Congresswoman Is in Unforeseen Struggle for Seat

As bleary-eyed drivers embarked on their Thursday-morning commute, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney stood at a busy suburban intersection belting out disco soul tunes.

Her bodyguard didn’t flinch, until a white passerby leaned out of a car and waved at McKinney and her campaign supporters.

“White people don’t usually wave,” the guard said.

Indeed, the outspoken McKinney, an African American Democrat whose campaign slogan is “Backbone in politics,” is struggling to be reelected to the House after a significant number of voters in the northern, predominantly white areas of her suburban Atlanta district voted against her in last month’s primary.

McKinney, 51, who had earlier been expected to win a seventh term in Georgia’s 4th Congressional District, won only 47% of the vote -- just 3 percentage points more than her main opponent, Hank Johnson -- forcing a runoff today.

Johnson, a moderate black lawyer and former county commissioner, says McKinney is a “candidate of polarization and divisiveness.”

McKinney struck an unapologetic tone last week as she scrambled for runoff support.

“I am known as a truth teller,” she said during a brief interview. “Truth is controversial.”

Acclaimed in many African American neighborhoods as a tough advocate for the downtrodden, McKinney has long rankled some white constituents with her combative style.

But her much-publicized altercation with a Capitol Police officer in March -- McKinney allegedly struck him after he stopped her for bypassing a security checkpoint -- seems to have ushered in a fresh spate of anti-McKinney sentiment.

A grand jury declined to indict her in the incident, but many Georgia Democrats fear she is a political liability.

In particular, they worry that she could jeopardize the party’s chances of attracting moderate white and rural voters in November’s gubernatorial election.

Already, Georgia Republicans have seized on Democrats’ embarrassment, calling for Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor, the Democratic nominee for governor, to explain his ties to McKinney. Taylor included McKinney near the top of his list of endorsements as he sought African American votes in his own primary, but he has not endorsed her.

McKinney has suggested that her electoral setbacks are part of a Republican conspiracy. Johnson, she points out, has received donations and crossover votes from anti-McKinney Republicans.

Yet McKinney’s difficulties stem in large part from her declining ability to rally African Americans to the polls. The number of overall voters in the primary dropped from about 96,000 in 2004 to 60,000 this year. (2004 was a presidential election year, however, accounting for at least some of the difference.)

Although McKinney continued to win majorities in the predominantly black precincts of south DeKalb County, her stronghold, it was in these areas that she experienced the largest decline.

In the last decade, a growing number of black middle-class professionals have settled in DeKalb, which is now the second-most-affluent predominantly black county in the nation.

Some residents say they are tired of McKinney’s strident rhetoric.

“Every year it’s something; it’s always something,” said Gloria Osborn, 57, a teacher from Ellenwood, who voted for McKinney in 2004 but said she would not vote for her after the Capitol Hill incident. “This was the last straw.”

McKinney has not shied away from controversy since she was elected the first African American congresswoman from Georgia in 1992.

She has questioned U.S. support for Israel, has called the Iraq war illegal and has suggested that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff should be charged with negligent homicide for Hurricane Katrina deaths.

In 2002, McKinney caused nationwide indignation after suggesting in a radio interview that President Bush might have had prior knowledge of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. That year, a more moderate African American, Denise L. Majette, a former state judge, defeated her in the Democratic primary before winning the general election.

In 2004, then-Rep. Majette gave up her seat to mount an unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign, and 4th District voters sent McKinney back to Washington to represent them.

McKinney has touted the fact that she is the highest-rated of Georgia’s Democratic representatives in “legislative effectiveness” on Congress.org, a private civic activism website that compiles information on federal lawmakers. (The site ranks her 285 out of the House’s 433 members in effectiveness. But for the site’s overall ranking of representatives’ “power,” she scores second to last in Georgia’s 13-member House delegation and No. 408 in the chamber.)

McKinney’s critics question her ability to make her constituents’ voices heard.

“She does not have a record of accomplishment,” said Charles Bullock, political science professor at the University of Georgia, who said he could not come up with even a short list of significant legislation she had introduced. “She’s a symbolic representative. Truth to power -- that’s her theme.”

But Kenneth Samuel, pastor of Victory Church in Stone Mountain and president of the DeKalb County NAACP, said it was difficult for McKinney to effect change in a GOP-controlled House. She works hard for the poor people of her district, he said, struggling to revitalize blighted urban neighborhoods and prevent toxic waste from being dumped in the district.

Samuel said he worried that McKinney’s situation signaled a new era of moderation in African American politics.

“We need people who speak aggressively and assertively; we need someone to shake the tree,” he said. “The reason Democrats are not elected is because we don’t stick to our guns, we pander to this middle ground.”

After speaking to senior citizens at the St. Philip African American Episcopal church in Decatur, McKinney’s campaign manager, John Evans, said it had become increasingly tough to rally community support on political issues. He criticized Georgia congressmen who had refused to endorse McKinney.

“It’s like when you have a room full of roaches: You go in, turn the light on and they scatter,” Evans said. “When people think you’re weak, they defect. Only the true at heart stick around.”