Darryl Smith became infatuated with guayabera shirts prior to a 1998 trip to Cuba, and has been collecting them ever since. A New Jersey native who arrived in Seattle's Columbia City neighborhood a little over a decade ago by way of San Francisco, Smith is a tough cat to pin down—a chameleon of sorts who's capable of thriving in culturally paradoxical corners.
Harley Soltes
Some credit Smith, with the Columbia City renaissance. Political eminences like Norm Rice see him as a 21st-century African-American candidate. But despite smarts and accomplishments, the unconventional Smith has a lot to prove, especially to his own community.
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Once a professional stage actor and jazz drummer, Smith is now a Realtor who just finished a term as president of the Rainier Chamber of Commerce, where he is widely credited as a key figure in Columbia City's renaissance.
"I think if you look at what Darryl's done in the community he's lived in, you can't deny that it has been advantageous for the development of Southeast Seattle at large," says Mount Baker resident Norm Rice, who was Seattle's first and only black mayor.
Recently, Smith has channeled his considerable acumen into electoral politics, failing to get past the primary in an upstart 2003 bid for Seattle City Council despite the backing of one of the city's two major daily newspapers' editorial boards.
"I still think people don't realize how much Darryl has done," says Rice. "And he has to communicate that a little better."
"I think it's challenging for people to figure me out," Smith concedes.
A practicing Buddhist who is married to a white woman, Smith's spiritual pursuits are solitary, his sermons cerebral. Politically, the 43-year-old gravitates toward issues of housing, neighborhood revitalization, and small-business development, eschewing the civil rights underdog story lines that have, in this town and many others, helped propel politicians who share his African-American heritage— politicians like Ron Sims.
Appointed in 1996 as King County's first black county executive, a post he was subsequently elected to and holds to this day, Sims cut his political teeth in the early '80s as an aide to George Fleming, who became Washington's first black state senator in 1971. Fleming was a protégé of legendary Sam Smith, Seattle's first black City Council member. As local political pedigrees come, Sims' is as regal as it gets.
"George Fleming mentored me," recalls Sims, now 57. "He hired me sight unseen on the advice of Sam Smith. He knew I wanted to be in politics, but I don't think he mentored me to be in politics. But was he hoping? Yes."
Smith showing his lotus tattoo.
An ordained Baptist minister who belongs to the Central Area's prominent Mount Zion Baptist Church and is prone to bear hugging friends and enemies alike, the bright, gregarious Sims lives life out loud and in a crowd— a passionate public presence among his brothers and sisters. A Spokane native, Sims moved to Seattle's Mount Baker neighborhood shortly after a term as student body president at Central Washington University. After a series of postbaccalaureate government appointments, he quickly turned his attention to electoral politics, absent such diversions as theater, jazz, and Latin-American fashion.
A recent Saturday morning on the greenbelt near Columbia City's public library saw Smith and Sims together onstage, promoting walking as a means for people to get in shape during a daylong, county-sponsored fitness fair. Clad in designer shades, a straw fedora, leather sandals, and a four-pocket guayabera, Smith, playing emcee, welcomes Sims to the stage with a warm intro and a quick backslapping embrace.
Once at the podium, Sims regales the audience with a tale about how, upon receiving a bad fitness score from his doctor, he was forced to cut back on his favorite guilty pleasure.
"I love maple bars, but now I don't eat maple bars every day," says Sims to an amused crowd. "I never wanted to exercise regularly, but I had to change my lifestyle."
By appearances alone, it would seem as though Sims and Smith should be political allies. For starters, they're both black—and, historically, black politicians in Seattle get each other's backs. But in 2003, Sims, whose wife is Filipino, endorsed an Asian-American opponent of Smith's in the City Council primary, casting doubt on the latter's Afro-centric bona fides.
"If there is a general perception that a candidate is being rejected by African Americans, there will be enough solidarity to refuse that candidate," says state Sen. Adam Kline, a Caucasian who's been elected multiple times in a minority-heavy Southeast Seattle district—the 37th —historically represented by blacks such as Sam Smith, Fleming, Dawn Mason, and, most recently, Eric Pettigrew.
"You look anywhere in the country, and identity politics are important," says consultant Christian Sinderman, who helped guide Smith's 2003 council bid. "So I think it's important for people to win support from what is perceived as their natural base. It can be a bit superficial, but it actually means something."
King County Executive Ron Sims is a politician who "can get over the bridge."
Sims describes his failure to support Smith in part: "People think because you're black, you're going to get elected. But I don't know where Darryl's church base is, and in this city, you'd better have a home church. The people in the black community who vote are in a church. That is the tie that binds people."
