Sam Smith In 1974, the capital colony of DC got to elect a mayor and city council
for the first time in over a century. Although the city's registration
was overwhelmingly Democratic, the young DC Statehood Party, which I had
helped to start four years earlier, decided to run a hefty slate. I
missed the convention, having gone to Philadelphia to visit relatives.
There I received a phone call from Jay Matthews of the Washington Post
informing me that I had been selected as the party's candidate for city
council chair. I replied with one of my least felicitous responses to a
press query: "Oh shit, I knew I shouldn't have left town." (The Post ran
the response without the expletive).
After a week of reflection,
I decided to stick to journalism, but couldn't resist holding a news
conference at which I described the mayor and city council chair as "the
political equivalent of Fruit Loops, sweet-tasting cereal circles
comprised largely of additives and artificial flavoring wrapped around
exactly nothing."
Nationally syndicated black journalist Chuck
Stone took an avuncular interest in my brief campaign, writing after its
demise: "The outside chance for a white city council chairman
evaporated when Sam Smith, the irreverent and witty publisher and editor
of the bi-weekly DC Gazette, withdrew after a draft (which included a
large number of blacks) had been mounted on his behalf. 'Oh dear,'
fretted a matronly white woman who had organized a candidates night, 'we
did want so much to have a least one white candidate for that office.'"
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