January 25, 2005:

WINNER'S CIRCLE Young Republicans at an afterparty at Smith Point, a bar in Georgetown, on Inauguration Night.

By ALEX WILLIAMS

AFTER the Constitution Ball and the Commander in Chief Ball, after all the official black-tie parties wound down around midnight on Inauguration Day, members of a young Republican crowd scarcely old enough to remember the Reagan years were still looking for excitement. Naturally, they headed to a basement bar in Georgetown that has become an unofficial clubhouse for the Jenna and Barbara Bush generation.

At that bar, Smith Point, these refugees in cummerbunds and gowns shimmied to a D.J. playing the Beastie Boys and slurped vodka shots poured down an ice-sculpture luge. And they entertained rumors that the twins themselves would be stopping by following their official appearances.

The president's 23-year-old daughters have been frequent visitors to Smith Point since moving to Washington after the election, according to several of the bar's regulars, dropping in roughly every two weeks. The bar's owner, Bo Blair, said he has added many of their friends to his guest list. The twins have been known to show up with a posse of up to 30, including old Texas friends, Yale buddies of Barbara's and other children-of-the-prominent like Krystal Shanahan, the daughter of Mike Shanahan, the Denver Broncos coach.

Part of the allure of Smith Point is that the president's daughters are treated just like everyone else, regulars say. "They feel like they can be Jenna Jones, as opposed to Jenna Bush," said Winston Lord, 37, who works in public relations for an investor group seeking ownership of the Washington Nationals baseball club. "That is a credit to Bo." "Everybody knows everybody here," explained Mr. Blair, a 32-year-old Georgetown native who has managed an unlikely feat in a city not known for sizzling night life: a genuine velvet-rope hot spot. It has become especially identified as a haven for a hip young Republican elite, including alumni of the Ivy Leagues and private Southern schools like Washington and Lee and Duke.

Perhaps 40 percent of the regulars on his 1,500-name guest list work in government, Mr. Blair said, and at least 200 are lawyers at political firms.

Catherine Forbes, a daughter of Steve Forbes, the one-time Republican presidential candidate, said on Thursday night: "I moved here in 1994, right after the Republican Revolution and Newt Gingrich, and there was nothing. Basically, Bo has created for young conservatives a Pamela Harriman. It's the salon. You feel safe; you can let your hair down."

"It's our Cheers," explained Courtenay White, a publicist who has been coming to Smith Point since the first night it opened in 2000.

Mr. Blair does not like to think of himself as a night life impresario for a Republican-only crowd, he said.

"That's a real misconception," he insisted. "People started to look at this as a Republican place, but we're all just friends here."

Still, there's no denying that Mr. Blair is one of young conservative Washington's favorite party-givers. He served as a chairman at a party for 1,700 on Wednesday at the Wyndham Washington hotel to honor the Mavericks, younger donors who raised $50,000 each for the Republicans during the campaign.

He started Smith Point with a guest list of 500 of his closer friends, not an ironic concept for an outgoing man who is a former social director for the Tau Kappa Omega fraternity at Villanova University. The son of a schoolteacher father and an antiques-selling mother, Mr. Blair grew up only a few blocks from his bar, which also includes a restaurant, and he has maintained his network of friends from Georgetown Preparatory School, as well as rival prep schools in the area.

"It's not a million-dollar New York nightclub," said Hunt Anderson, 29, a doctor who recently moved to New Orleans from Washington but was back in town to attend the Independence Ball. Smith Point was his first stop when he arrived, in a cab straight from the airport. "It's not Glass, it's not Cipriani. But you walk in and you know everybody. Everybody is about the same age bracket, fairly well educated, with good jobs."

On a night in which much of right-leaning Washington was flush with a heady sense of destiny (and much of left-leaning Washington was keeping out of sight), Mr. Blair was putting on no airs.

Amidst the black-tie finery of his guests, he wore a rumpled white oxford-cloth shirt and a pale blue necktie, hung like an afterthought. With a heavy gait and no-nonsense manner, he comes off more like a big city ward boss than a Georgetown power host.

He is not a ringmaster of Sirio Maccioni polish. Representatives of Perrier Jouët, a sponsor for the night's party, were stunned to find that only hours before the Bush twins may or may not be arriving, Mr. Blair had on hand only 10 Champagne flutes. (More were quickly requisitioned.)

"Velvet rope," he snorted contemptuously of the barrier to his door. "I hate that term. It's more of a crowd-control stanchion. Velvet is just what they make it out of."

Kelley McCormick, a publicist working with Perrier Jouët, told a co-worker to save the last bottle for the Bush twins, on their way any minute. By 1 a.m. there were still no daughters of the president, but the scene was throbbing. The crowd exuded a sense of triumph so pure it almost penetrated the bone. It was possible to believe that Democrats had ceased to exist; and in this club, on this night, that was sort of true. A very unscientific survey turned up only two, one there because she was hoping to drum up business selling Lilly Pulitzer clothing, big among this preppy set.

By 2 a.m., word came that the twins would not be showing. They had begged off, the rumors said, after a long day of public appearances.

But few were willing to leave, even at 2:30. Finally Mr. Blair threw them all out, Democrats and Republicans alike.

January 24, 2005:

Jesus and Jack Daniel's
In search of the Bush cultural footprint on the capital:
a visit to the hot church and the hot bar.

By Jonathan Darman and Holly Bailey

In terms of social life, Bush's Washington is an oxymoron. The 43rd president has never embraced, nor particularly liked, official Washington—the lawyers and lobbyists and journalists who make up Washington's more or less permanent establishment. Bush, who prefers to go to bed at 9:30 p.m., has entertained at only a few state dinners; his socializing tends to be rare and low-key, mostly with old Yale and Texas buddies. And most of the Texans who came to Washington say they want to return home when their time is done. The one cabinet officer who made the social circuit with some regularity, Secretary of State Colin Powell, was not asked to stay on for the second term.

