Casting herself as a populist, Linda Smith won election to
two terms in Congress where she voted conservatively on
social issues and repeatedly clashed with Republican leaders
in her attempt to pass gift bans, lobbying restrictions,
and an overhaul of the campaign finance system. In 1998
Representative Smith chose to leave her House seat to
challenge Senator Patty Murray for a seat in the U.S. Senate.
“You can’t pull them along,” Smith observed when recalling
her approach to leadership. “But you can stand and do the
right thing and stand with your head up no matter what
and people will follow that.”1
Linda Ann Simpson was born in LaJunta, Colorado, on
July 16, 1950. Growing up in modest circumstances, her
biological father abandoned her mother, Delma Simpson,
and their family. Her mother and stepfather eventually
moved to Clark County in Washington state, where Linda
was raised with five siblings. Her stepfather worked as a
mechanic to support the family. After her mother died,
Linda worked part-time in an orchard and retirement home
to make ends meet. “I felt like by 17, I had had more lives
than most people,” she recalled.2 She graduated from Fort
Vancouver High School in 1968 and married Vern Smith,
a locomotive engineer, a few weeks shy of her eighteenth birthday. The couple raised two children: Sherri and Robert.
Linda Smith worked as a district manager for seven tax
preparation offices.
Smith considered herself a liberal Democrat until a large
business tax hurt her enterprise. She then converted to
conservative Republicanism, but initially had no interest
in running for office. “I thought politics were dirty . . . and
I didn’t want to be in something dirty,” Smith explained.
“And I remember thinking that I want something noble, I
want to reach up and reach higher.”3 Smith recalled that her
husband’s activism in the anti-abortion movement and his
belief in her potential as a strong candidate paved the way
for her future career in politics.4 In 1983 she entered elective
politics by defeating an appointed Democratic incumbent
in a special election for a seat in the Washington state house
of representatives. “I didn’t have a clue what it would be
like,” Smith said. “All I knew was I wanted change. I didn’t
like what was happening. I certainly didn’t understand the
political system.”5 In 1986 Smith beat another appointed
Democrat to win election to the state senate—and swing
it to GOP control. In the upper chamber, she successfully
opposed the Children’s Initiative, a tax hike earmarked
for welfare programs and schools. She also carved out a reputation as a religious conservative who opposed gay
rights and gay adoption laws. Unable to move campaign
finance reform and tax relief through legislation, Smith
sponsored two major ballot measures. In 1992 Initiative
134, which slashed campaign spending and donation
amounts from big contributors, passed the Washington
legislature. A year later, Initiative 601 passed, requiring voter
approval for all tax increases. Smith considered the latter her
greatest triumph.6
In September 1994, Smith joined the race for a
southeastern Washington House district that included the
state capital, Olympia, and counties along the Pacific Ocean
and, to the south, the Columbia River border with Oregon.
Smith later recalled that her entry into the campaign
came as a surprise. “We were driving into town and I saw
a sheet on the top of a building up on the freeway and it
said, ‘Write in Linda Smith.’ It had spontaneously started.
People were starting to make their own signs, put them in
their cars, in their yards, and on the roofs. And the first
thing I thought was, ‘Who’s that?’ I really could not think
of it being me.”7 Smith challenged incumbent Democrat
Jolene Unsoeld—Republican businessman Timothy
Moyer dropped out of the race in late August—in the
all-party primary. The write-in campaign quickly gathered
momentum. In less than three weeks Smith volunteers
phoned 50,000 voters and mailed information to another
150,000 in an impressive grassroots movement. Smith
carried 29 percent of the vote (well ahead of the other GOP
contenders), second behind the incumbent, Unsoeld, who
carried just 40 percent. Smith became Washington’s first
candidate ever to win a congressional nomination as a write-in.
“I remember standing there and going these people did
this, they really did,” Smith remarked. “Maybe write-ins
do work.”8
In the general election Smith ran on her record as a
ballot initiative specialist, and as an anti-abortion, tax
reform, and campaign finance reform candidate. She had
strong support from a network of followers drawn from
the ranks of anti-environmentalists and the Christian right.
In Unsoeld, she faced a leading Democratic feminist and
environmentalist. Unsoeld, a three-term incumbent, ran
in opposition to gun control and to the North American
Free Trade Agreement while trying to paint Smith as
an extremist. But Smith’s base, referred to sometimes as
“Linda’s Army,” encompassed a variety of conservative populists:
anti-tax groups, government reformers, gun owners, and property rights advocates.9 Unsoeld had been
a GOP target for six years, since she had won the district
narrowly in 1988. Against Smith, she was hurt by a third party
candidate, Caitlin Carlson, who siphoned off part of
the gun-control vote. Smith prevailed with 52 percent to
Unsoeld’s 45 percent.10
When Smith took her seat in the 104th Congress
(1995–1997), she received assignments on the Resources
Committee and the Small Business Committee. She served
in both capacities through the 105th Congress (1997–
1999). During the 104th Congress she also chaired the Tax
and Finance Subcommittee of the Small Business panel.
