Smith Attacks Schmid On Thank-You Letters, Where She Praises Him

MIDDLETOWN, NJ — This fall, when Democrat Stephanie Schmid seeks to unseat Central Jersey's longtime Republican congressman, Chris Smith, she will actually be running against her former — albeit briefly — boss. That's because Schmid, now 39, once interned for Smith as a teenager getting her feet wet in government and public service.

But Smith's team is now attacking Schmid over that internship, saying she is not being truthful about her time there, as she lavished praise on Smith 23 years ago, seeking to be re-hired, but today says "I knew then that his values were extreme."

Schmid herself responded in an op-ed this week, writing "I’ll admit I have a few different views than I did as a 16-year-old in 1997. I can only assume he’s attacking my teenage self because he’s afraid of the adult who faces him now."

It may be the first time in recent U.S. politics a former intern has run for her boss' seat. Smith has represented New Jersey's fourth congressional district since 1981, and is one of the state's only two remaining Republican congressmen; Democrats have been trying to win the seat for years.

As a teen growing up in Bergen County, Schmid was placed in Smith's office through a nonpartisan internship program, the Washington Workshops Foundation, in the summer before her senior year of high school. The program places teens with Congress reps in their home state.

Before Schmid officially clinched the Democratic primary last week, the Smith team released several handwritten letters she wrote to the congressman before and after that fifteen-day internship ended in the summer of 1997. Smith's chief of staff, Mary McDermott Noonan, said the letters speak to Schmid's "integrity problem."

In the letters, then-16-year-old Schmid describes herself as a Republican, as she praises Rep. Smith and asks to be re-hired.

"I can't tell you how thrilled I am to become a part of our country's legislative process," wrote teenager Schmid in a letter dated June 23, 1997, before her internship officially began that July. "As a Republican resident of Ridgewood, NJ, I can't tell you what a pleasure it is to work for someone with similar interests, values and concerns."

After the stint in Smith's office ended, she wrote him several thank-you letters, writing, "It's wonderful to know that in a small way I had a chance to help a dedicated and tireless advocate for human rights and Christianity around the world ... I would love the opportunity to work in your office again ... Thank you and God bless," she ended the note.

In a Christmas card she wrote later that year, Schmid let Smith's office know that she had been accepted into Yale University and took part in then-President Bill Clinton's One America race discussions.

It's quite different than how Schmid describes her internship decades later, now running to unseat Smith.

In a tweet last fall, she said “even though I was only 16 at the time, I knew then that his values were extreme.”

In her campaign launch video, she said: "I ended up in Chris Smith’s office because I’m a Jersey girl and he’s a Jersey guy, and that’s where the similarity ends. I knew then that we did not agree on almost anything.”

She later said:

“It was abundantly clear then, as it is now, that we don’t share the same values," and also: “The thing that I learned most that summer is that Chris Smith and I agree on very, very little."

Smith's team takes issue with what they say is Schmid's dramatic about-face.

"Stephanie Schmid has used a totally false narrative about an internship in Rep. Chris Smith’s office 23 years ago," wrote Noonan in an op-ed provided to Patch. "In contrast to her Facebook claims that 'it was very uncomfortable as a 16-year-old woman to be working in an office full of mostly men' — while in reality the top positions in the Smith office were held mostly by women, including me as chief of staff— her letters reveal a very different view, including her desire to return to the office. Ms. Schmid has misled many to garner support — and people know that."

"She has a real integrity problem," Noonan added, speaking directly to this Patch reporter. "People change their views — all of us have on something. But that doesn't mean you can lie about it."

Schmid responded this week with a lengthy op-ed: "Twenty-three years ago, I was a 16-year-old intern in Representative Smith’s office who was thrilled to have the opportunity to intern in Washington, D.C. with a representative from my home state of New Jersey. My short time with his office was uneventful, but educational. He was obviously wrong on many issues then, as he is now, but I was happy for the opportunity to serve. At the conclusion of my internship, as my (then, but no longer) Republican mother taught me, I sent him a thank-you note for the opportunity," she wrote. "Now comes the strangest political attack in a year that’s certainly full of strange ones. Smith has assigned his longtime chief of staff to attack me for … my thank-you note?"

Schmid has done a lot since she was a 16-year-old intern: After graduating from Yale and obtaining her law degree from U.C. Berkeley, she worked as a white-collar criminal defense lawyer for Fox Rothschild, according to her LinkedIn profile. There, she represented several mid-level executives at Transocean, the oil rig that exploded in the 2010 British Petroleum oil spill, where 11 workers died. After that, she worked for seven years as a U.S. diplomat, spending part of that time stationed in Haiti.

On her LinkedIn, Schmid also describes the internship as three months of "analyzing human rights issues," while Noonan said it was fifteen days of mostly taking administrative notes and sitting in on hearings.

Schmid moved to Little Silver before deciding to run for the Congressional seat.

Among other issues, Schmid and Smith disagree most poignantly on abortion.

Before Schmid decided to run for Congress, she worked as the legal counsel for the Center for Reproductive Rights. She helped write the Reproductive Rights Are Human Rights Act of 2019, which Smith opposes.

Smith is one of Congress' staunchest abortion opponents, and he has said his strong Catholic faith is the reason he is against it. He is a regular speaker at the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. Every year he votes in support of the Hyde amendment, which prohibits federal taxpayer dollars from being used for abortion.

You can hear Schmid talk about that summer internship in her campaign launch video:

The fourth congressional district covers nearly all of Monmouth County, including towns such as Holmdel, part of Middletown, Colts Neck, Rumson, Manalapan, Freehold, Red Bank and Wall Township. The fourth district also reaches into Jackson and Lakewood in Ocean County and Hamilton and Robbinsville in Mercer County.

Related: Chris Smith's Former Intern Is Now Running Against Him (Sept. 2019)

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