At this writing, Georgia’s controversial Rep. Cynthia McKinney is trailing her challenger in the runoff by a much bigger margin as Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman is trailing his challenger:
Early results coming in Tuesday night encouraged Henry C. “Hank� Johnson, the former DeKalb County commissioner who is challenging Rep. Cynthia McKinney in a Democratic race for Congress.
As of 10:15 p.m., Johnson had 58 percent of the vote, compared with 42 for McKinney with 51 percent of the precincts reporting.
In DeKalb County, where political experts say the race almost certainly will be decided, Johnson had 52 percent of the vote with 53 of 188 precincts reporting.
“It looks like we are in for somewhat of a long night,� Johnson told supporters. “Part of the vote is in and it shows that we are doing well.�
Before the vote, she predicted Republicans would turn out to sandbag her:
Rep. Cynthia McKinney had expected an easy return to Congress this year, but instead faces a runoff Tuesday and the real chance of being upset by a fellow Democrat for the second time in three primary elections.
While many political observers cite McKinney’s scuffle with a U.S. Capitol Police officer in March for energizing the campaign of her runoff opponent, attorney Hank Johnson, she blamed Republicans for her failure to get enough primary votes to avoid a runoff.
Trying to rally Democrats, McKinney predicted that Republicans would come out in droves Tuesday like they did in 2002 to vote against her, as part of what she referred to during the campaign’s final televised debate Saturday as the ABC – Anybody But Cynthia – movement.
Beyond the war, or making controversial statements, there will surely be a lesson for politicians everywhere if Lieberman and McKinney both go down to defeat tonight. Ronald Reagan was the “teflon” politician; they have seemingly been “velcro” politicians.
Even highly controversial incumbents survive tough re-election battles…if they have the political skills.
(NOTE: Our first post of this was wrong due to the way we edited it so we’ve corrected it.)
The first link in this post also has updated election results so keep checking it.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.