Edward "Smitty" Smith | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1980 Washington, D.C. United States |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Education | Brown University (BA) Harvard University (LLB) |
| Occupation | Attorney |
| Website | Smitty for AG |
Edward H. "Smitty" Smith II (born 1980) [1] is an American lawyer. He was a candidate for Attorney General of the District of Columbia in the 2014 election and a former adviser to the FCC. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Smith was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in the working-class neighborhoods of Congress Heights and LeDroit Park. [1] [2] His family moved to the District of Columbia in 1943 and he is the third generation of his family to live there. [6] His father taught physics at Ballou High School and his mother worked in the federal government. [1]
After winning scholarships to attend the Beauvoir School and the Potomac School, [1] Smith earned a Bachelor's degree with honors from Brown University, where he was captain of the track team, [7] and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. [1]
Smith began his legal career as an associate attorney at the Washington, D.C. law firm Hogan & Hartson. [1] [3] After several years with the firm, he left to work on Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. [1] After the election, he was named Deputy General Counsel of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, and then joined the Department of Commerce, where he worked on the economic development of low-income communities. [7]
At the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, Smith was named Program Director of the State Broadband Data and Development Grant Program. [8] Under his leadership, and with funds allocated by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the SBDDGP established the $4.7 billion Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, which extended and developed broadband services to reach rural and underserved areas, improved broadband access for public safety agencies, and provided financial assistance to low-income families to facilitate the transition from analog to digital television. [9] [10]
Smith later joined the FCC, where he was appointed Chief of Staff and Senior Counsel of the Incentive Auction Task Force, a multibillion-dollar radio spectrum allocation project assessing whether to set bidding limits on Verizon and AT&T, ensuring that the wavelengths at auction remained reserved for smaller carriers. [1] [7] [11] [12] On May 15, 2014, he spoke before an open meeting of the FCC in favor of bidding limits, and the Commissioners subsequently voted 3-2 in favor of the limits. [11]
Following his campaign for attorney general, Smith joined DC government to run the District of Columbia's Justice Grants Administration. [13] He then rejoined the FCC as an advisor before joining the law firm DLA Piper, where he won an award for his work representing T-Mobile. [14] [15] [16]
He works with DC Vote, an organization that advocates for D.C. voting rights, [1] [7] and he sits on the Board of Directors of the We the People Project, which pursues litigation in support of “full and equal citizenship” for residents of D.C. and U.S. territories. [1] [7]
On July 12, 2014, Smith announced his candidacy for D.C. Attorney General [1] [2] [5] at the former home of his grandmother in Washington, D.C.'s Shaw neighborhood. [4]
Smith emphasized the need for reform of D.C.'s juvenile justice system. [1] He saw the Attorney General's role as “cooperative” with the Council of the District of Columbia, and has expressed disagreement with sitting Attorney General Irvin B. Nathan's contention [17] that the 2012 budget autonomy act approved by the Council violates the District of Columbia Home Rule Act. [1]
On August 6, the campaign submitted 6,500 petition signatures, more than double the 3,000 required to get Smith's name on the ballot. [18] Shortly before Smith's campaign finance report was released on August 11, he announced he had raised over $185,000 during the first fundraising quarter of the campaign, [19] [20] including more from outside donors than all other attorney general candidates combined [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] (Karl Racine raised nearly $257,000, but he donated or loaned $225,000 of that total to his own campaign). [22] According to the finance report, Smith's campaign paid a company owned by Jauhar Abraham for petition signature collection. [19] [25]
In an interview at the hearing for S.132, the New Columbia Admission Act, Smith told an interviewer at The Atlantic that “as Americans, under no conditions should issues of political convenience or expedience dictate fundamental rights. The fact that [D.C. statehood] might prove politically inconvenient for either party is not a just reason for continuing to deny citizens those rights.” [6]
A mid-October poll conducted by local NPR affiliate WAMU and the Washington City Paper showed Smith tied for second place with Lorie Masters and Paul Zukerberg behind Karl Racine, although a large plurality remained undecided. [26] According to the City Paper, Smith's campaign tried to persuade two of his rivals, Lorie Masters and Paul Zukerberg, to drop out of the race in order to “[consolidate] the anti-Racine vote,” but both rivals declined. [27]
Smith came second in the election for attorney general, polling 21.12% of the vote. The winner, Karl Racine, polled 40.65%. [33]
TimothyShiou-Ming Wu is a Taiwanese-American legal scholar who served as Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy at the United States from 2021 to 2023. He is also a professor of law at Columbia University and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. He is known legally and academically for significant contributions to antitrust and communications policy, coining the phrase "network neutrality" in his 2003 law journal article, Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination. In the late 2010s, Wu was a leading advocate for an antitrust lawsuit directed at the breakup of Facebook.
