Early Career
Following graduation, he taught junior high school social studies at public and Catholic schools, and has said that "teaching kids ... about the constitution and government" stirred his interest in politics.
LaHood was director of the Rock Island County Youth Services Bureau and then district administrative assistant for U.S. congressman Tom Railsback, a Moline, Illinois Republican, from 1977 to 1982. He was appointed in 1982 to fill a vacant seat in the Illinois House of Representatives, serving for nine months, and running for the seat in November 1982, but losing to Democrat Bob DeJaegher. LaHood then became administrative assistant and ultimately the chief of staff to U.S. House minority leader Robert Michel, serving from 1982 until 1994.
Read more about this topic: Ray LaHood
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or career:
“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)