This is a copy of an email sent to a friend who teaches political science. It was written on the evening of August 21, 2002 and involves local politics in Georgia. McKinney would be voted out of office that year, but elected again two years later.  Two years later, she was out again.

It occurs to me that I do have an unusual obligation to you.  To wit, I have been right at the 50-yard line of the action in one of the country's most interesting primaries, one involving Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.  Ms. McKinney's reputation precedes her, and this note will not address the validity of her statements.  Rather, we will dwell on the race itself.

For ten years, Ms. McKinney has held forth in my Congressional district, most of which lies within DeKalb County.  We don't really see her all that much at this end of the County, since her political power base is located at the South end of the district.  The district has changed over the years.  Originally, DeKalb was a sleepy suburban county next to the City of Atlanta.  It was marked by quiet streets and an almost rural nature.  Cattle still grazed in several areas.  Local politics also had a rural flavor, and the Congressman that was in office when I arrived back in Atlanta in 1972 was Mr. Elliott Levitas.  A moderate Democrat, Levitas was Jewish and nobody in the County seemed to care very much about that fact.  He was (and, I believe, still is) a decent guy who worked hard to serve his constituents.

That was to change with the arrival of Pat Swindall.  What's in a name?  Swindall was a conservative Republican who overwhelmed the Levitas political camp by working the conservative churches, drumming out the religious vote.  Of course, having a person of the Jewish persuasion in office made Swindall's task easier in those confines, and Levitas was quickly swept from office.  I quickly developed a strong dislike for Swindall, who was far more white bread and sacrosanct than the law allows.  He and his plastic wife frequently were photographed in family scenes created for the benefit of his portion of the electorate.  His enthusiasm for his wife was evidenced by continuing growth of the Swindall family.  She seemed to be eternally pregnant.  In fact, it was only Swindall's being dispatched to prison on bribery charges that slackened that pace.  And so, as Pat was led off to the Graybar Hotel, John Lindner entered the scene.

A conservative Republican, Lindner held office in the 4th District for at least two terms.  They all blend together after a while.  In any case, Lindner moved northward into another suburban county and into the vacuum came Cynthia McKinney.  Like her father, Billy McKinney (another local politician), Cynthia played racist hard ball.  Like Swindall, she worked up her supporters with a brew of "Us versus them".  She determined that she only needed the votes in a certain portion of the County, and could get elected and stay elected by only appealing to that portion.  Until recent months, it was an extremely successful formula.  But there always was a whiff of corruption; one of her strongest voting precincts usually showed a 95% participation rate.  I don't know of any community that can get 95% of its residents to do anything.  There were charges of interfering with an election.  And on. 

As a consequence of her political calculus, we never saw her at this end of the County, which was particularly irritating.  I make out checks to the U. S. Treasury four times a year, and with Ms. McKinney in office, I knew that I was highly unlikely to ever see any of those dollars back here again.  In the same way, telephone calls and correspondence to her office on official matters went unanswered.  Why should they care?  They did not need us to get reelected.  And so, the North end of the County seethed without recourse.

The matter was seemingly exacerbated further when the Georgia General Assembly performed its magic after the 2000 census.  If Gerry had computers he could have done no better job.  The state now has a new Congressional district, one that snakes its way along the West side of the state, encompassing an inordinately large number of Democrats.  Not a big surprise since the General Assembly is dominated by the Democratic Party.  Likewise, they structured the Fourth Congressional district in such a way that no Republican candidate could stand a chance of success.  In this sense, the General Assembly's changes had not been that radical in the 4th, since that had been that stasis which allowed McKinney to continue.

In the past, several Republicans had made a game try of it.  One, a Ms. Sunny Warren, had some possible chance, being a black woman.  But, largely, the 4th Congressional race usually was over by the primary.  Not that there weren't some moments.  In one race, the Republican du jour was a Mr. Mitnick.  Things got nasty early, and reached a political crescendo when Ms. McKinney's father made some anti-semitic comments about Mr. Mitnick.  Now, it was Republicans and Jewish people who were seething in the 4th.  Yet, Ms. McKinney continued in office through hard ball politics.

One characteristic of the 4th's politics is that local churches play a role in the action.  Note that the synagogues don't usually get into that game, a telling comment of the religion.  In the 2000 Congressional race, the minister of one 25,000 member church made the mistake of supporting Ms. McKinney's opponent in the race.  The next year, Governor Roy Barnes budgeted $750,000.00 for a community outreach program with this church, but it was Billy McKinney who denied the church's grant, saying that it was a waste of money.  The minister learned his lesson, coming out and supporting McKinney in this year's primary.  Some people seem destined to bad decisions.

This time last year, things looked like it was going to be business as usual in the 4th Congressional District.  And, of course, everything changed.

The first hint on the horizon was when a quiet Yale educated former County judge named Denise Majette showed up at our civic association meeting in May.  She walked around and introduced herself, left some brochures and then went her merry way.  Unlike previous victims, this woman was running in the primary against Ms. McKinney instead of running in the general election.  She had been a County judge, running on the Democratic ticket.  Her quiet resolve was interesting, but the oddsmakers at that evening's meeting did not give her much of a chance.  But there was this faint glimmer of hope, and we all held onto that.

Meanwhile, up in Washington, a Disneyland for politicians, Ms. McKinney was expanding her outrageous style.  Her Congressional record has largely consisted of grabbing an aisle seat at the State of the Union so that she can try and slip her tongue into the mouth of the sitting President as he passes by on the way to the podium.  Beyond that, her office has managed to get the Congress to deliberate on the benefits of declaring "Peach Week" and ribbon cutting at a local post office.  But there were indications that her world was beginning to fall apart.