Upon arriving in Washington, DC, Smith immediately
set the tone for her tenure, telling a reporter, “This city is so
awful. I can’t wait to get back home.”11 She voted to support
much of the “Contract with America” in an attempt to
overhaul the scope and function of government. She was
consistently rated one of the most conservative House
Members in the 104th and 105th Congresses, voting against
gun control and environmental legislation, perceiving the
latter as a threat to property rights. She believed being gay
was an “inclination” and also opposed using Medicaid to
fund abortions for victims of rape and incest—telling The
New Republic that “We don’t kill children because the father
is a jerk.”12 Smith’s opposition to abortion helped her forge
close alliances with influential Republicans—in particular,
Henry John Hyde of Illinois and Frank Rudolph Wolf of
Virginia. “So some of these people that became friends that
I knew had power, it was very important for me,” Smith
noted. “Now, I was aligned to them.”13
But it was Smith’s commitment to campaign finance
reform which brought her national attention as a “rebel”
among the GOP “revolutionaries” of 1994. It also brought
her into open conflict with party leaders, whom she
chastised for not carrying reforms far enough. During her
first year in Congress, she insisted that House leaders had to
overhaul the gifts-lobbying-campaign system to enact true
reform. In a fall 1995 editorial piece in the Washington Post,
she questioned how Congress could reform government
without producing new laws to regulate itself: “You can’t
perform surgery in a dirty operating room and with a team
that hasn’t scrubbed.” Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia
rebuked Smith for making her dissent public, eliciting a
private letter from Smith to Gingrich (which also made
its way into the public). “This institution, under your
leadership, is truly on trial,” she wrote.14
After submitting her own plan for banning gifts and
overhauling campaigns, she eventually backed the Shays–Meehan Campaign Finance Reform Bill. In an attempt
to support that measure, Smith organized an unusual
coalition of reform groups: the League of Women Voters,
Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen, and Common Cause. She
also allied herself with Ross Perot, founder of United We
Stand, and stressed her populist bona fides as she took
on her party’s leadership. “And then you start one by one
building relationships,” she explained. “It was very unusual
coalitions of people and that built relationships into other
things because they were very legitimate and that would be
the kind of group that I would put together and say, ���I think
I have enough votes to rock. Maybe you can get through
me, but do you really want to get through me as being the
new write-in candidate and the first woman that’s ever
chaired a committee (the Small Business Committee) in
their first year or term?’”15 Smith seemed more comfortable
with the reform mold. “I’ve always been a crusader,” she
said. “That’s just been my nature from the time I was a little
kid. I was going to change the world.”16 Appearing before
the House Committee on Oversight, she declared, “A PAC
ban is essential to stop the checkbook lobbying that goes
on here.”17 As a result of her work, the 105th Congress
adopted more stringent limits on gifts from lobbyists in
November 1995.
In 1996 Smith faced Democrat Brian Baird, head of the
department of psychology at Pacific Lutheran University,
in the general election. Baird charged that Smith approved
of slashing the Medicare budget and highlighted her
support for the GOP “Contract with America.” The
Congresswoman stressed her independence: “Linda Smith
is owned only by the people from the district.”18 On
election night, Baird had racked up a 2,400-vote lead and
was widely presumed to be the winner; however, a count
of 40,000 absentee ballots gave Smith the election by 887
votes (50.2 percent to 49.8 percent).19
The razor-thin victory did little to deter Smith’s attack
on the institution and on GOP leaders. In January 1997,
she voted against Gingrich as Speaker in favor of former
Congressman Robert Smith Walker of Pennsylvania. As
a result, the leadership deprived her of her subcommittee
chairmanship. Undeterred by the consequences of her
rebellion, she later reflected that “if you’re not elected again
or you lose a committee chair,” it was worth it if done for
something “that you really believe is right.”20 She also was the only Republican to vote against an IRS reform bill
in 1998, arguing that she could not support legislation
which also slashed veterans’ benefits by $10 billion. In
addition, Smith rejected “most favored nation” trade
relations with China because of that country’s human rights
violations, again parting company with the majority in her
party.21 Every year she was in office, from 1995 to 1998,
Smith offered amendments to end tobacco subsidies, each
time failing by a slender margin.
Several months into the 105th Congress Smith declared
her intention to forgo a re-election bid to the House in
favor of joining the 1998 Senate race against Democrat
Patty Murray, then considered a vulnerable incumbent.
“I actually decided I would get out of politics,” Smith
reminisced. “But if I won the seat then that would make
some sense. It would mean I could take the issues further.
I ran for office like 12 times and never lost, but I just
knew that you run without really believing every time
that you’ll win because I was always the odd one. I never
was the one that was preferred.”22 Smith won the GOP
nomination after an expensive contest against Seattle
multimillionaire Chris Bayley, setting up just the third
woman-versus-woman Senate race in U.S. history. Gender
provided only a background issue, since both candidates
were so distinctly split with Smith opposing nearly every
issue that Murray embraced: affirmative action, tighter
environmental restrictions, abortion rights, trade with
China, and increased funding for the National Endowment
for the Arts.23 Combined, Murray and Smith spent more
than $7 million, with Smith at a considerable disadvantage
in the general election after emptying her coffers in the
primary. Murray purchased large blocks of television time.
She agreed to debate with Smith only once in a carefully
choreographed campaign, leading to Smith’s criticism that
Democrats “hid” Murray from public view and the “people
never got a campaign.”24 Murray won by the most lopsided
margin of victory in a Washington Senate race since the
days of Henry Martin (Scoop) Jackson, taking 59 percent to
Smith’s 41 percent.
After Congress, Smith returned to Vancouver,
Washington, where she started a nonprofit called Shared
Hope International. Smith’s group raised money and
awareness to free women and children who were the victims
of sex-trafficking and end all forms of human trafficking.
By early 2002, the organization operated 19 homes in India,
Nepal, and Jamaica, accommodating up to 300 people.25
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
[ Top ]