Cynthia McKinney Drops the Green Party
Former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has given the red light to the Green Party, ending speculation that she would run for president on that ticket and leaving party leaders wondering where their months-long public courtship went sour.
McKinney, who as recently as August 31 made an appearance at a Green Party event where money was raised to retire campaign debt from her failed re-election bid in 2006, said she wanted her name withdrawn from consideration in a letter delivered to the party Monday.
On Wednesday, stunned party officials said they had not spoken to McKinney since receiving the letter, which is posted on her web site, www.allthingscynthiamckinney.com.
“We’re still trying to reconstruct what really happened,” said Brent McMillan, the Washington, D.C.-based national political director for the Green Party. “We haven’t talked to her, and we’re trying to get a meeting with her to find out. We think it’s something that might have happened at a party meeting last weekend in California. Yes, this comes as a big disappointment.”
McKinney was traveling , according to her Atlanta attorney, J. M. Raffauf, and could not be reached for comment. She was expected to return to Atlanta Wednesday night.
In her letter, addressed to the Steering Committee of the Green Party of the United States, McKinney, said she had seriously considered running as the party’s 2008 presidential candidate after meeting party leaders attending at least a dozen state parties, including the national meeting in July in Reading, Pennsylvania.
“Since the Reading meeting, I have also begun to help Green candidates raise money for their campaigns,” the letter read. “For months I have answered questions about my intentions for this race in 2008 by saying that while I am not yet in, neither am I out of this race.”
She does not say specifically why she is withdrawing from consideration, only that she made the decision after “careful consideration” of the political conditions in the country, the “level of development” within the party, and her own “readiness to take on such a daunting tasks and my own long postponed personal priorities.”
Susan King, a spokesperson for the California Green party, which held a convention last weekend, said party officials believe McKinney was unhappy with the group’s decision to add all the Green Party candidates to the ballot for the California presidential primary.
“Instead of picking or choosing a Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney, there are a whole lot of names in the running,” said King.
© 2007 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Cynthia McKinney has been made a caricature by the MSM. Her future is not in electoral politics. Thanks to Ms. McKinney for “pulling the plug” on this budding relationship. And Mr. Nader should hurry up and get his priorities set and announced now, please. Why? Because….
The Greens need to organize around the issues, as they naturally do, and allow the grassroots to work without chasing after personalities for national campaigns. Local, state and maybe a few Congressional races are more than enough to match the energies of the party faithful. Let’s get back to the basics, OK?
Bushiswmd:
I think your comment on McKinney is an example of the racial divide in perception in the US today.
We Greens would have greatly benefited from McKinney, but I think she made the right choice for her - we don’t have the resources yet. If we hadn’t screwed up in 2004 and kept some of our 2000 momentum, things might have been different.
As to national campaigns and grassroots: I agree and disagree. For local campaigns, we should focus on issues and when activists arise from those struggles they should run (I’ve argued that locally we shouldn’t run campaigns unless we have a track record and a reputation on an issue.) But the party really needs to break out of its isolation, and the state of politics in the US really needs an alternative. A candidate like McKinney would have done that. Some of the people that have declared for the Green presidential race would make great school board candidates, but they would be an instant yawn and receive no attention… like Cobbs non-candidacy in 2004.
We have some local races to be working on, but I hope the Greens across the nation can support these two non-Green (but independent from the corporate duopoly) candidates:
http://www.cindyforcongress.org/ (no introduction needed)
http://malcolmforcitycouncil.com/ (Malcolm Suber of the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund, running for City Council in New Orleans).
Mckinney is too radical for the waterdowned green party views
Gore/RFK Jr. Greens 2008
Also for those interested in the Sheehan campaign: http://www.sheehanforcongress.us
Cynthia McKinney is one of the very few people that are or ever were Democrat or Republican that I have trusted or respected.
How are the Greens watered down? Of all the political parties they’re the least watered down.
I was a green once. I just decided that although I agree with their perception of the problems, I don’t agree with their solution..socialism.
