Deconstructing Cynthia McKinney: Her complex relationship with the Jewish community

In 1981, Billy McKinney made a difficult decision. It was a mayoral election year in the city of Atlanta, and the race was shaping up as a showdown between Andrew Young and Sidney Marcus, one of the city's best-known Jewish leaders. McKinney threw his support behind fellow state legislator Marcus, and became co-chairman of the Marcus campaign.

Throughout his public career McKinney had always delighted in taking contrarian positions. In this case he was excoriated for choosing Marcus over Young. McKinney was one of the black Marcus supporters whom Maynard Jackson sneeringly referred to as "shuffling, grinning Negroes."

Marcus lost the race, but 18 years later, McKinney's relationships with some local black leaders remains strained because of the choice he made in that long-ago mayor's contest.

Atlanta businessman Jules Stine remembers the story well. "Billy was very much out front in the Marcus campaign," Stine told the Atlanta Jewish Times. "A black man taking on Andy Young!"

Stine and McKinney have been good friends for decades. In the early '70s, Stine hired McKinney's daughter Cynthia to work part time in his shoe store, inside Regenstein's department store, in downtown Atlanta. Stine liked the then-St. Joseph's High School student right away.

"She was wonderful. She was bright and energetic. She had this wonderful curiosity."

Stine became Cynthia McKinney's friend and mentor, and they remain close today. He was at McKinney's district office last week when she gave the interview to Atlanta Jewish Times editor Cynthia Mann that accompanies this article.

"I have this enormous regard for intellect," Stine told me in one in a series of phone conversations we had for this story. "Cynthia is very bright. She is able to bring things together. She will be in your face and tell you exactly what's on her mind with candor and frankness; and she's had that since she was a little girl."

A father who risked the scorn of his own community to back a Jewish candidate for mayor. A most-trusted adviser who is a Jew. These are hardly the credentials that would suggest McKinney has a troubled relationship with many Atlanta Jews. And yet even those closest to her admit that she does.

"I will acknowledge that there is tension between Cynthia and some members of the Jewish community," says Stine candidly. And her father recognizes the rift, too: "I would certainly like Cynthia to get past this friction," he told me.

Yet Billy McKinney bears a large share of responsibility for the rift. Just ask Cookie Shapiro. Shapiro got to know Cynthia McKinney during the fall of 1996, when she was engaged in a fierce re-election battle against Republican challenger John Mitnick. They were working together, planning a campaign fund-raiser for McKinney that Shapiro had agreed to host in her Buckhead home. Tipper Gore was set to fly in as the star attraction, and dozens of invitations had been mailed to prominent and well-heeled Atlanta Jews.

In the midst of this flurry of activity, Billy McKinney, who was serving as his daughter's campaign manager, was accused of taking an anti-Semitic swipe at Mitnick in a community forum at Ebenezer Baptist Church.

He called Mitnick "a racist Jew," a remark he recently said he made out of frustration because Mitnick was trying to tie his daughter to notorious anti-Semite and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. But McKinney was slow to apologize, and his daughter was equally slow to take action to reprimand him. (She eventually fired him from the campaign.)

The incident sent shock waves through the Jewish community and cast Shapiro's fund-raiser in a new, controversial light. "When all this started coming out she seemed to call me more often," Shapiro said. "I think she was trying to keep me from canceling. She kept saying her father didn't speak for her." As for Shapiro, "I was determined to go forward because I wanted to give her a chance to speak for herself."

The fund-raiser was a success, and McKinney went on to win a convincing victory over Mitnick. Shapiro was pleased. "When she won, I was genuinely thrilled for her." In high spirits, she called McKinney to congratulate her on her victory, and left a message with the campaign office. There was no response.

"I must have called her a dozen times and she wouldn't talk to me," Shapiro said. "Not one phone call; and to this day she hasn't called me one time."

Shapiro now believes McKinney was exploiting her: "Coming to me and using my platform was strictly political. She wanted to make an inroad into the Jewish community."

Shapiro isn't alone. A number of Atlanta Jews who spoke for this article said they've had no contact with McKinney since the election of 1996.

Sherry Frank, regional director of the American Jewish Committee, offered her explanation. "I've been a supporter of hers endlessly because I think she's so smart; but she doesn't have contacts in the Jewish community; she doesn't have a sixth sense about it. I'm sure she isn't asked to speak as often to Jewish groups as John [Lewis, the 4th District congressman who is revered among Atlanta Jews] because she hasn't been accessible."

