At 95, Mr. Smith is trying to get to Washington

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11617273/from/RS.3/

He's running for Congress by contesting Democratic primary

Updated: 9:46 a.m. ET March 1, 2006

AUSTIN, Texas - Given his age, Sid Smith's campaign slogan seems obvious: "At 95, who needs term limits?"

The former newspaperman and real estate agent, who scoots around his hillside home with the help of a cane, is running for Congress in Tuesday's Democratic primary.

"I'm the oldest guy in this race," said Smith, joking that his Dec. 24 birthday makes him "one day older than Jesus."

His main goal is to boot from office Republican freshman Michael McCaul, who won the 10th District seat two years ago after the redistricting effort led by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

Has to be an improvement over McCaul.

http://www.dccc.org/races/candidates/TX_10_Sid_Smith.html

Some facts about Michael McCaul and how tied up Rep. McCaul is with Tom DeLay...
# Michael McCaul has taken $10,000 from Tom DeLay's ARMPAC. No surprise that McCaul voted with Tom DeLay 94% of the time.

# Michael McCaul voted to weaken the ethics rules in a move that many say served only to protect Tom DeLay.

# When Republicans realized it was "impossible to win the communications battle" over the gutted ethics rules, McCaul flip-flopped and voted to put the old rules back into place.

# When Democrats offered a solution to clean up the House by strengthening ethics rules, Michael McCaul voted twice to make sure it never even came to an up or down vote.

1 Contributions from ARMPAC: $10,000
2 Voting percentage with DeLay: 94%
3 Vote to weaken ethics rules: H Res. 5, Roll Call #6, 1/4/05 YES
4 Vote to repeal weakened ethics rules: H Res. 241, Roll Call #145, 4/27/05 YES
5 Votes to table Democratic solution: H. Res. 153, Roll Call #70, 3/15/05
H. Res. 213, Roll Call #106, 4/14/05 YES, YES

"‘Names begin to escape me’

With a beard and a shock of white hair, Smith is now a widower who peppers his conversations with curse words, telling a reporter "you can clean up my language."

His stories ramble into other stories, which drift into other stories and roll into still more stories, acknowledging "my mind is still fairly good, but names begin to escape me."

Hanging on the wall are photos of him in the annual Capitol 10K foot race, which he started running in his 70s. He still walks it.

Russell Smith said he thought his grandfather was joking when he first mentioned it on a trip to Las Vegas to celebrate his 95th birthday. So it was quite a surprise when Smith announced Jan. 4 at a Rose Bowl party that he had plunked down the $3,125 filing fee two days earlier."

And this Delay crony has gotta go, no matter what