Smith Point: Exclusive hot spot for a GOP generation

By BOB DART
Cox News Service
Friday, February 18, 2005 WASHINGTON — Midnight on a Saturday at Smith Point.

The Bush twins haven’t shown up yet. But the bar is crowded with other party-hardy twentysomethings who qualify for “The List” of those allowed to enter this smoky conclave of Republican cool.

Outside, a bouncer warns the wannabes lined up on the Georgetown sidewalk behind the velvet rope: “Don’t waste your time. If you’re not on ‘The List,’ you’re not going to get in.”

“The List” is composed of about 1,500 friends and friends of friends of Bo Blair, 32, founder and owner of the basement bar. In addition to its best known members, Jenna and Barbara Bush, “The List” contains an evolving Who’s Who of Washington’s young conservative staffers from the Bush administration and Capitol Hill and well as lawyers, lobbyists and the offspring of top Bush advisors and members of Congress.

The president’s 23-year-old daughters blend in here and their celebrity causes little commotion, explained others on “The List.” The place is always packed with Ivy League grads and grown-up fraternity boys and sorority girls from Southern universities like Duke and William & Mary. Since opening within days of George W. Bush’s first election to the presidency in November of 2000, Smith Point has become the haven of this GOP generation.

“The first weekend I moved here, I started coming,” said Caroline Butts, 25, who grew up in Marietta, Ga., and was an intern for then Rep. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and a staffer for Rep. John Linder, R-Ga., before recently joining a public affairs firm.

“Jobs change. Apartments change. People come and go. D.C. is very transient,” said Butts, a member of Kappa Delta sorority during her undergraduate years at Vanderbilt. “But when you come in here every weekend, you’re guaranteed that you’re going to see the same people. If you come in alone after working late, you know you’re going to know 90 percent of the people at the bar.”

“You can cut loose after a long week of work and dance to 80s music,” said Jessica Ferguson, 24, who moved here from Boca Raton, Fla., and works for the Republican House leadership. “We’re all friends. Two of the bouncers are my co-workers on the Hill.”

Since their hangout — where a Red Bull and vodka costs ten bucks — won’t close ’til 3 a.m., other young regulars will economize with a few shots at home before hitting the dance floor at Smith Point.

“I moved here in 1994, right after the Republican Revolution and Newt Gingrich, and there was nothing,” Catherine Forbes, daughter of one-time Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes, told The New York Times. “Basically, Bo has created for young conservatives a Pamela Harriman [a famed Democratic hostess]. It’s the salon. You feel safe. You can let your hair down.”

Amid the sea of khakis and open-collared shirts, Blair in the guy with a tie around the neck of his button-downed oxford cloth shirt. He grew up a few blocks from where his bar is now located and attended Georgetown Prep before heading to Villanova University and becoming social chairman of Tau Kappa Omega fraternity. The bar’s name, Smith Point, comes from a favorite spot on Nantucket, the island off the Massachusetts mainland where Blair’s family summered.

Smith Point’s restaurant is open to the public until about 11 p.m. Then the corner bar becomes site of a private party, the owner explained. That’s when “The List” kicks in from Thursday through Sunday.

It began as a place for about 500 of Blair’s friends from college and prep school and their friends to congregate. “Mostly young professionals from schools in the northeast and South who moved to D.C.,” said the owner.

But the no-frills dive has grown into the in-spot for the young partiers in a political party headed by a teetotaling, in-bed-by-nine president.

It is the sort of place Dubya would likely have enjoyed when he was the age of those on “The List.”

There is no official political affiliation, of course, and there are some Democrats on “The List” as well as “a lot of people who have nothing to do with politics at all,” said Blair. But Smith Point was the Inauguration Eve site of a celebration for “Mavericks,” young Republican fundraisers for Bush’s re-election. These “Mavericks” raised at least $50,000 apiece for the campaign.

Still, the atmosphere is social rather than political.

“It’s like a fraternity party,” said Teddy Eynon, 30, a Republican congressional staffer from Cincinnati. A big attraction, he admits, is “Southern girls. They’re polite, smart, attractive and fun to be with.”

Hooking up is not unknown.

“There are 22 couples that I know of who met in here and later got married,” said Blair. “Lots of relationships start here — and end.”

The decor is basic barroom. Exposed brick walls. Flagstone floors. Pictures of Nantucket scenes. A DJ. Two bars. A few tables along the walls. The fashion is preppy casual. Some young women wear pearls and glittery tops. Both genders drink beer from the bottles.

“What’s going to be interesting will come 10 to 15 years down the line,” predicted Blair. “A lot of these people are going to have very high profile jobs.”