Weeks after her victory over Mitnick, McKinney did accept an invitation to appear at a meeting of the Men's Club of Congregation Beth Jacob. Program Director Chana Shapiro was there and said that was the last time the congregation heard from McKinney. "We don't feel like she's been there for us.... She gave us the sense of being attentive and listening, but she's never given us the sense of caring, and that's a whole different thing."

For his part, Rabbi Stanley Davids tried for two years to get McKinney to speak at Temple Emanu-El, his Dunwoody congregation. His invitations, sent to members of McKinney's staff, went unanswered. "When I finally talked to McKinney herself, she promised me I would be contacted by a staff member who would set up a meeting. It never happened. It was a dead end. About a year ago I gave up in frustration."

Davids, who lives in the 4th District, remains bitter about his lack of rapport with McKinney: "I think I and the community in which I live, mainly the Jewish community, are being ignored. I have never before lived in a situation in which I was cut off politically from those who represent me in government."

Frank blames the tenuous relationship between McKinney and Atlanta Jews on the Mitnick-McKinney contest. "It was a terrible election that left scars that aren't healing."

But the first signs of estrangement pre-date the stormy 1996 campaign. In 1992, in her first race for Congress in what was then Georgia's 11th District, McKinney made it clear she wouldn't be beholden to the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Stine said McKinney thought AIPAC was heavy-handed in demanding her endorsement of their positions in return for its support. McKinney refused to play ball.

"Here was a young woman who had not yet been elected to Congress and AIPAC was saying 'This is our point of view, sign off on this.' Cynthia being Cynthia was not going to do that. Had it been a Catholic group, had it been the Pope, she wasn't going to do this. I think Cynthia was taken aback by the aggressiveness that is how AIPAC does business."

McKinney's relationship with AIPAC continued to deteriorate after she won the 1992 race. An AIPAC source, who insisted on anonymity, said that tension grew to the extent that, "for the next few years, AIPAC saw Congress as having 434 members. We didn't send her the information we sent to every other member. We didn't talk to her. She didn't ask us not to. We were told to leave her alone by other members of the Georgia delegation."

To this day McKinney has never been to an AIPAC convention, an event that annually draws up to 200 U.S. senators and representatives. Stine calls himself a strong supporter of AIPAC, but he defends McKinney for refusing to placate an organization which Stine thinks plays a disproportionate role in defining how Jews view elected officials. "We have been known on occasion to get turned off if the list [of issues] AIPAC hands out isn't checked off properly."

With relations already beginning to show signs of strain, an episode in 1994 heightened Jewish suspicions about McKinney. She refused to vote for a congressional resolution condemning the anti-Semitic speeches of a Farrakhan disciple, Khalid Muhammad. McKinney saw the vote as a threat to freedom of speech, while her critics saw it as a blatant slap at the Jewish community.

The ensuing controversy dismayed McKinney supporter Melissa Fay Greene, the prominent Atlanta writer. "I felt the long arm of Farrakhan reach down here and right into my living room. It poisoned the waters here. Atlanta had such a magnificent history of black-Jewish relations but suddenly it was as if we were unable to have access to that. We all fell back on knee-jerk reactions. We borrowed instead of looking at our own rich history of cooperation."

Greene, like Shapiro, continued to back McKinney through the 1996 election despite intense pressure from the Jewish community. "I think she has a good heart, and I don't think she realized the power Farakkhan's name had to distance and upset her possible Jewish supporters." Now, though, Greene has pulled away. "She didn't win my fidelity beyond my loyalty to the Jewish community."

To be sure, McKinney has forged close alliances with some Jews. Stephanie Davis, head of the Atlanta Women's Foundation, has known McKinney since her days in the state legislature, where Davis was a legislative researcher. "I think she's a visionary in many ways," Davis said. "She is so strong on issues of equality and equal rights for women and people of color." Davis is frustrated by what she sees as the Jewish community's unwillingness to forgive McKinney for the harsh tone of the 1996 election: "We cannot disregard her or pretend she's not important to our future or try to discount her for past actions that I think she's reversed."

Gary Edelman, a Decatur surgeon, credits McKinney with winning him a position on Gov. Barnes' newly created Community Health Board. He has risen to vice-chair and become an adviser to McKinney on health care and other issues. "She's a good lady," Edelman told me. "I think she's misunderstood in the Jewish community." Frank agrees. "We like to hate Cynthia," Frank said of Atlanta Jews.

Even her friends acknowledge that McKinney is abrasive, that her world is made up of stark contrasts and of friends and enemies, to whom she reacts with deeply felt passion. It may therefore be Jewish hyper-sensitivity which assumes that her treatment of Jews is somehow different from the way she deals with others. To some extent, it's simply how McKinney does business.

