Actor Erik Todd Dellums stirs political pot with blog posts on Obama

At 6-foot-6, with his shiny black hair pulled back into a ponytail, Erik Todd Dellums is a striking man. So when he walked through the dining room of Busboys and Poets in the U Street corridor recently, it was not clear whether some people did double-takes because of how he looks or because they remember him from the ’90s television show “Homicide: Life on the Street,” in which he played the elegantly evil drug kingpin Luther Mahoney.

During the two seasons that he appeared on the NBC drama about Baltimore homicide detectives, fans would spot Dellums and exclaim “Lu-ther!”

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 Workers at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial cleaned and prepared the new monument for its official unveiling.

“I would walk into some hard neighborhoods in Baltimore and get such respect from the brothers and sisters. I loved it,” he says.

In the 14 years since Dellums’s character was written off the show, his acting career has sputtered. He makes some money using his voice, a baritone that can be formal enough to narrate history shows on the Discovery Channel and funky enough to be Three Dog, a radio DJ in the post-apocalyptic video game Fallout 3 . This weekend, he will serve as the announcer at the dedication ceremony for the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the Mall.

But it is another voice that is attracting attention these days, one he has cultivated on his blog, Erik Todd Dellums Presents. It’s personal and political, at turns funny and ferocious, and it has landed him back on television, this time as a guest on Fox News to talk about his frustrations with President Obama — airing a message that resonates among some African Americans who feel underserved by the first black president but are reluctant to criticize him openly.

“I am embarrassed that my brothers and sisters are so transparent in their support of Obama. Given that Blacks have gotten NOTHING from this Administration, showing that kind of support brings up memories of Jonestown.”

Dellums launched that grenade on his blog Sept. 16 after an NBC News poll showed that 92 percent of African Americans support Obama. He tossed another one after the president told members of the Congressional Black Caucus at their annual dinner last month to “stop complaining . . . stop crying” and help him fight for his jobs bill.

“The Black Caucus has been your friend,” wrote Dellums. “To tell them to all but shut up and get in line, showed such arrogance it was shocking.” After each post, he was invited to appear on Fox.

Fans might be surprised to stumble upon Luther Mahoney pontificating about politics, but it’s a role for which Dellums has more preparation than that of a drug lord.

Steeped in Washington

Dellums, 47, is the son of former representative Ron Dellums (D-Calif.), who stormed into Washington in 1970 on an anti-Vietnam War message and became a leading advocate for liberal causes during his 27 years in Congress.

Activism runs deep in Dellums’s family. His mother’s grandmother headed the anti-lynching campaign in California in the 1930s. His father’s uncle was a leader in the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, which worked with civil rights leaders to organize opposition to segregation.