Ron Silver: A D.C. regular

It became sort of a running joke amongst media types and Washington observers: "Oh, what a surprise! Ron Silver is back in town ... again."

Silver, the actor who died Sunday morning at the age of 62 after a long battle with cancer, was one of those New York celebrities who never missed a chance to visit Washington (we're looking at you Joey Pants and Kerry Washington).

For Silver, any occasion would do, ranging from the glamorous (Barack Obama's inauguration or the White House Correspondents' Dinner or a White House official summit for Chinese President Hu Jintao) to the serious (Silver co-founded the organization One Jerusalem, sat on the Board of Directors of the United States Institute of Peace and was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations).

In a word, he was here a lot. So much so, that he began to blend in with the woodwork. You may have stopped doing a double take when you spotted him in a crowd or on a red carpet. So what if you remembered him from his stints in "Reverse of Fortune", "Ali" or "The West Wing"? So what if he won a Tony Award for his work in "Speed-the-Plow"?

At some point, you probably just stopped even wondering what he was doing in town. When Silver stopped by a party the day before Obama's inauguration at the Fairfax on Embassy Row hotel, his presence was hardly buzzed about, if even noticed, in an A-List crowd filled with the Clintons, Valerie Jarrett, Yo-Yo Ma and Brian Williams.

Of course, perhaps Silver spent so much time in Washington because he had a lot of work to do: As one of Hollywood's only celebrities with some nice things to say about Republicans, Silver was left to carry a lot of water for the GOP.

In a 2004 speech at the Republican National Convention in New York City, Silver made the case for a second term for President George W. Bush and called out some of his colleagues on the West Coast. "I find it ironic that many human rights advocates and outspoken members of my own entertainment community are often on the front lines to protest repression, for which I applaud them, but they are usually the first ones to oppose any use of force to take care of these horrors that they catalogue repeatedly."

Of course, Silver wasn't always so forthright in his support of Republicans, which made his switch to the other side an even more satisfying coup for conservatives. He was president of Actors' Equity, a labor union, for most of the 1990s and co-founded the Creative Coalition along with such notable liberals as Alec Baldwin and Suasn Sarandon. And while Silver remained a liberal on many issues all the way until the end, he told the New York Times in 2004 that "I'm a 9/11 Republican. ... If we don't get this right, all the other things don't matter worth a hill of beans."

Speaking out in favor of George W. Bush had its consequences in Hollywood. "It's affected me very badly," Silver one told the AP. "I haven't worked for 10 months."

Silver's regular cameos in town will be missed. It's true that he began to blend in with the tapestries over time, but, in Washington, that can be a good thing and so it was for Silver. While Washingtonians tend to toss a disproportionate amount of attention on the occasional drive-bys of Angelina Jolie, George Clooney and the like, there's a special place reserved in our hearts for those who—gasp!—share the same nerdy, wonky love of Washington that we do.

We have a guilty hankering for those celebrities who genuinely like it here and who hang around long after the cameras have been packed up. After bumping into Silver on a few occasions, I finally had to ask him, "What, are you out of acting gigs in L.A., Ron?"

But obviously I must have been glad he was there, as we spent a good amount of time in the corner of a room making fun of the madness in another corner that held that weekend's hot new celebrity visitor to D.C.

"Wish that was you?" I asked.

"Nope," said Silver. "This is exactly where I want to be."