If McKinney loses, she can blame herself

Despite signs that her opponent, Denise Majette, is putting up a strong challenge, U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney remains a formidable candidate. She could yet hold onto her seat in next week's election.

McKinney has built quite a political machine in DeKalb County, especially in its southern precincts, and she will no doubt pull out all the stops in the final days.

She can be expected to use "walking around money" to pay ministers and community activists to take her voters to the polls.

She will drain not only the deep reservoir of her own political capital but also that of her father, longtime state legislator Billy McKinney -- collecting on every favor they've ever done for anybody.

Yet if McKinney loses, it could hardly be considered a great surprise. She will have defeated herself.

Over ten years in Congress, McKinney has frittered away the opportunity to become a well-respected political figure who transcended the boundaries of a suburban Atlanta congressional district. She might have become nationally recognized as a champion for the marginalized, the forgotten, the unfortunate. She could have become that which is so rare these days -- an old-fashioned liberal who is widely respected.

Instead, McKinney has become not famous but infamous, embracing a paranoid worldview that borders on the irrational. She picks fights with those who ought to be her allies. She recklessly plays the race card. She engages in high-octane rhetoric guaranteed to keep her on the political fringe.

She couldn't help the underdog if she wanted to. She has destroyed her credibility.

McKinney's congressional career didn't start out that way. Indeed, elected in 1992, the so-called "Year of the Woman," she got off to a promising start, taking on the cause of a cadre of working-class Georgians who had been exploited by the kaolin industry.

The industry, which leases mineral rights from landowners to mine a white clay used for everything from toothpaste to paints, had enjoyed political support from the state capital for years. McKinney's congressional hearings helped force the industry to reform its labor and leasing practices.

Even back then, McKinney was a committed liberal who could be indifferent to the concerns of realpolitik. As a state legislator in 1991, she had taken to the well of the House to denounce the U.S. government for invading Iraq. Needless to say, her speech was not well-received by her overwhelmingly conservative colleagues. Nor could the speech have been conceived as a way of influencing the administration of President George H.W. Bush, since state legislators rarely influence foreign policy.

But back in those days, McKinney did enough good -- working to increase the minimum wage, seeking more state and federal funds for child care, advocating a host of women's issues -- to keep the scale balanced toward keeping her in office. Middle-class, professional women remained her core constituents.

But McKinney quickly began to tilt toward increasingly questionable stances and reckless rhetoric. In 1997, when she was challenged by John Mitnick, a Jewish Republican, she allowed her father, a spokesman for her campaign, to engage in blatant anti-Semitism and homophobia.

In 2000, her Web site posted her inflammatory analysis of Al Gore as having a low "Negro tolerance level."

Earlier this year, of course, she accused President Bush of allowing the terrorist attacks to proceed so his friends in the defense industry would profit from the ensuing war. That broadside marked another steep drop as McKinney descends into fringe lunacy. It's not clear why she veered so far off track. But it is clear that many of her constituents have given up hope that she'll find her way back.

Don't you love Cynthia's friends?Racist remarks spoil political campaigning

.....The battle for the 4th District congressional seat is another story. No one involved is looking forward to 1998 or 2000. There's no time - and no tomorrow. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has pulled out all stops - and all the celebrities she knows - to turn back Republican John Mitnick.

Tipper Gore and Jane Fonda are helping McKinney raise money. Robert Redford, Andy Young and Isaac Hayes have recorded radio spots for McKinney. Meanwhile, Mitnick has become the Republicans' best and perhaps only hope of picking up an additional congressional seat in Georgia.

This would be a fun game to watch, except for two sad elements: racism and anti-Semitism. McKinney's father and closest adviser, state Rep. Billy McKinney, has labeled Mitnick "a racist Jew." He hurled that slur after Mitnick wondered whether Congresswoman McKinney was sympathetic to the views of anti-Semitic black separatist Lewis Farrakhan. She refused to endorse a resolution by Atlanta Rep. John Lewis condemning a Farrakhan aide for anti-Jewish remarks.

