McKinney Out--Again

For those of you who have been watching teh Lamont-Lieberman race with intensity, might want to look south to see the another incumbent bit the dust in a primary run-off yesterday. Cynthia McKinney lost to political novice Hank Johnson, a virtual unknown a few weeks ago in a near landslide. Johnson grabbed nearly 60 percent of the vote in the largely Black district outside of Atlanta.

For those of you keeping score, this is the second time in four years that McKinney has lost in a primary. In 2002, she was ousted in the primary by Denise Majette after McKinney made a series of somewhat anti-Semitic remarks and espoused various conspiracy theories about 9/11. Such comments about the terrorist attacks did not play well in a city where patriotism runs deep and crosees party lines.

Majette gave up the 4th District seat when she made an ill-fated and foolish attempt to run for the U.S. Senate and McKinney won her former Congressional seat. Some will undoubtedly point to her run in with Capitol police, which for a while held the promise of a criminal indictment, as the cause of her defeat. But I believe that the reason McKinney lost is not that she struck a police office, but that her actions since that time, and indeed during most of her tenure, were an embarassment to her constituents.

While Johnson was making the rounds of local TV interviewers,

Rather than addressing her loss late Tuesday night, McKinney responded by heaping more criticism on the White House. Before the tallies were completed, McKinney also complained of voting irregularities, which election officials discounted.

Always fun stuff in Georgia.