50 Most Beautiful People for 2011

Age: 23
Hometown: Plymouth, Mass.
Political party: Republican
Relationship status: In a relationship

When Danielle Beck is on edge, she bakes.

“If I’m having a horrible day or if I’m very, very stressed out, I go home and bake elaborate cupcakes,” says the legislative correspondent for Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.). “Cupcakes are my favorite thing to bake.”

She recently made duckie cupcakes for a friend’s birthday, using doughnut holes for the birds’ heads and diagonally cut marshmallows for their tails. They were a hit.

The petite Beck looks as though she wouldn’t dream of eating her own baked goods, but she talked enthusiastically about the kabobs and cheeseburgers she’s been grilling with her boyfriend this summer on her new Weber grill. Beck runs and does yoga occasionally, but she mostly credits her svelte figure to good genes.

“People would be surprised at the exercise I don’t do,” she says.

Beck first came to Washington as a student at The Catholic University of America, intending to study German. But she got stuck in an American government class her first semester, and to her surprise, she liked it.

From that point, she went on an internship bender, working for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation; Rep. Wally Herger (R-Calif.); the British Parliament (where she witnessed the historic 2009 resignation of the Speaker of the House of Commons); the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee; and the Senate Republican Policy Committee. She graduated from college last year and two weeks later began working for Rooney.

Beck spends her Saturdays volunteering at a preschool for autistic children in Arlington, Va. They play Duck Duck Goose or mold Play-Doh together in an effort to build social skills.

“Sitting at a desk all day — [this] reminds you that there’s life outside of [Capitol] Hill that’s not related to any sort of Beltway, political whatever,” she says.

—Kris Kitto

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