I often wonder how someone becomes a politician. The routines, and even the threshold acts of politics, seem foreign to me. This piece explores how and why Senator GEORGE SMATHERS of Florida became a Senator.
George Smathers
Smathers was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1913, and raised to be a politician. His father Benjamin Franklin Smathers, a colorful character from Waynesville, North Carolina, loved politics, just adored everything about it, and wanted to be smack in the middle of it. Benjamin was a good enough baseball player to get a pro contract. He came to Newark, New Jersey to play minor league ball but, on a whim, took and passed the bar exam, retired from baseball and set up shop as a lawyer — and an organizer for the Democratic Party.