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Fri. Aug 02, 2002

McKinney On The Ropes

McKinney On The Ropes – "In a new poll, challenger Denise Majette claims a slight edge over McKinney in the Democratic race for the 4th Congressional District, 41 percent to 39 percent, with less than three weeks until election day. But the 6 percent margin of error makes it a statistical dead heat. About 20 percent were undecided. ’Yeah, I’m worried; I’d rather be ahead,’ said Bill Banks, McKinney’s campaign manager. Banks admitted this is the toughest campaign fight that the five-term congresswoman has had. ”We’re going work as hard as we can,’ he said."

Yeah, working as hard as we can to keep our candidate from even showing up to debate her opponent (not once, but twice), and working to pull in the vast majority of our contributions from out-of-state, while simultaneously accusing our opponent of being ”bought” by ”outside” forces; Republicans and the same Jewish supporters they claim helped Alabama Rep. Earl Hilliard get the boot. But the reality is that Majette’s contributions are 95% from within Georgia; McKinney’s, 27%. It’s pretty clear which candidate is primarily supported by those outside her district … people who will not be able to cast a vote August 20.

" ’To have a dead heat for an incumbent is truly astonishing,’ said Emory University political scientist Merle Black. ’If the poll is right, this would be an explanation of why McKinney started out with that huge [advertising] blast at Majette.’ " It concerns me when I’m better informed than a local ”political scientist,” a phrase that brings forth a rather unsettling visual image of test tubes and beakers marked ”Dem,” Rep,” Lib,” Con,” and ”Perot.”

As the article states, "Majette said Thursday’s poll numbers were similar to internal poll numbers her campaign released several weeks ago. ’None of this is surprising,’ said Majette." We’ve known this since mid-June. Where has Dr. Black been?

And while McKinney continues to run negative ads, in the past couple of days I’ve seen several TV commercials for Majette. They don’t mention McKinney at all, almost as though it’s beneath them.