Saira Blair: the youngest elected state politician in the US

Ms Blair wrote 3,500 handwritten letters to potential voters, to introduce herself to West Virginians

Pro-life Saira Blair was elected last month to the West Virginia House of Delegates (AP)

The youngest elected state politician in America has arrived home for the weekend.

Craig Blair, father of Saira Blair – 18 years, four months and 10 days – peered out of the window at the approaching headlights of his daughter’s new Jeep, which she bought a few weeks earlier after winning her seat in the West Virginia House of Delegates – knowing the position came with a $20,000-a-year (£12,800) salary and would mean a lot of driving.

“What do you have going on tomorrow?” asked Craig, himself a state senator and formerly his daughter’s campaign manager. “I might see some friends,” his daughter replied. “I have to write those thank-you letters.”

The letters were to her supporters, some of the 18,000 West Virginians Ms Blair will be representing in the 59th district – a mostly rural, mostly Republican region two hours from Washington. She won the election in November by beating her opponent, a 44-year-old attorney, with 63 per cent of the vote. She has since become the most famous state legislator in the country. This weekend was her first at home since winning.

Last year, while still in high school, she took part in a government programme in which students put a mock bill through the state legislature. She loved it, having grown up learning about politics watching her father work.

As Saira’s mother, Andrea, remembers it, discussions of Saira’s candidacy were joking at first. One day, the jokes turned serious. “She laid out her own campaign, and I just put the polish on it,” Craig says. “Two things she did that were advantageous were tricks I wanted to do for a long time.”

First were the handwritten letters – 3,500 of them – on her stationery, giving potential voters the location of their nearest polling station and introducing herself to West Virginians. “Hello! My name is Saira Blair. I am a fiscal conservative. I’m Pro Life. I’m Pro Marriage. I’m Pro Family. I’m Pro Business because that’s where jobs come from.”

To which her father added his own letter: “I don’t normally endorse candidates during primary elections, but I’m making an exception this time. Yes, she’s my daughter, and she has earned my support!”

But Ms Blair doesn’t want people to think she’s her father’s mouthpiece. She has her own ideas, she says, like the morning-after pill: he approves of it, she doesn’t.

She cites as a current favourite book Unleashing Capitalism, an economic treatise on returning prosperity to West Virginia. She admires Condoleezza Rice and Shelley Moore Capito, the state’s senator-elect.

Later, Ms Blair and her friend, Amber, visit a museum, a place called Discovery Station just over the Maryland border. A museum employee and asks if she can take their picture. “I’ll put it up on our Facebook page,” an employee says. “We don’t get many people your age in here.”

© Washington Post