Mary Cheh is a smart lady. She’s got tenure at George Washington University Law School and has a master’s degree from Fair Harvard. That said, it was slightly mystifying to read the following, located about halfway through an interview Cheh gave to the Washington Post magazine. Cheh’s gee-whiz tone throughout (the best part of being a politician: “hugs and the free food”) certainly didn’t help when the magazine asked what her biggest “goof” was. Cheh’s answer:

I wasn’t always sufficiently aware of what the [D.C.] Council did before I got involved with it. On the night of my election victory . . . I met some other people, and I wasn’t entirely aware that they were Council members. Then someone pointed it out for me, and I went back and said, ‘Oh, we’re going to be colleagues.’

According to Cheh’s website, she’s worked in D.C. since 1979. So today’s guessing game is going to be trying to figure out which councilmembers she didn’t know — one would assume that anyone who had lived in D.C. for 28 years would at least recognize Marion Barry, Jack Evans, and Jim Graham. Should one assume the councilmembers that were elected in the same year (Bowser, Wells, Thomas, and Alexander) are probably off the list, since their names and faces would have been in the news leading up to the election?

Who’s your money on? Catania? Mendelson?