There was the infamous 1991 speech on the floor of the Georgia House condemning President Bush's decision to launch the war against Iraq. Most members walked out in anger as she was speaking. "It still sticks in people's craws today," said state Rep. Tyrone Brooks, her friend and ally. Just two weeks ago in an interview for CBS' "60 Minutes," McKinney weighed in on Emory University's fight with former business school professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld. McKinney called Emory University President William Chace a "liar" and urged Sonnenfeld to take Emory for all he could in a lawsuit.

She has, at times, been a passionate supporter of President Clinton. Yet, after an embarrassing incident in which she and a black guest were turned away from a White House party by secret service agents, McKinney loudly protested that it was typical of the way the White House treats non-whites.

Her anger was probably justified. But other members of Congress might have chosen a more discreet approach in deference to the president.

Jules Stine admits that she is often too blunt: "Sure there are things that Cynthia has said that would have been better left unsaid. [But] on balance, I would much prefer that kind of candor and directness."

Despite the strong criticism expressed by many of the Jews who were interviewed for this article, none accuses McKinney of being anti-Semitic, although some believe her father is. At the same time, many believe she uses the politics of divisiveness as a weapon.

American Jewish Committee board member Elaine Alexander said, "I've known her for too long to think that Cynthia's anti-Semitic. But I think her tactics really reflect the burn-and-kill philosophy of politics today. Would she use anti-Jewish feelings to win an election? Absolutely."

For his part, Gary Edelman bluntly invoked racism as one reason for Jewish hostility toward McKinney. "Some people in her district would just as soon see her as their maid as their congresswoman."

Despite her strained relationship with AIPAC, her votes on their issues rates a "pretty good" from Mark Moskowitz, AIPAC regional director in Atlanta. But for two years now, McKinney has voted in favor of amendments to reduce U.S. aid to Israel. Last year, the amendment called for some of the funding earmarked for Israel to be redirected to African nations, and so to some, McKinney's vote was an understandable decision by a black congresswoman with a burning interest in helping Africa.

This year, though, she was one of just 35 House members who voted for the proposed $30 million reduction (from a total package of $2.88 billion); and this time, the proposal did not call for redirecting the money anywhere. "The vote disturbed us," said Moskowitz. "We wondered if she was letting us see her true colors."

Moskowitz adds that AIPAC "still isn't 100 percent sure what her feelings about Israel are because she doesn't speak on it. She stays pretty quiet on the issue."

Jay Kaiman, southeast director of the Anti-Defamation League, has a similarly vague grasp of McKinney's position on the ADL's agenda. "She hasn't made our issues a priority. On the other hand, I don't think she's ever taken any stand that's been offensive to us on hate crimes or religious protection."

The simple fact is that McKinney doesn't put so-called Jewish issues at the top of her agenda. She is deeply involved in helping emerging African nations. She fights for black causes and women's rights. And truth be known, she doesn't need Jewish votes to keep her seat - the 4th District is just 4 percent Jewish - as long as she maintains her strong coalition of women and African American voters.

Still, McKinney is a force for Jews to reckon with. She is the only member of the Georgia delegation with a seat on the foreign relations committee; and if Democrats regain the majority in the House next year, she'll become chairwoman of the international relations subcommittee. In that role, she would have enormous influence in decisions affecting American relations with Israel.

And that is why many of the Jews who were interviewed for this article believe it is important to repair whatever breach exists between McKinney and the Jewish community. "We should stay close to her to educate her," Sherry Frank insisted.

But how? Mark Moskowitz said that APIAC "has had discussions with her office about ways to repair the relationship and they've chosen not to do any of the things we've suggested."

Elaine Alexander suggested that they key may be in the hands of the Jews who are close to McKinney: "I think she has some real friends in the Jewish community. I would hope that people who have maintained close ties to her would be able to sensitize her."

It won't be easy. The wounds are deep on each side. Stephanie Davis offered a McKinney perspective: "I think she may feel misunderstood and feel she can't redefine herself in a community she thinks has vilified her. She doesn't want to look as if she's pandering."

Cookie Shapiro believes there should be a relationship with her, but the potential is limited. "I think her opinions are set and that's the way they are."

Cynthia McKinney hasn't talked with me for three years. That's why her interview appears outside this article. Our troubles date back to the 1996 election, too. She remains angry because she feels I barged into her campaign headquarters with a Channel 2 camera when I was trying to get the campaign's reaction to Billy McKinney's attack on John Mitnick. Last week, when I interviewed her father, I reminded him of his daughter's boycott. He laughed: "If Arafat is making peace with the Israelis, I think I can get Cynthia to make peace with you."

