A Painful Failure in Politics Clears a Pathway to Success

At a popular Crenshaw Boulevard hot dog stand, national political commentator and talk show host Tavis Smiley was busy giving his take on success.

“You can’t really enjoy success unless you’ve had some failure,” he said, jabbing a dog in the air. “It’s the failures that make the successes all the more sweeter.”

Smiley remembers the bitter taste of failure.

A decade ago, Smiley mounted an unsuccessful bid for Los Angeles City Council out of the same building that today serves as the hot dog eatery. Motivated by the political loss, Smiley reinvented himself, first in radio and then in television.

Today, the 36-year-old television personality, a paid commentator on CNN and ABC, is back on Crenshaw in a newly constructed headquarters for his staff of 12, financed largely with proceeds from a recent multimillion-dollar television, radio and book deal.

Smiley’s successful office opening was made even sweeter because it came in the wake of a highly publicized firing in March from his nationally syndicated talk show on the Black Entertainment Television network.

“Sometimes it isn’t the worst thing in the world for somebody to push you out there, because then you get a chance to truly test your value,” he said. “I rebounded and then some.”

Smiley’s rebound is taking place in Leimert Park Village, an enclave of boutiques, gift shops and restaurants experiencing a resurgence as a center of art and music.

“I want to be part of this renaissance here in Leimert Park,” he said. “I lived here when I first came to Los Angeles, and I wanted the opportunity to give something back.”

But Smiley, who has fashioned a reputation for publicly embarrassing corporations with less-than-stellar histories of reaching out to the poor and minorities, couldn’t get a loan to finance his project.

So he poured $1 million of his own money into the renovation of a dilapidated nightclub into a 6,000-square-foot office complex--complete with European-styled archways, skylights, imported tiles and walls decorated with colorful African crafts and the works of well-known black painters and sculptors.

The building is home to the Smiley Group Inc., which handles Smiley’s various broadcasting and book ventures, and his foundation, which says its mission is to “encourage, empower and enlighten” black youths across the nation through seminars and scholarships.

With his new digs completed, Smiley was on the air lashing out against a banking institution that wouldn’t finance the project, accusing it of engaging in “predatory lending practices.”

“When these banking institutions punch in your ZIP code, the process begins right then to turn down your loan,” he said.

Having the cash to buy, renovate and furnish the building, he points out, shows he could afford to make the loan payments.

Smiley is an unapologetic liberal, fighting for the underdog, challenging like-minded thinkers to rise up against a conservative agenda.

And that’s why his return to a base in Los Angeles’ African American community has excited so many who have watched the brash former junior aide to Mayor Tom Bradley grow to prominence--at ease in the presence of heads of state such as President Bill Clinton, Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Pope John Paul II.

“He is one of the most progressive voices on television,” U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) said. “I love him.”

“He’s proud to be here, and we are proud to have him here,” said City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, whose district includes Leimert Park.

“Not only has he reinvested in his community in terms of bricks and sticks but he is investing in the young people in the community nationwide.”

Smiley grew up in Kokomo, Ind., one of 10 children, raised by a father who was a sergeant in the Air Force and a mother who was a homemaker and an evangelist minister.

After his junior year at Indiana University, he decided to drop out, but a friend persuaded him to take time off for an internship. Smiley decided he wanted to work for Bradley.

“He realized that Tom Bradley was in a history-making position as the mayor of the second-largest city in the country, and he wanted to be part of that,” said Bill Elkins, a special assistant to the mayor.

Smiley wrote and called the mayor several times a week seeking an audience and a job. He even flew to Los Angeles, but never got any further than the security guard outside Bradley’s office. Finally, Smiley said, he sent Bradley a handwritten, tear-stained letter, and persistence paid off. The mayor gave him a call.

After the internship, Smiley went back to Indiana University and finished his undergraduate degree in law and public policy. When he returned to Los Angeles, he landed a full-time job as the mayor’s aide in South Los Angeles. “He had a burning passion to succeed at whatever you gave him,” Elkins said. “He also had a burning passion to promote himself, and that is where some of the criticism came in. Some saw it as arrogance.”

By 1991, Smiley was itching to get into politics. He left the mayor’s office to unsuccessfully challenge Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, finishing in fourth place. The loss left him without a job, wondering how to pay off his debts and keep his name before the public for a future race.

He came up with the idea of doing radio commentaries and found sponsors for a one-minute “Smiley Reports” on KGFJ-AM, a black-oriented station.

He developed a following, and his career began to take off at a time when Los Angeles was in the nation’s spotlight with the Rodney King incident, the riots and the O.J. Simpson trial.

By 1996, he was appearing on the “Tom Joyner Morning Show,” a nationally syndicated radio program in 100 markets. He launched “BET Tonight with Tavis Smiley” on cable’s Black Entertainment Television, and he was doing frequent guest appearances on CNN, CNBC and MSNBC. He interviewed Clinton six times, including the former president’s first wide-ranging interview after allegations surfaced about his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

He won the NAACP Image Awards three years in a row. He was named “one of America’s 50 most promising leaders” by Time magazine. Newsweek named him “one of the 20 people changing the way Americans get their news.”

He wrote five books and has mounted radio campaigns aimed at increasing voter registration, supporting affirmative action and awarding a Congressional Gold Medal to civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks.

“His agenda is all too much ‘The white man done me wrong,’ and that the government owes us,” said another black commentator, conservative radio talk show host Larry Elder. “He’s a walking refutation of the racism about which he speaks. He is like many who are constantly crying out against the establishment but have become fantastically wealthy.”

Critic and author Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of Africana studies and English at the State University of New York at Albany, said one problem with Smiley’s television show was that it was “often reduced to cronyism.”

Neal recalled one BET show in which Smiley introduced attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. and author Cornel West as his good friends, “effectively undermining his value as a host.”

Smiley was fired from BET over an ABC interview he conducted with Sarah Jane Olson, the alleged former Symbionese Liberation Army member scheduled to go on trial next month in Los Angeles for her alleged involvement in a bomb-planting incident more than two decades ago. BET Chairman Robert Johnson, who took to the airwaves to explain his decision, said he fired the talk show host because the piece was never offered to BET, something Smiley said he wasn’t obligated to do.

Within weeks of his firing, Smiley had new agreements to appear as a correspondent on ABC television and radio, CNN and National Public Radio.

In his new surroundings, Smiley contemplated what life might be like had he won that seat on the City Council. Some say he might have had a shot at a congressional seat.

“It wasn’t meant for me to win that City Council race,” he said. “With all due respect to the City Council, there is no way I would have the national platform and national audience that I now have. I’d still be filling potholes and trimming trees for constituents rather than doing the kind of work that I’m pleased to do on a daily basis while still based in this community.”

These are good times, Smiley says. “I’ve found my passion.”