John K. Evans III is an American lawyer and politician who served on the Council of the District of Columbia from 1991 to 2020 before resigning due to numerous ethics violations. Evans served as the chairman of the board of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) until its ethics committee found he violated conflict of interest rules. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented Ward 2 of Washington, D.C. from May 1991 to January 2020, making him the D.C. Council's longest-serving lawmaker. He ran for mayor in 1998 and 2014, but lost in the Democratic primary both times.
Michael Arrington Brown is an American politician in Washington, D.C. In 2008, he was elected an at-large member of the Council of the District of Columbia and served one four-year term.
Harry Thomas Jr., is a Democratic politician in Washington, D.C. In 2006 he was elected to represent Ward 5 on the Council of the District of Columbia and served until his resignation in 2012, several hours after federal prosecutors filed charges of embezzlement and filing false tax returns against him.
The attorney general for the District of Columbia is the chief legal officer of the District of Columbia. While attorneys general previously were appointed by the mayor, District of Columbia voters approved a charter amendment in 2010 that made the office an elected position beginning in 2015. The current Attorney General is Brian Schwalb, who has served since January 2, 2023.
On November 4, 2014, Washington, D.C., held an election for its mayor, concurrently with U.S. Senate elections in various states, U.S. House elections, and various state and local elections.
Irvin Bertram Nathan is an American lawyer from Washington, DC. He served as the attorney general of the District of Columbia from 2011 to 2015. He was appointed in 2011 by Mayor Vincent C. Gray. He previously served as the general counsel of the United States House of Representatives from 2007 to 2011. Nathan announced his resignation the day after the November 2014 election, in which voters chose Karl Racine as the first elected attorney general of D.C.
Paul H. Zukerberg is an American activist, lawyer, and politician. Through a series of lawsuits and appeals, Zukerberg successfully ensured the direct election of the Attorney General of the District of Columbia in 2014 after the Council of the District of Columbia and incumbent Irv Nathan sought to postpone the vote.
Brianne Nadeau is an American Democratic politician in Washington, D.C., and a member of the Council of the District of Columbia representing Ward 1 since 2015. She defeated long-time incumbent Jim Graham in the Democratic Party primary and won the general election with 75% of the vote in 2014. She is the first woman to represent Ward 1 on the council and the first D.C. Councilmember to give birth while serving in office.
Mark H. Tuohey III is an American attorney best known for representing corporations and white collar clients. In February 2015, he was appointed by Muriel Bowser as director of the Mayor of Washington D.C.'s Office of Legal Counsel In August 2018, he returned to private practice for law firm BakerHostetler.
Karl Anthony Racine is a Haitian-American lawyer and politician. He was the first independently elected Attorney General for the District of Columbia, a position he held from 2015 to 2023. Before that, he was the managing partner of Venable LLP. As Attorney General, Racine received national attention for his work on antitrust matters, and in 2021 launched an eventually-dismissed antitrust lawsuit against Amazon.
Lorelie Sue "Lorie" Masters is an American lawyer specializing in insurance litigation notable for her work supporting District of Columbia home rule and opposing human trafficking. She was a candidate for Attorney General of the District of Columbia in the 2014 election. She is currently a partner in the law firm of Hunton Andrews Kurth in Washington.
The 2014 District of Columbia Attorney General election was held on November 4, 2014, to elect the Attorney General of Washington, D.C., concurrently with elections to the United States Senate in various states and elections to the United States House of Representatives, and various state and local elections.
Brandon Tristan Todd is a lobbyist for Washington Gas and a former American politician who represented Ward 4 on the Council of the District of Columbia. Todd previously worked in the Council office of Muriel Bowser and in various campaign positions during her successful campaign for Mayor of the District of Columbia. Todd won a special election in May 2015, succeeding Muriel Bowser, who was elected as mayor. After serving one full term on the council, Todd lost the 2020 Democratic primary to Janeese Lewis George.
Trayon White is an American politician from Washington, D.C. A member of the Democratic Party, he has represented Ward 8 on the Council of the District of Columbia since 2017. He was first elected to the council in 2016 in his second attempt for the position, which had been held by former mayor Marion Barry prior to his death.
Robert C. White Jr. is an American attorney and politician who has served on the Council of the District of Columbia since 2016.
On November 6, 2018, Washington, D.C., held an election for its mayor. Incumbent Democrat Muriel Bowser won re-election, becoming the first Mayor to do so for Washington, D.C., since Anthony A. Williams won a second term in 2002.
Matthew Michael Graves is an American lawyer who has served as the United States attorney for the District of Columbia since 2021.
The 2022 District of Columbia Attorney General election was held on November 8, 2022, to elect the next attorney general for the District of Columbia. This was the third attorney general election in D.C. history.
Initiative 82 was a voter-approved ballot initiative in Washington, D.C., to phase out the special minimum wage for tipped employees as part of the national Fight for $15 campaign. In the November 2022 general election, D.C. voters approved Initiative 82 by a margin of 74% to 26%, though about 12% of all participating voters did not vote on the initiative. It was nearly identical to Initiative 77, a ballot measure in the 2018 primary election that was approved by D.C. voters but later overturned by the D.C. Council before it could enter into force.