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Thu. Aug 01, 2002

Who's Bought McKinney?

Who’s Bought McKinney? – The subject of Cynthia McKinney’s campaign contributions has been brought up here more than once. But Scott Koenig has taken a look at the donations to McKinney on just one day: 9/11/2001.

"I’m willing to bet that all of you can remember that day vividly as well. Some people, on the other hand, after learning of the attacks decided that it was a great moment to make a political contribution. Really. Check out this page at OpenSecrets.org, listing the campaign contributions to the Honorable Ms. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia. Notice anything unusual (besides the fact that so many of her contributers have Arab names, and none of them are from her district)? I’ll give you a hint: if your browser has a search function, type in 9/11/2001.

[edit list of two dozen donations from that day from Arab sounding names]

Thats quite a haul for one day: $20,300."

Indeed it is. OpenSecrets.org is a fun site. You can discover things like McKinney spent over $28,000 on a survey of 500 likely primary voters on June 18, yet not a peep of the results was released. And on 2/21/2002, she refunded a contribution from Enron.

Almost 12% of McKinney’s contributions were marked ”No Disclosure,” meaning ”No information about the donor’s employer and / or occupation was listed.” The page that states ”Candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives typically get the great majority of their campaign dollars from donors within their home state” shows that Cynthia McKinney gets 78.2% of her individual contributions from out of state (individual contributions compose 72.7% of the $511,491 dollars raised). In the list of Zip Codes with the highest donations, the Top Ten contains exactly one within her district (mine’s not even in the Top 15). Meanwhile, McKinney’s opponent, Denise Majette, has gotten 95% of her contributons from in state (and she’s raised $485,530, only slightly less than McKinney).

I don’t know for sure who owns Cynthia McKinney, I just know they don’t live in the district she supposedly represents.