The McKinney family has always been prone to making statements which inflame, but Ms. McKinney was to really outdo herself with comments about George Bush the Younger having known in advance about the events of September 11th, and doing nothing about it because his business friends would benefit financially.  Now the whole country was beginning to get twitchy about her, and a movement was born.  Down on Marietta Street, the Atlanta Journal Constitution editorial board began to quietly grease the rails.

It soon became apparent that much of McKinney's campaign money was coming from people with Arabic sounding names that resided in places outside the 4th Congressional District.  Meanwhile, her opponent, Ms. Majette was quietly going about the County using words like "work together".  It was a siren call to the disaffected.  It also open the floodgates of money coming from outside of the District into her campaign. 

And, an interesting political matter arose.  Unlike many states, Georgia has open primaries, which means that you don't need to carry a party id card to get into the polls.  And, given the generally weak nature of the GOP in the state of Georgia, it usually didn't matter.  But, again quietly, word began to circulate about Republicans coming to the polls and voting for Majette.
 

The icing on this cake came in a letter to the editor of the Journal.  It said, in effect, that the General Assembly had configured the 4th in such a way that no Republican stood a chance of winning the election anyway, so what was wrong with Republicans going to the polls and trying to have some input in the election of their Congressperson?  The disaffected breathed a knowing "Ahhhh".  And the race was on.  Of course, in the backs of several minds was the memory of the last time that Republicans crossed over en masse to vote in the Democratic primary.  Lester Maddox became governor because of that crossover vote.  But Majette was a moderate, and played to a moderate campaign.

The campaign leading up to the primary was classic McKinney.  Truth may be the first casualty in war, but in this race, truth didn't get much play from the McKinney camp in the first place.  Somehow, Majette wasn't black enough; McKinney loyalists began calling her "Tomette" for being too friendly with the white folks.  As things heated up in the final day of the race, Ms. McKinney's father was broadcast by local television stations saying that "The Jews own everything".  And, just in case nobody heard him say it, he spelled it out: "J-E-W-S". 

In the week prior to the primary, our published telephone line had been constantly ringing with recorded messages from political candidates encouraging us to vote for them on primary day.  Some of the calls were live, and a source of great amusement for me.  One earnest young thing called and launched into her prearranged script.  "Joe Blow is involved in a heavily contested race for Dog Catcher...."  I stopped her and asked: "Who's running against Joe Blow?"  "What?"  "Who's running against Joe Blow?"  "I don't know."  But without a doubt, the real motivator came with The Phone Call.

This one featured a VERY authoritarian recorded voice saying: "Attention Republicans!  It is against the law to cross over and vote in another party's primary....  Observers will be at the polls to insure that only those qualified to vote in a party's primary will be able to do so.  Etc."  Of course, it was classic late-in-the-campaign dirty politics; by the time that the truth actually emerges, the primary election will simply be a memory.  But The Phone Call caught the 4th on fire, and those who might not have planned on going to the polls suddenly were penciling in an appointment.

The media has made much of the fact that The Phone Call was directed to Republicans, but, in fact, it appears that all voters in the northern end of the District were contacted.  The tone of the call was intimidating, and voter intimidation is a felony in the State of Georgia.  Technology being what it is, the perpetrator of The Phone Call will eventually be discovered.  In all likelihood, it originated with the McKinney campaign, which also took to using old political endorsements from Robert Redford, Andrew Young, Ralph Nader and even ol' Bill Clinton hisself; the Redford camp is "outraged" (these days, who isn't?), etc.  But, The Phone Call appears to be developing a life of its own, and I silently pray that it did, indeed, come from the McKinney camp and not from another party.  For if it came from another party, the consequences are going to be unpredictable.

But as the sun rose on August 20, voters streamed to the polls with intent.  The turnout at the polls was higher than usual in the 4th, indicating that The Phone Call might have worked in an unanticipated manner.  Still using punch cards, vote counts were slower than usual, presumably in an effort to avoid another Broward County hoohah.  My lovely bride and I finally turned out the lights late in the evening, hopeful that The Great Satan was going to be retired.  In the morning, I collected the Journal Constitution from the inside of my shrubs, peeled back the plastic and was delighted to learn that Denise Majette had won.  So, it was an interesting race.

And, there is one other loose end.  Ms. Majette is not elected yet; she still has to face a Republican contender.  Because of the low turnout and because of the presence of several candidates, there is a runoff in a couple weeks between two women for the Republican candidacy.  Given that many who would have voted for these candidates under ordinary circumstances now cannot do so in the runoff, it makes for an unusual campaign.  There were so few voters in the Republican primary that both of these candidates could visit with each voter individually, have a cup of coffee, perhaps send a fruit box from Harry & David........  The results remain to be seen.

See you at the polls,

*****

Now that the dust has settled, it appears that about 12,000 to 15,000 Republican voters crossed over in the primary. Their crossover vote did not ultimately affect the outcome of the primary election.  You always remember things after you hang up the phone; before Levitas were James Makay and Ben Blackburn.  After Swindall and before Lindner was Ben Jones.

A few other vignettes were lost along the way. Opponents created the “goodbycynthia.com” site, devoted to that topic. At the McKinney campaign celebration party, a large group of homeless men who had been hired for campaigning purposes grew restive when a rumor circulated that they would not be paid.  No word about the final outcome.

In the dust of the primary, a group of “concerned” black clergy met to discuss recent events.  There was no condemnation of Billy McKinney’s comments.  Indeed, one clergyman came out of the meeting and suggested to the media that the Jews owed black people an apology.  Billy McKinney also finds himself in a political quandary; he is in a run-off election in two weeks for the Democratic nomination for his House district.  There is also talk about eliminating crossover voting, but it seems unlikely. The freedom to crossover and vote in another party’s primary dates back to the Reconstruction.