In subtle but interesting ways, however, the mostly Red State Bush crowd has infiltrated the social fabric of the mostly Blue State capital. During nonworking hours, their presence can be felt in a pair of local institutions with very different purposes but a certain cultural affinity: the hottest bar in Georgetown, Smith Point, and one of the region's most popular houses of worship, the evangelical Falls Church, a 271-year-old Episcopal parish in the northern Virginia suburbs. The president's daughters, along with a cadre of young and hungry staffers, are regulars at the bar, and a notable group of administration officials, including the president's chief speechwriter and his top lawyer, worship at the church. Together, the bar and the church provide a haven and networking opportunities for what may become a future Washington establishment. Bush, who knows something about sin and redemption, would feel right at home in either place. A pair of NEWSWEEK correspondents visited the bar and the church over two weekends in early January. Their report:

THE BAR. Outside Smith Point, the line starts forming an hour or so before midnight. Preppy boys in polo shirts with upturned collars and preppy girls showing their pearls and cleavage want to see if "the girls," as the Bush twins are known, have shown up. Many nights they are not disappointed. In the spring of 2004, after graduating from Yale and the University of Texas, Barbara and Jenna moved to Washington to help their father's re-election campaign. They began going to Smith Point to unwind with friends after work.

The bar itself is a bit of a dive, a hangout for private-school Peter Pans who wish to relive those wild nights at the frat house. It succeeds in part by an old barkeeper's trick: keeping the wanna-bes lined up out on the street even when the place is mostly empty. The real regulars, who are on "The List," usually arrive late, sometimes after "pre-gaming" (downing a few shots at home). On this particular Saturday night, Barbara appears first, surrounded by burly boys, sipping a Bud Light as she heads for the bar. She is wearing a designer coat and her jeans are tucked into big, Jessica Simpson-style boots. Jenna arrives later, wearing a gold top with skinny straps, her head on the shoulder of her boyfriend. The dance floor after midnight is pretty raunchy, with couples grinding away, but the Bush girls steer clear. "The girls are probably more tame than a lot of people," says one Smith Point regular who worked in the Bush White House.

Smith Point has become a clubhouse for low-level administration staffers, who tend to have wealthy fathers and know each other. Still, the scene is slightly awkward. When they started coming, the Bush girls fit in easily with the Southern fraternity boys and the Texas Rich children of Bush-Cheney officials and contributors. "Now," says a regular, "it's the two girls on one side and a whole lot of people on the other side and then some people in the middle who are trying to act like they don't care at all that Jenna and Barbara Bush are in a room with them." The average age is twenty something. An older crowd showed up after the election, when the top echelon of the Bush campaign stopped by. The waitresses wore BUSH-CHENEY '04 hats.

Meet the Mavrick's

Smith Point would like to thank everyone for making New Years Eve with Pat McGee and Late Night in the Green Room with Pat Green such a great success. Both events sold out. The New Years Eve party was attended by over 3300 people and Late Night in the Green Room had over 1600 attendees. We look forward to seeing you at our next event!

Check out the article on "Late Night in the Green Room" below!

SUNDAY POLITICS, SUNDAY, JANUARY 23, 2005
by Mike Allen

Meet the Mavericks, Sons of the Pioneers

There was a "VIP area" upstairs and a "VVIP area" downstairs for the very, very important persons. But this was no high-rollers' ball, and even the VVIPs had to wear cheap wristbands.

Teeming with the post-fraternity, pre-marriage crowd, this 10 pm to 2 am bash on the night before the inauguration was a tribute to the Mavericks, the 90 young Republicans who were corralled into raising at least $50,000 a piece for the Bush-Cheney campaign. The open-bar party at the Wyndham Washington Hotel here was billed as being presented by "the next generation of Republican leaders."

Jenna Bush mingled in the ballroom, where Texas country singer Pat Green was the headliner. Mary Cheney showed up. And so did Jack Oliver, the fundraising brains of both Bush campaigns, which spawned the Mavericks and their parents, the Rangers and Pioneers.

Oliver's presence reflected the determination of Ken Mehlman, the new Republican National Committee chairman, to keep the Mavericks active as another component of the Bush-Cheney campaign that will outlive the second administration.

Mehlman, who spoke to the group at a reunion meeting Friday, said keeping that team is one of his most important missions. "Just as we found these new voters who lived in the exurbs, we also identified new donors, and fundraisers who haven't previously participated," he said.

The Mavericks program raised more than $11 million for President Bush's campaign and $2.5 million for the RNC - far surpassing the goal of $1.5 million the campaign had set.

The chairmen of the Pat Green party were Dick Williams, a private equities investor from Atlanta who ran the Mavericks program; Jim Price, deputy director of the Mavericks; Bo Blair, owner of Smith Point, the hot Georgetown bar for young Bushies; and Curtis Jablonka, who holds the triple crown of working for Bush '00, the White House and Bush '04.

Friday's reunion meeting, which drew Mavericks from as far away as Minnesota, was held in the boardroom of a lobbying firm, with a view of the Capitol dome. Williams said he urged them to develop relationships back home with peers running for office such as city council and statehouse. "That's how you get in the inner circle in 20 or 30 years," he said.

Jablonica, 28, known for his ability to conjure anything from a Greyhound bus to a Gulfstream jet in the middle of the night, said the 50-member host committee is a nucleus for bigger things. "The network is in place," he said. "These events are a way for the next generation of Republican leaders to interact and talk about the future of the party."

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The Zagat Survey 2004

"...Unusually good cooking at fair prices."
Tom Sietsema The Washington Post

"...Unpretentious Smith Point makes its presence felt."
The Washington Times