwell Frost was elected to represent the 10th congressional district of Florida in the U.S. House of Representatives.

I wasn’t aware of Congressman-elect Frost’s victory until I heard President Biden mention him in his post-election press conference.

Biden described Frost as the youngest person ever elected to Congress.  He was almost right – Frost was actually the second youngest Congressman-elect.

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The youngest person ever elected to Congress was actually William Charles Cole Claiborne of Tennessee, who was only 22 when he was elected to Congress in 1797.  At least that’s what the official House of Representatives website says – other sources report that Claiborne was 23 or perhaps 24 when he took the oath of office. 

In any event, the U.S. Constitution provides that members of the House of Representatives must be at least 25 years of age – which Claiborne clearly was not.  That fact didn’t seem to have bothered the members of the House, who chose to seat Claiborne despite his youth.

Unlike Claiborne, Maxwell Frost was 100% legal.  He was born on January 17, 1997, which means he celebrated his 25th birthday almost a full year before he will be sworn into Congress.

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After congratulating Congressman-elect Frost at his press conference, the President noted that he had been the second-youngest person ever elected to the Senate.

As we learned above, Maxwell Frost wasn’t actually the youngest person ever elected to Congress.  And Joe Biden wasn’t actually the second-youngest person ever elected to the Senate– he was actually the sixth-youngest Senator.  

Biden was 29 when he was elected in 1972, but was 30 years, six weeks, and one day old when he was sworn in as a Senator.

Given that the Constitution provides that you must be at least 30 years old to serve in the U.S. Senate, Biden cut it fairly close.  But not as close as William Wells.

William Wells

Wells – like Biden, he was from Delaware – was only 30 years and ten days old when he was sworn in as a Senator.  (Not that it really matters, but William Wells was the great-great-grandfather of Orson Welles.)

While Senators are supposed to be at least 30 when they take office, four men were seated in the Senate despite being younger than that – including the legendary Henry Clay, who became a Senator from Kentucky when he was only 29.  

Second-youngest, sixth-youngest, whatever.  (Uncle Joe is known for not sweating the details.)

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Back to Congressman-elect Maxwell Frost . . .

In 2010, I wrote about Wild in the Streets – a movie that was released the day before my 16th birthday. 

That movie starred Christopher Jones – an actor who is now largely forgotten – as a rock star who was asked for help by a Senator who wanted the voting age lowered to 18.  (That actually happened only three years after the movie was released.)

The rock star did the Senator one better – he released a song titled “Fourteen or Fight,” which inspired massive protests and demonstrations by teenagers.  As a result of the chaos that was unleashed by “Fourteen or Fight,” the oldsters in Washington cried uncle and lowered the voting age to 15.  Eventually, the kids took over the government, which put everyone who was over 35 in “re-education” camps, where they were given daily doses of LSD and lived happily (and obliviously) ever after.

The name of the fictional rock star portrayed by Christopher Jones (who was elected President by all those newly-enfranchised teenage voters) was . . . Maxwell Frost.  (Actually, it was Max Frost – but if the President can say he was the second-youngest Senator when he was actually the sixth-youngest Senator, I reckon I can say that the Christopher Jones character was named Maxwell Frost when he was actually Max Frost.)

Click here to read my 2010 post about Wild in the Streets.

Click here to listen to “Fourteen or Fight.”

Click here to listen to “Shape of Things to Come,” which was the best Max Frost song from Wild in the Streets.