Smith Bagley, RJR heir, dead at 74

Both the New York Times and Huffington Post have pieces today on the death of Smith Bagley, heir to the R.J. Reynolds tobacco fortune in Winston-Salem and since the 1970s a fixture on the Washington, D.C. social and political scenes. He died of a stroke, the Times reported.

Bagley, 74, was the grandson of Richard Joshua Reynolds, who founded the tobacco company. Bagley once ran for Congress from North Carolina but lost in 1968. He and his wife were fundraisers for Democrats from the Jimmy Carter administration though the first year of the Obama administration, raising about $600,000 to help defray costs of the Obama inaugural. His wife Elizabeth served as ambassador to Portugal in the Clinton Administrtion. He also was indicted in 1979 for conspiring to manipulate stock prices, but was acquitted at a Richmond trial.

Here's a link to the Times piece.

And here's a link to the Huffington Post piece.