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Fri. May 31, 2002

McKinney Upset In The Making?

McKinney Upset In The Making? – From this week’s Creative Loafing: "There may not be a candidate in Georgia whose supporters want to beat their opponent as badly as Denise Majette’s backers want to beat Cynthia McKinney—such are the feelings McKinney engenders." Amen to that. But with about two and a half months to go before the primary, a new poll shows things are looking up.

"Majette’s strategy is obvious: Portray yourself as the anti-McKinney. Where McKinney is perceived as strident, look conciliatory. When she goes left, Majette goes center. Say over and over that you are the representative for all of DeKalb County, not just pockets of southern DeKalb [...] But if running as the Great Conciliator is to work, Majette must go negative now, and she must reach the masses with her message quickly. To do that, she’ll need money for radio and television, money thus far, that has been relatively slow in coming." If you oppose McKinney, no matter where you live, you can help.

"To win, Majette will have to prevent the race from becoming about, well, race. ’It’s going to be a factor even when you have two black folks running,’ Boone says. ’In DeKalb County, there is the question of the divide between the north and the south and who gets the resources.’ McKinney always has the race card up her sleeve. There are already whispers about who’s the ’real’ black candidate."

Oh, please, bring it on. That should be as much fun as when McKinney claimed, "I believe that when it comes to major foreign policy issues, many prefer to have black people seen and not heard," causing much hilarity behind the office doors of Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, the two preeminent voices of American foreign policy.

Creative Loafing says, "For all the enmity, however, it’s not clear how much damage McKinney’s incautious statements have done her, " but new poll results make it clearer: "Although her name recognition is only 28 percent, Secrest says, Majette led McKinney 41 percent to 37 percent, with 22 percent undecided."

But the poll covered an amazingly small sample, 509 people. This gives a +/- margin of error of about 5 points, and therefore runs the risk of not being a good representative sample. But even if you want to call it a dead heat due to statistical variance in a small sample, it’s an impressive showing for a first time candidate still trying to gain name recognition 10 weeks out from the primary.

Furthermore, McKinney has a 38-60 positive to negative rating. As you can see, not many people (2%) are undecided about McKinney, and there’s a huge ”Anybody But Cynthia” contingent. Her only hope is to keep her mouth shut for ten weeks. Unfortunately for her, that won’t be possible. The first debate between Majette and McKinney will happen at 7pm, Friday, June 7th, at Colony Square. I intend to be there, just to make sure no juicy quotes are missed.