This article first appeared in the November 5, 1997 issue of the Seattle Weekly.
I am driving with
Linda Smith through Southwest Washington. She is noting the flaws of the "Linda Smith for
U.S. Senate" bumper sticker on the car ahead of us. "It's too little!" the congresswoman points out. "I can't see it! The white needs to reflect!" We talk about the campaign, which is being hailed as the first in history to reject money from political action committees and Washington, DC, fund raisers. Suddenly the car we are trailing veers right. "We're not going that way!" Smith bellows. "Don't follow anybody! Wherever they're going, we're not going that way!"
Linda Smith could put that on a bumper sticker. The 47-year-old Republican has built her political career on not following anybody (even her own party) or anything (even conventional wisdom). The result has been an astonishing odyssey of unlikely victories. In 1983 the political rookie from Hazel Dell overthrew an incumbent in a run for the statehouse. Later, as a state senator, Smith spearheaded two successful citizens' initiatives, the campaign-finance-reform Initiative 134 and the state-spending-lid Initiative 601. Largely on the grassroots foundation of those efforts, the Christian right-winger pulled off an unprecedented 1994 bid for Congress as a write-in candidate, beating three-term Democratic incumbent Jolene Unsoeld in the heavily Democratic 3rd District. Two years later, after renouncing PAC donations, Smith reclaimed her seat over challenger Brian Baird. It was the narrowest victory of her career-so narrow, in fact, that Baird was initially pronounced the winner.
Since arriving on Capitol Hill, Smith has seized an unusually bright share of the spotlight: snaring a coveted committee chairmanship as a freshman; brazenly defying GOP leadership, as when she kicked sand in the face of Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich with the now infamous "fat kid" remark; hammering incessantly on issues like campaign finance reform and removing perks from ex-speakers of the House. Many Democrats have long despised the aggressive Smith. Clark County Democratic Party Chair Dan Ogden used that verb in an interview with The Seattle Times last year, and gentlemanly State Sen. Sid Snyder once blurted out that Smith is a "self-promoting, miserable bitch." "She is as self-centered a politician as you're ever going to meet," says one Democratic colleague who begged anonymity. "We all have ego. But she'll be at any place at any time to have her ego needs met."
More striking now are the numbers of GOP faithful who don't like her either. Republicans on Capitol Hill privately seethe over Smith's cowboy propensity for bucking party leadership. New York Rep. Peter King branded the reformer "irritating as secondhand smoke." National Republican leaders have been actively recruiting candidates to run against Smith in the 1998 Senate primary (the winner will run against Democrat Patty Murray), with Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott meeting recently with George Nethercutt in an attempt to talk him into running. Smith's own state Republican Party has appeared desperate in its attempts to recruit anti-Smith candidates. After Washington GOP state Rep. Jennifer Dunn announced that she wouldn't be taking on Smith, and after Nethercutt all but said no, moderate Republicans from around the state fervently turned to Pierce County Executive Doug Sutherland, who finally threw his hat in the ring in September.
Of course her fellow pols don't like her, Smith retorts: Her crusade for campaign finance reform will take away their perks. "I threw a fit about tobacco lobbyists passing out checks on the House floor before votes, and that's the kind of thing they say is abrasive," Smith says, shaking her head. "I say, 'You shouldn't be doin' it! If you don't want me to talk about it, don't accept checks from lobbyists on the House floor!' You take something from people, their golf trip with a lobbyist, and it's personal. One said, 'This is our life, it's rough, we deserve this! If you don't like it, then go home!' Well, no, the people who sent me here, they wouldn't like it either if they knew how influence was bein' bought!"
A lot of Americans don't like it. Groups and individuals as politically disparate as Common Cause, Ross Perot, John Miller, Charlie Chong, The Seattle Times editorial board, and Bill Clinton have all praised Smith for her principled attack on the campaign corruption that has become such a visible issue in recent years. Lobbyists donate "hard" and "soft" money to the coffers of politicians who can benefit them with favorable votes; a common soft-money move was Boeing's $300,000 donation to the Republican Party before the 1996 vote on Most Favored Nation status for China. Smith, with characteristic independence, was the only one in the Washington state delegation to vote against MFN. Along with Smith's already motley base of independents, union members, Christian conservatives, small-business people, property-rights proponents, and small- government fanatics, many Democrats who wouldn't normally consider a dalliance in the voting booth with a right-wing, anti-gay, right-to-lifer are finding themselves tempted to vote the gutsy outsider into the most insider club in America.
But first they want to know what makes Linda Smith tick. Turns out that's not as simple a question as a whole raft of unlucky opponents have assumed. Country bumpkin or canny pol? Straight-up or dissembling? Religious or ambitious? A coalition-builder or force for division? Driven by principle or driven by ego? To follow this whirlwind of contradictions around her district is to know only one thing for certain: There is absolutely nothing about Linda Smith one can know for certain.
