WASHINGTON — The third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, Rep. Adam Putnam, had no trouble recalling the last time a Capitol police officer stopped him on his way into work, demanding that he show a staff ID card.

“It happened this morning, actually. It was embarrassing,” Mr. Putnam said sheepishly in a recent interview. “I said, ‘No, ma’am, I have my member’s pin.'”

Mr. Putnam wasn’t much bothered by the slight; he is used to it. At 33 and already serving his fourth term, the Florida conservative is quite experienced at being a youthful upstart lawmaker.

As Republicans try to recover from a decisive defeat in 2006 and regain the majority in Congress, they are increasingly turning to, in Mr. Putnam, a young man whose shock of red hair stands out amid the heads of thinning gray and white that dominate the Capitol. He’s risen quickly to the chairmanship of the House Republican Conference, and he now serves as a principal spokesman for a party still adjusting to life in the minority.

His colleagues often rib him about his age — the Republican leader, Rep. John Boehner, calls him “Red,” and “Opie” and “Howdy Doody” are among the other monikers he’s had to fend off. But after winning a narrow intra-party race for conference chairman in 2006, Mr. Putnam has earned the respect of fellow lawmakers for helping to unite the caucus and successfully stymie key Democratic initiatives, such as an expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Colleagues praise what they say is an unpretentious style in a politician known not only for his grasp of the issues but also for an uncommon ability to communicate the party’s message in a straightforward way. Indeed, he can unleash homespun aphorisms as well as Michael Huckabee, complete with a folksy Southern accent and a ready smile.

At a recent debate between House Republicans and Democrats, Mr. Putnam likened efforts to rein in entitlement programs to “hunting where the ducks are.” Without missing a beat, he turned to bank robbery to further his point. “That’s like the old bank robber Willie Sutton,” he said. “‘Willie, why do you rob banks? Because that’s where the money is?’Entitlement spending is where the money is.”

The lines prompted chuckles from the college-age crowd at George Washington University as well as a few quizzical looks from his Republican colleagues. “I don’t know where he gets all this stuff, but I hear four different new ones from him a day,” another one of the four Republicans participating in the debate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, said in an interview afterward.

Unlike many lawmakers who win election to public office at an early age, Mr. Putnam does not hail from a political family. A native of central Florida, he was raised amid his family’s cattle ranch and citrus farm. His first taste of Washington life came during a college internship, and the experience was far from perfect. “I was up here four months and my car was broken into four times,” he recalled with a laugh. “I didn’t really fall in love with Washington.”

He turned to Tallahassee instead, testing the waters for a legislative run right around the time he graduated from the University of Florida. “I started meeting with people, saying, ‘What do you think about the idea of a 22-year-old running for the legislature. Is that just crazy?’ Some people said it was, but more than not, people said, ‘No, it’s really not.'”

He defeated an opponent who, at 69, was more than three times Mr. Putnam’s age, and by his second term, he was tapped to head the Agriculture Committee in the Florida House of Representatives.

Next came a race for an open seat in Congress in 2000, in which Mr. Putnam, then 26 and with four years in the Legislature under his belt, recalls running as both the “candidate of experience” and the “fresh face” against a car dealer in his 50s who had never held elective office.

When Mr. Putnam arrived in Washington, his affable personality and readily apparent intellect quickly defused skepticism about his age, colleagues say. His mentors included the then-House speaker, Rep. Dennis Hastert, who helped put him on a leadership path.

“He’s a very likable person, but you’re very aware of how smart he is — quickly,” the vice chairman of the Republican conference, Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, said. Mr. Putnam, she said, was a hard worker who “wasn’t elbowing his way to the camera.”

Mr. Putnam has also become close with other young lawmakers considered rising stars in the conference, including Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, 44 and a member of the party leadership, and Mr. Ryan, 38, who is the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee.

“The advice I gave him, which is the advice I got and thought was good, was, ‘Don’t be the young cocky know-it-all. Be the young guy that everyone wants to help,'” Mr. Ryan said.