In the large scheme of things, McKinney's relationship with me is irrelevant. But McKinney and the Jewish community have to decide if it is worth their while to invest in repairing theirs.

Cynthia Mann Editor
The following is excerpted from an hour-long
interview at U.S. Rep. Cynthia
McKinney's district office on Sycamore
Street.

AJT: Let's talk about you and your leadership. What drives... your passion and priorities?

McKinney: I try to think in the back of my mind, 'What's the mission?' [Writer] Ellen Goodman did a column, oh gosh, a long time ago. She said the best elected officials are the ones who have one foot in the door and the other foot outside. And that's because we need the kind of people who are so committed they're willing to walk if they are asked or forced to compromise on their values.... I've always tried to remember that.

McKinney: We talk a lot in this office about being the voice for the voiceless. The old 11th District gave me an opportunity to serve them and this country and they really were the voiceless: people who still don't have running water in their homes, people who never saw a member of Congress, probably never dawned on them they actually had a representative up there. Be they in Jefferson County, Ga., or Dunwoody, Ga., or Haiti, Guatemala, or Australia, [or] East Timor, we define our constituency as those people who need us. What I ask people to do is not judge me on what I say but judge me on what I do.

AJT: Clearly you have strong feeling about the United States' role in the world. What's your view of your mission on the International Relations Committee? I know you have a special interest in Africa.

McKinney: I have a special interest in human rights.... The subcommittee I serve on is the human rights international operations subcommittee. ...I knew there had been a lot of people victimized by our [foreign] policy and I wanted to know why and I wanted to change that.... We used to be a force for good in the world and our accumulation of power was not just an end in itself, but a means to do good things on behalf of people in the world.

AJT: You've been criticized by pro-Israel quarters... for being hard on Israel.... Most recently, you voted for the Campbell Amendment [to the foreign aid bill] to decrease aid to Israel. Can you share your thoughts about Israel and the peace process?

McKinney: When Yitzhak Rabin shook Yasser Arafat's hand, I was there. I didn't have to go. I was there because [of] my concern for human rights.... There's no way you can have peace in this world, unless there's a certain level of respect for people just because they're people. So that's why I place a lot of prominence on human rights as an important issue in the formulation of our foreign policy.

AJT: So, has your support for human rights in the context of the Middle East peace process created ill will?

McKinney: I can tell you I've tried to be consistent.... Let me put it this way. My telephone number is listed in the phone book. People can call me. We have an open-door policy in this office....

You mentioned the Campbell vote. What happened there was the president made a request and his request included money promised as a result of the implementation for the Wye accords. I am not an expert on the politics of the Middle East. But I will be supportive of the peace process. Absolutely 100 percent. The appropriations committee put an additional $50 million in - $30 million for Israel and $20 million for Egypt - and the Campbell Amendment struck the additional funding, the $50 [million], which was not the president's request.

AJT: Some people in the Jewish community talk about alliances they felt they made with you in the 1996 campaign and that since then they feel cut off, that there hasn't been a lot of dialogue, and that you haven't reached out....

McKinney: I guarantee you I work seven days a week.... My political mother is Jewish. Her name is Sima Osdoby. She's in Bosnia right now. [When] I met her, she at the time was the national director for WAND, Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament.... She basically is the reason I ran for Congress.... My political daddy is my first boss... Jules [Stine].

... But I don't think about people this way. We don't sort of categorize people and take a litmus test. I don't do that!... Please, we're open.... The people who are concerned need to call me.

AJT: Do you have any comment on the black-Jewish relationship... on what we share and where we're apart?

McKinney: How do we judge progress in relationships? You got to have some indicators of what progress is. ...If it's a shared agenda, I can tell you that the people I go to in the Congress for my peace issues, for my human rights issues, for my civil rights issues, are first Democrats, but I know that my Jewish colleagues are going to support 99 percent of the issues I have. What does that tell me? It tells me that... we're a lot alike.

I was disappointed that the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Congress filed amicus briefs against minority districts. That was shocking to me. I read Melissa Fay Greene's book - she did an event for me at her house - and it ["The Temple Bombing"] was a really good book about the commonality and at the same time the differences in our struggle. I walk into a room and everybody knows just exactly what I am.

I'm automatically identified. But I wouldn't know you were Jewish unless I asked or unless you volunteered it. The struggles are quite different. But... the thing I always say is we have to wrap our loving arms around our white allies because we identifiable minorities in this country will never get anywhere on our own. It's through... coalitions.