To try to patch up the rift between McKinney and the traditionally Democratic Jewish community in the 4th District, Billy McKinney has apologized and publicly resigned as his daughter's campaign counselor.

"I have allowed the love I have for my daughter to cloud my judgment," he said in a prepared statement.

If the epithet were an isolated remark blurted out in the heat of battle, it might be forgotten.

The problem is, a disturbing pattern of racism has plagued Cynthia McKinney's brief congressional career.

The McKinneys, father and daughter, lobbied the Justice Department for an overwhelmingly black 11th District, which they received. Their public reasoning: Whites would not vote for black candidates.

When a black political expert testified at a court hearing that the district was unfairly drawn, Billy McKinney called the fellow "a Judas n____" and challenged him to a fist fight. He later said he was sorry.

When the federal courts ordered her congressional district redrawn to include additional white voters in a more compact area, McKinney alleged a conspiracy of racism.

In her successful Democratic primary (which she won without a runoff), she assailed her moderate white challengers as "old Confederates" and insisted their campaigns were motivated by racism.

McKinney ought to be a celebrated political figure. She is the first black woman elected to Congress from Georgia. Though she won her seat in an overwhelmingly black district, she easily captured the Democratic nomination in a new majority-white district. She appears to be ahead of Mitnick in her quest for re-election.

It is too bad a virulent strain of bigoted remarks and racist stances mar her historic achievements and cast a pall over what might otherwise be a cheerful political happening.

This would be a fun game to watch, except for two sad elements: racism and anti-Semitism

No surprises there. Which is, of course, why LarryLied/Voegelin is so infatuated with her.

[ The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 8/3/02 ]

Some McKinney donors probed for terror ties
DeKalb Democrat said unaware any donors might support terror

By BILL TORPY
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer


Rep. Cynthia McKinney is backed by many Islamic individuals and groups.

Rep. Cynthia McKinney's re-election campaign has accepted contributions from several people who have come under federal investigation for suspected links to Middle Eastern terrorists or have voiced support for extremist groups.

The outspoken DeKalb County Democrat, a frequent critic of U.S. Middle East policy, has long drawn Arab and Muslim financial support. Most of McKinney's individual donors listed on disclosure reports in 2001 and this year have Arabic names and live out of state.

According to a review of federal campaign disclosure records, they include:

Abdurahman Alamoudi, leader of a Muslim organization, who during a 2000 rally outside the White House expressed support for the violent Palestinian group Hamas and for Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite party linked to bombings. The controversy surrounding his comments caused Senate candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton and George W. Bush's presidential campaign to return his contributions.

A professor who was jailed in 1998 on contempt charges for refusing to answer a grand jury's questions about alleged money-laundering links to Hamas.

Five businessmen whose homes or businesses were searched in March during an FBI raid investigating financial links to terrorism. Another was an officer in one of the groups under investigation, according to Federal Election Commission reports.

Bill Banks, manager of McKinney's re-election campaign, said this week that the congresswoman was not aware that any of her donors might support terrorist activities, or have ties to organizations involved with terrorism.

The McKinney campaign reported most of those contributions as having come Sept. 11, the date of the terror attacks in New York and Washington. But Banks said the campaign had organized a fund-raiser a few days before Sept. 11 and the donations collected were coincidentally recorded on that date.

FEC spokeswoman Kelly Huff said the date listed on disclosure reports is supposed to be, by law, the date the campaign received the money. But FEC officials said it was up to the campaign to document the proper date.

McKinney campaign coordinator Wendell Muhamad downplayed the FBI investigations of the donors, saying the agency historically has hounded minorities and is now targeting Muslims and people with Arab names.

"They're doing stuff like they did in the '60s to Dr. [Martin Luther] King," said Muhamad. "These are American citizens learning to use their money like the very small population which sways a lot of opinion with their money -- the Jewish community. That's the American way."