Mr. Putnam has been married for nearly 10 years to his wife, Melissa, an educator. With four children all under the age of 10, he juggles a large family with the demands of Congress, and though he has taken on a job with a national focus, he keeps reminders of home nearby. His staff places a dozen bottles of Florida’s Natural orange juice on a conference table for his regular “pen and pad” sessions with reporters, and a two-foot long head of an open-jawed Florida alligator greets visitors to his office on the seventh floor of the Longworth building on Capitol Hill.

Mr. Putnam became chairman of the Republican Policy Committee in 2006 and turned heads later that same year when he delivered an impressive performance in a debate with a Democratic leader, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, on ABC’s “This Week” during the height of the Mark Foley page scandal.

Known as an expert on agriculture because of his upbringing, Mr. Putnam has built a solidly conservative voting record and scores in the mid-90s with Beltway groups such as the American Conservative Union and Americans for Tax Reform. And although his job as conference spokesman often places him in the position of attack dog, he said he sees opportunities to work with Democrats on issues such as expanding the use of electronic medical records and achieving energy independence.

At the George Washington University debate, he sided with Democrats in stating that global warming is real and that humans are contributing to it, and he signaled an openness to a “cap and trade” program to reduce carbon emissions, an idea opposed by many conservatives but supported by the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator McCain.

When he ran for the conference chairmanship, Mr. Putnam gave Republicans the opportunity to showcase a fresh face in a political climate in which polls showed voters looking for new leadership on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Both he and his fellow lawmakers say that while his youth can offer a clear advantage, it has not played a role in his fast rise to prominence.

“I don’t recall any instance where someone has said, ‘We’ve got to have Adam out there talking because he’s a young guy,'” the House Republican whip, Rep. Roy Blunt, said in an interview.

Mr. Putnam’s higher profile on Capitol Hill has also drawn the attention of Democrats back home in Florida, who have derided what they see as his newfound partisan edge and have tried to pounce on any misstep. He has not given them many chances, by their own acknowledgement. His most notable blunder came early in 2007, when he responded fiercely to an anonymously sourced article reporting that the Democratic speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, had requested a large new plane to take her back and forth to her district in California from Washington.

It was soon disclosed, however, that the Defense Department had requested the plane for safety reasons, and a White House spokesman denounced the story as “silly” and “unfair to the speaker.”

Mr. Putnam has expressed few regrets about the incident, saying he was merely responding to what appeared to be a credible press report. But Florida Democrats say it’s an example of a young politician trying to make a name for himself nationally.

“It’s been clear that he’s more interested in being a partisan hack than representing the people of his district,” a spokesman for the Florida Democratic Party, Alejandro Miyar, said.

Though Mr. Putnam has achieved little in the way of bipartisan consensus with Democrats in Washington, he has gotten along well with Mr. Emanuel, the head of the Democratic conference.

“Personally, I like him a lot,” Mr. Emanuel said, while noting their political differences on most issues. “We have a good chemistry.”

Recently, Mr. Putnam has worked with Mr. Emanuel to organize a series of debates outside the Capitol between lawmakers of both parties. The events are designed to cut through the daily partisan bickering of Washington and demonstrate to voters, particularly younger Americans, that members of Congress can engage in civil debate on the issues.

The first event, focusing on the economy, was held at George Washington University last month, with the second, on health care, scheduled for early April at a location to be determined outside Washington.

Last month’s debate produced no legislative breakthroughs, but it featured meaty exchanges on issues ranging from taxes to Social Security, and the lawmakers succeeded in maintaining a collegial tone throughout. “I think we did prove that you could have a substantive debate with a smile,” Mr. Putnam said.

As for the future, Mr. Putnam is seen as a promising candidate for statewide office in Florida, and he may have his eye on the governor’s mansion if he leaves Washington, as he professes no interest in the Senate.

“There’s just unlimited possibilities,” a home-state friend and colleague, Rep. Ander Crenshaw of Jacksonville, said. He added that Mr. Putnam’s political calculus could depend on whether and for how long the Republicans remain in the minority. “Most people in Florida would see him as a rising star.”

Mr. Putnam, meanwhile, betrays not the slightest hint of urgency. “I’m just happy to be here, man,” he said.