...We've got to understand... sometimes the people who look like us don't even care about us. We've got to redefine who we are. Are we just black? No, we're much more than that. [And] because we are, the people who impact our lives are also going to be much more than black. We need to embrace that and embrace them.

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Nigut (lead political reporter for WSB-TV/Atlanta) can be such an ass in person, but he's one hell of a political reporter.

Last time the NAACP convention was here, Nigut and I were on the back of the press platform while Al Gore transformed from buffoon to pseudo-Baptist preacher. I was aghast (it was the first time I'd heard this transformation from AlGore), but Nigut was more aghast at my anger at Gore.

Simply hilarious. Sounds like he was groveling to get a shot at Cynthia, and a picture of that, for me, would be worth the price of admission...

What crap. Jihad Cindy's campaign manager is a member of the Nation of Islam. So is Stokely Carmichael's son, the one she hired to be a coordinator for her delegation to the UN racism conference. McKinney writes a guest column for The Final Call and is guarded by the Fruit of Islam.

Mitrick was right--Cindy IS tied in tight with the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan.

Nigut (lead political reporter for WSB-TV/Atlanta) can be such an ass in person, but he's one hell of a political reporter.

Agreed...very good political reporter.... but an insufferable liberal.

I listened to her debate with Majette. Majette put the question to her, McKinney talked about taking contributions from all sorts of people, but did not mention 9/11. Majette could have followed up pointing out McKinney's side step, but I don't think she's a "debater."

I thought maybe there would be another explanation - some kind of accounting timing or something - but McKinney offered none.

I thought when the Islamists saw the WTC fall their first instinct was not concern for victims, but to prop up their bought out politico by immediately writing a check.

But the possibility this was some kind of perverse, even nose-thumbing response is certainly possible.

So is Stokely Carmichael's son, the one she hired to be a coordinator for her delegation to the UN racism conference.
________________

Stokely Carmichael was gay and died in Africa of an AIDs related disease but it was excused as cancer

http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:GADQ6qEzGZcC:www.cnn.com/US/9811/15/carmichael.obit/+Stokely+Carmichael+was+gay+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

What a tub of friggin' nonsense! Who's idea was this- to try at this stage of the campaign, with the primary a few days away, to try to humanize poor Cynthia McKinney? This makes me so mad. All these people trying so desperately to wrap their minds around the enigma that is CM!
Instead of accepting her for what she is (a non-responsive aggressor whose pride won't allow her to admit making a mistake), these "Jews" are torturing themselves trying to accommodate her what-have-you-done-for-me-lately persona. Such grovelling makes me sick.
What these disturbed individuals should be doing is finding a candidate that doesn't spit in their face and actually responds to their communications.
Don't buy any of this crap, people. Cynthia McKinney should not be in the House of Representatives.

McKinney saw the vote as a threat to freedom of speech

Needs some editing...

McKinney saw the vote as a threat to ~~freedom of speech~~ her campaign contributions from Muslim extremists

MUCH better!

Just two weeks ago in an interview for CBS' "60 Minutes," McKinney weighed in on Emory University's fight with former business school professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld. McKinney called Emory University President William Chace a "liar" and urged Sonnenfeld to take Emory for all he could in a lawsuit.

Doesn't sound like a wise move for a politician representing a district that includes Emory University.

people who never saw a member of Congress, probably never dawned on them they actually had a representative up there. Be they in Jefferson County, Ga., or Dunwoody, Ga., or Haiti, Guatemala, or Australia, [or] East Timor, we define our constituency as those people who need us.

Man, I knew her district was Gerrymandered but East Timor?

I should have put the date in bold. This article was written in 1999.

Posted it to show the Jewish problem with McKinney goes back a while and that she would not be in congress today had it not been for Jewish support.

McKinney's off the cliff socialism doesn't bother Atlanta Jews, her going against AIPAC and not voting more money for Israel does. My guess is she did the Farrahkan thing just to annoy them. She wanted to let them know she could not be bought in the most in your face way.

Seeing as McKinney rose to power on Jewish support, I say let them kept her in congress. They deserve her.

On the other hand, if she is defeated by the AIPAC crowd, it could cause more animosity between Jews and Blacks in the Democratic Party.

Probably a toss-up. Conservatives will win if she is defeated or not.

She is the only member of the Georgia delegation with a seat on the foreign relations committee; and if Democrats regain the majority in the House next year, she'll become chairwoman of the international relations subcommittee.

I didn't know this till now, that is the House sub-committee responsible for relations with the UN! Georgians, do your duty to your country, vote for Majette in the primary!

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