# Steering Council nomination: Gregory P. Smith (2026 term) **URL:** \ **Category:** Steering Council Nominations\ **Tags:** election, sword-distribution\ **Created:** [November 24, 2025, 10:52am UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/steering-council-nomination-gregory-p-smith-2026-term/105011 "2025-11-24T10:52:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![gpshead](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/gpshead/32/54_2.png) [@gpshead](https://discuss.python.org/u/gpshead)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2025, 10:52am UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/steering-council-nomination-gregory-p-smith-2026-term/105011/1 "2025-11-24T10:52:53Z")
I nominate myself for re-election to the Python Steering Council for the 2026 term. I have served for the past four years. If elected, I intend for this to be my last consecutive SC term ([following the lead of Brett Cannon](https://discuss.python.org/t/steering-council-nomination-brett-cannon-2023-term/21078)) to make sure others have an opportunity to shine. I’m @gpshead on github, etc. Over twenty years on the python core team, wrangler of internals of a posixy flavor, subprocess, multiprocessing, & hashlib. I’m also on the [PSRT](https://peps.python.org/pep-0811/) and a champion for getting our security story straight. I am employed by [Anthropic](https://www.anthropic.com/), the maker of [Claude](https://claude.ai/). ## Looking Back, Looking Forward Considering the past four years on the SC, I was first elected wanting to support the ongoing performance work while maintaining language behavior and API stability. Fast forward and I wound up being amazed that we had the opportunities to both: Hire full time PSF managed developers in residences to work on python and ecosystem security. See free-threading go from [a neat demo](https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-dev@python.org/thread/ABR2L6BENNA6UPSPKV474HCS4LWT26GY/) on an old interpreter into something we actually managed to support shepherding to [where it is headed today](https://peps.python.org/pep-0779/). The SC doesn’t do that work, all of you do. We’re just here to approve the direction to unblock it. That said, I think the 2026 forward looking focus for the SC should be to guide us towards making free-threading stick its landing in a way that it becomes the only Python and the world collectively forgets what a GIL even is when using Python five+ years hence. The unique opportunity that goes along with this that I’d _like_ to see taken advantage of are improvements on the C API and ABI front given we are facing a community-desired reworked internals transition. Remember, [per PEP-13 the SC is really here to represent all of you](https://peps.python.org/pep-0013/#mandate). Our role is primarily to digest conversations and align decisions with a hopefully coherent strategy based on the broader community consensus in as much as one can hopefully already exist before issues land on our plate. ## State of the SC 2025 edition I think I speak for all of us on the SC when I say that this was a much better year for us. We had lots of lovely PEPs and discussions sent our way to review regardless of our ultimate decision. _I’m honored to have been the one to “notify” Pablo of [the first rejected PEP with his name on it](https://discuss.python.org/t/pep-679-new-assert-statement-syntax-with-parentheses/103634/24)_. Despite good feelings, the one thing that has _always_ been on the SCs radar to do better on, and remains so, is our communication. That is still circling the radar. We had a hired communications liaison for a while but found ourselves having to reset and figure out a new workflow after they departed. At this point I expect doing better at SC to core team comms will be a continually evolving thing no matter what we do. 😅 To the next SC: find your cadence and stick to it. In a poll we ran in 2024, y’all voted to have SC-to-public comms in this Core Development forum be a thing. Doing that in public takes _a lot_ more time and energy (in short supply for all of us) due to the lower-context potentially infinite audience, so I think what I’d suggest is that we aim for more consistent communications with the core team _first_ before expanding. We have had some success here in limited forums as Barry noted in his own nomination. We need to actually move that to cover everyone. The success I really want to highlight is that many of y’all have used our office hours slots. Thank you! Direct conversations are great to have. More of that please! ## My past couple of nomination statements - [2025 self nomination](https://discuss.python.org/t/steering-council-nomination-gregory-p-smith-2025-term/71947) - [2024 self nomination](https://discuss.python.org/t/steering-council-nomination-gregory-p-smith-2024-term/39381) ---
**Author:** ![pitrou](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/pitrou/32/28_2.png) [@pitrou](https://discuss.python.org/u/pitrou)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2025, 11:38am UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/steering-council-nomination-gregory-p-smith-2026-term/105011/2 "2025-11-24T11:38:52Z")
This was pleasantly short, thank you! Just a question: what’s with the #sword-distribution tag? ---
**Author:** ![da-woods](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/da-woods/32/7507_2.png) [@da-woods](https://discuss.python.org/u/da-woods)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2025, 12:00pm UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/steering-council-nomination-gregory-p-smith-2026-term/105011/3 "2025-11-24T12:00:49Z")
> Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government ---
**Author:** ![EWDurbin](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/ewdurbin/32/3103_2.png) [@EWDurbin](https://discuss.python.org/u/EWDurbin)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2025, 12:31pm UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/steering-council-nomination-gregory-p-smith-2026-term/105011/4 "2025-12-13T12:31:17Z")