Smoke-filled room

Notice the three gentlemen in the lower right.

In U.S. political jargon, a smoke-filled room (sometimes called a smoke-filled back room) is a secret political gathering or round-table-style decision-making process. The phrase is generally used to suggest an inner circle of power brokers, as at a convention. It suggests a cabal of powerful or well-connected, cigar-smoking men meeting privately to nominate a dark horse political candidate or otherwise make decisions without regard for the will of the larger group.

An early example of a smoke-filled room is the Boston Caucus. A report of a 1763 meeting of this group said, "selectmen, assessors, collectors, fire-wards and representatives are regularly chosen [there] before they are chosen in the town ... There they smoke tobacco till you cannot see from one end of the garret to the other."

The origin of the term was in a report by Raymond Clapper of United Press, describing rumors of the process by which Warren G. Harding was nominated as Republican candidate for the 1920 presidential election. After many indecisive votes, Harding, a relatively minor candidate who was then the junior senator from Ohio, was, legend has it, chosen as a compromise candidate by Republican power-brokers in a private meeting at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago after the convention had deadlocked.

See also

• Closed session
• Star Chamber

Further reading

• Safire, William (1993). Safire's New Political Dictionary. New York: Random House. pp. 721–722. ISBN 978-0-679-42068-2.