Edward Smitty Smith

Edward H. "Smitty" Smith II (born 1980) 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. His family moved to the District of Columbia in 1943 and he is the third generation of his family to live there. His father taught physics at Ballou High School and his mother worked in the federal government. and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. After several years with the firm, he left to work on Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. 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.

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. 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. 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.

He works with DC Vote, an organization that advocates for D.C. voting rights, at the former home of his grandmother in Washington, D.C.'s Shaw neighborhood.

Smith emphasized the need for reform of D.C.'s juvenile justice system. that the 2012 budget autonomy act approved by the Council violates the District of Columbia Home Rule Act. 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, (Karl Racine raised nearly $257,000, but he donated or loaned $225,000 of that total to his own campaign).

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.” 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.

Endorsements Metropolitan Washington Council AFL-CIO Jews United for Justice, a progressive Jewish nonprofit D.C. Police Union D.C. Working Families Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, an association of LGBT Democrats