Banks said the campaign accepted contributors' money believing "in good faith that they are law-abiding citizens. If you did an investigation of everyone who gave money, people would stop giving."

McKinney is locked in what a poll released this week shows to be a virtual dead heat against former DeKalb County State Court Judge Denise Majette in the Aug. 20 Democratic primary. Majette declined to comment Friday on McKinney's fund-raising.

McKinney caused a tempest earlier this year by suggesting President Bush knew the Sept. 11 attacks were coming but did nothing so his associates could make money in the ensuing war. And last October, she also caused controversy for apologizing to a Saudi prince whose $10 million donation for terror victims was rejected by New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. The prince had laid part of the blame for the Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. policy. The following week, McKinney collected $32,150 in a fund-raiser, her best fund-raising day in 2001.

McKinney's support for Arab causes is well known. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, an Islamic advocacy group whose director was named on the Sept. 11 listing as giving McKinney $500, recently asked members to support her. "She is our strategic choice. Pro-Muslim candidate. Supporter of Palestinian state for over seven years. Against secret evidence. Against aid to Israel."

Steven Emerson, who runs a private counterterrorist institute in Washington, called McKinney's contributors "the A list of militant Islamic front groups." Two years ago, Emerson warned a Senate committee about increasing terrorist activity in America, sometimes in the name of charity.

Alamoudi, the president of the American Muslim Foundation who expressed support for Hamas and Hezbollah, gave the maximum allowable contribution of $2,000.

Clinton, then a Democratic Senate candidate in New York, returned the $1,000 Alamoudi gave her after her opponent called the donation "blood money." Her spokesman, explaining the decision to return the money, said, "Hillary is a strong supporter of peace and security for Israel." Reps. James Moran (D-Va.) and David Bonior (D-Mich.), Republican Senate candidate John Sununu of New Hampshire and the Bush presidential campaign all have returned Alamoudi's contributions since last fall.

Alamoudi did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Another donor, Abdelhaleem Ashqar, now a Howard University professor, who gave $250, was jailed for six months in 1998 after refusing to testify before a federal grand jury investigating money laundering in the United States by Hamas. Ashqar told the grand jury that he would not testify because the information would be "used against my friends, family and colleagues in the Palestinian liberation movement." He was never charged with a crime and did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Six of McKinney's donors were officers with companies and organizations that are under investigation.

On March 20 and 21, Treasury agents served warrants on the Herndon Va.-based Saar Foundation, Safa Trust, the International Institute of Islamic Thought and 13 other locations. The groups are part of a Saudi-based financial empire that U.S. investigators say has handled $1.7 billion since the mid-1990s, allegedly sending some of it to groups that authorities have linked to terrorists, The Washington Post reported. No charges have been filed in that investigation.

Listed as McKinney donors on Sept. 11 are M. Yaqub Mirza, Mohamed Omeish and Ahmad Totonji.

Federal agents in March searched the offices of Mirza, who contributed $500. The former president of Saar, Mirza was the central figure in the interlocking multinational corporations being investigated. He is the president of Mar-Jac, which includes investment firms and a North Georgia poultry plant, which also was searched in March. He did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Omeish is president of Success Foundation, a refugee relief organization whose office was searched in March. He is listed as having given $500. Omeish said investigators returned computers taken from his office.

Totonji, founder of Saar and the IIIT, gave $1,000. Federal agents carted away numerous computers from his offices in the March raid.

Two weeks later, on Sept. 26, Jamal Barzinji, Taha Alalwani of Herndon, Va., and Hisham Al Talib of California all gave $500 to McKinney's campaign, according to FEC records.

Barzinji, a business associate of Mirza's, is also president of Mar-Jac Poultry in Gainesville.

Alalwani is a founder of the IIIT and Al Talib, was the treasurer for Safa and the IIIT vice president.

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