Posted on 08/14/2002 6:20:15 AM PDT by veronica
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.
You're welcome! #46.
You're welcome! #47.
;-)
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