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Thursday, July 20, 2006
The return of goodbyecynthia.com. Sort of.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Atlanta Press Club has set 7:30 p.m., Monday, July 31 for its live, GPTV debate between Hank Johnson and Cynthia McKinney in the 4th Congressional District runoff. That means it will air just before the start of early voting.
We wonder if she’ll make it.
We’re also hearing from people who walk the halls up there, that cops at the U.S. Capitol in Washington are passing the hat for Johnson. Not sure about the amounts involved, but if Georgia cops jump in as well, it could produce a tidy sum fairly quickly.
The most intriguing news of the day comes from the office of Mark Davis and his Duluth outfit, Data Productions Inc. Davis is a Republican data miner. Four years ago, in a matter of three weeks, Davis and a few Republican friends activated a dormant political action committee and waded into the McKinney fight, on the side of Denise Majette.
Their web site was goodbyecynthia.com.
We talked to him Thursday. He’s jumping in again, but in a capacity that hasn’t entirely been sketched out yet. His main task will be to find DeKalb County voters who didn’t cast a ballot on Tuesday, and let them know — via direct mail or automated phone calls — that they’re eligible to participate three weeks from now.
But should she lose next month, Davis said, McKinney won’t be able to argue that Republicans did her in. All the hardcore Republicans in the district voted in the Reed-Cagle race on Tuesday. Which means Davis’ job will be harder, because he’ll be reaching out toward the disaffected middle.
So here’s the day’s topic for you armchair strategists out there. And remember, the following is a tactical discussion — not an endorsement:
The technology is there for Republicans. But do you pull the trigger? We’ve heard a good many people say no, Republicans need McKinney as a poster child for liberal excess. But that’s a fund-raising argument the Republican National Committee might make. The more pressing strategic argument involves the re-election of Gov. Sonny Perdue.
Say that Democrat Mark Taylor makes all the right moves, and the race for governor in late October is tight. Would Republicans rather have a happy, enthusiastic McKinney pushing all the south DeKalb County buttons at her disposal? Or would they rather have a sullen, defeated McKinney who thinks Democrats — perhaps including Taylor — didn’t do all they should have to help her?
We’ve passed this by a number of people today, and it’s produced one cogent objection: They say that McKinney’s turnout machine, like that of Ralph Reed, is highly over-rated, and is decreasing in power as south DeKalb’s middle-class wealth increases.
If she can’t keep herself out of a run-off, her involvement in Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts in November aren’t worth worrying about. And so would have little impact on the outcome of the governor’s race.
Remember, one Democrat told us, that had John F. Coyne III of far-away Alpharetta not jumped into the race — and siphoned 5,249 votes from Johnson — there would be no run-off. It was Johnson who was drawn into the run-off on Tuesday, not McKinney.
The election in DeKrossover County
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Save only for the 2002 Denise Majette-Cynthia McKinney race, we’ve heard more about the impact of crossover voting after Tuesday’s primary than ever before. And once again, it’s DeKalb County where voters seem to have had the strongest urge to pick up the other party’s ballot.
If gays and lesbians in DeKalb who usually vote for Rep. Cynthia McKinney hadn’t defected to vote against Ralph Reed in the Republican lieutenant governor’s race, one of our readers writes, they might have kept her out of a runoff with Hank Johnson.
McKinney got a double crossover whammy, in fact, because at least some Republicans crossed over to vote against her, and with this low a turnout, that could have affected some GOP primary races.
Cathy Cox’s supporters believe she lost a lot of votes to Democrats crossing over to – as one of them put it Wednesday – “drive a stake through Ralph’s heart.� But the same voter said she’d also decided she would have voted for Taylor.
Note, in all this, the utter absence of political guile. Is it all that whole-grain bread?
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