I asked him how life was as a famous political documentary star and he admitted that the documentary had been "a little candid," perhaps a bit more than he would have liked, but that the success of the film was great (and that its been airing across the country on PBS so check the site to see if it'll be on in your neighborhood soon).

I asked him to describe the campaign briefly, and he said that when he first ran, at 29, "the whole idea was crazy" but that the enthusiasm he generated was unbelievable. He ended up with over 500 volunteers, many from Washington University in St. Louis where he was a professor, and despite going up against the biggest name in Missouri politics he shocked the political establishment when he lost by only 1800 votes, a mere 1.6%.

Smith told me that after the 2004 primary loss he had traveled the state working for Claire McCaskill's bid for Governor and then took a visiting professorship for a few months. But he returned to Missouri and entered the race for an open state senate seat in St. Louis. In a crowded five-way primary that he described as similar to his 2004 race, full of members of the establishment, he again ran as the outsider. I asked him why he choose to run and he said that he didn't want what he had built in 2004 to fray, because he had gotten so many new people involved and wanted to keep them involved. He described his 06 state senate campaign (district 4) as "2004 on steroids" with 19 full-time interns and his campaign had 51,000 door knocks (in a district of 170,000).

We spoke for a while about education policy (we had both been in the education policy panel earlier in the day) and he explained some of his experience with the public education system. He had started as an evaluator for the St. Louis public schools and part of the frustration with what he saw led him to help co-found a charter school called "Confluence Academies" which started with 225 students and has grown in four years to 1900 students in three schools. Jeff shared some sobering statistics with me about the often ignored problem of homeless students, in St. Louis public schools one out of ten students is homeless and throughout the course of the year three out of every ten students will be homeless at some point. In addition, on average, students move once every eleven months, which is why Smith argues for a standardized curriculum.

Professor Smith told me that he taught a "campaigns and elections" class during his 06 campaign and will teach in the fall and legislate in the spring (Missouri is half-time legislature) and noted that students in his "Legislative Process" class might have a pretty cool inside-view.

Now, I have to admit that I haven't yet seen "Can Mr. Smith Still Get to Washington?" but you bet it's now on my must-watch list (I'm a little behind on my political documentaries, I just saw Street Fight). But check out the trailer and website for the movie below.