What’s wrong with socialism? It seems to be turning things around for the better in several Latin American countries currently. I also grew up in a socialistic country: Norway. It seemed pretty good to me. In fact, it keeps seeming better and better in comparison, and at this point I have finally been able to convince ex to let me take our daughter and go there!
I think the Socialist Party might be upset about calling the Greens socialists. Many would say the greens are still capitalists, while much much much much more friendly ones than the others.
“Gore/RFK Jr. Greens 2008″
I agree, ezeflyer. These two are “naturals” for the Green Party — providing the Party can get over its obsession with “purity.”
Dennis J Kucinich and Cynthia McKinney would be the best ticket as Democrats. Let’s do it, and stop saying it can’t be done. Let the damn Chuck Schumers and other assorted jack asses go to hell.
Democrats to putting up Kucinich should insist on his being the head of the national ticket, as he’s the only one who would have a snow ball’s chance in hell of getting two terms which are essential for an incoming president to reverse W’s hell on Earth!
Wanna know where Cynthia gets her conspiratorial worldview from? Lyndon LaRouche. She even went so far as to hand her former Congressional staff LaRouche publications and told them to “run with it.” Follow the provenance of her pet conspiracy theories and they will usually lead lack to Executive Intelligence Review — LaRouche’s magazine. I support the Green Party and I think they dodged a bullet this time.
trails_end said:
“I was a green once. I just decided that although I agree with their perception of the problems, I don’t agree with their solution..socialism.”
Of course, rapacious, predatory, capitalism is a far better system - at least for those with capital. The capitalists have succeeded brilliantly in their century and a half of propaganda to convince the people that the people owning and controlling the wealth of the nation is not in the people’s best interest, and that it is better for the people if they, the wealthy capitalist minority should continue to be able to buy and control the nation’s wealth and to control the nation’s government as the plutocracy it has always been.
If you think the Green Party is promoting socialism, your knowledge of the Green Party is seriously skewed, distorted, or simply inadequate.
Izzy have to agree with you there if she is supporting LaRouche I don’t want to support her. Its too bad I thought she had a lot of courage.
Advocate, Just because I don’t want socialism, it doesn’t go to follow that I want what we have now.
I want what we never had but could have had - freedom. If anyone had the chance of real freedom, we the United States had it.
I do know the Green Party. I even ran for office as county legislator once on the Green Party ticket.
They are not advocating full socialism but rather aspects of it like Universal Health Care. That is socialistic.
All that stuff sounds nice, there’s a part of me that would really like it, and God knows I could use it.
But when you hand all this responsibility over to the state you also hand over your freedom.
“The price of freedom is responsibility.” ~ my son.
Should progressives really be spending their time and energy running their own candidates when there is no chance of winning in the foreseeable future (e.g. Green Party)? Doesn’t it make progressive causes and progressives look pathetic? Aren’t there right-wing groups that have an effect on the political process without actually running candidates as a political party? Wouldn’t it be more effective for a progressive organization to punish and reward Democrats with support based on their policies and positions, while making it clear that the progressive organization was not endorsing the Democrat’s policy as optimal but still using its power to provide pressure to move the policies in the proper direction? Wouldn’t that empower progressives and have some chance of effecting real world change?
The policies that are formed are the result of all the pressures from all directions. When progressives go off and isolate themselves in a Quixotic task to stroke their own egos, don’t they just remove their pressure from the process determining the outcome?
Do dee doo do do,
Another “Democrat” thumbs his/her nose at “progressives” and “different” policies. Tweedle ee dee, sing with me people, Tweedle dee dum. You think you getting anything else from the wonderful Kucinich, card carrying union man? he cant even smell the nomination as a democrat but is he leaving??
La la la la,
Greens have to STAND for something other than being democratic lite to the republican lite that the dems ARE.
SOCIALISM IS THE CURE FOR CAPITALISM. Let greens be LOUDLY and PROUDLY be socialistic. And send the “new capitalists” elsewhere.
…….”and the wind cries Mary”