Cynthia Ann McKinney (born March 17, 1955) is a former American politician. As a member of the Democratic Party, she served six terms in the United States House of Representatives. She was the first African American woman elected to represent Georgia in the House. She left the Democratic Party and ran in 2008 as the presidential nominee of the Green Party. She ran for vice president in 2020 after the Green Party of Alaska formally nominated her and draft-nominated Jesse Ventura for president.
McKinney served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 1988 to 1992. In the 1992 election, McKinney was elected in Georgia's newly re-created 11th district, and was re-elected in 1994. When her district was redrawn and renumbered due to the Supreme Court of the United States ruling in Miller v. Johnson, McKinney was elected from the new 4th district in the 1996 election. She was re-elected twice more without substantive opposition, but was defeated by Denise Majette in the 2002 Democratic primary. Majette's success has been attributed to crossover Republican voters who preferred Majette to McKinney.
McKinney was re-elected to the House in November 2004, following her successor's run for Senate. In Congress, she unsuccessfully tried to unseal FBI records on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the murder of Tupac Shakur. She continued to criticize the Bush administration over the 9/11 attacks. She supported anti-war legislation and introduced articles of impeachment against President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
McKinney sought re-election in 2006, but was defeated by Hank Johnson in the Democratic primary. In a March 29, 2006, Capitol Hill police incident, she struck a Capitol Hill Police officer for stopping her to ask for identification. McKinney left the Democratic Party in September 2007. She eventually sought and won the Green Party nomination in the 2008 presidential election, receiving 161,797 votes (0.12%) nationwide in the general election.
Cynthia McKinney was born and raised in the affluent middle-class Historic Collier Heights area in Atlanta, Georgia, the daughter of Leola McKinney, a retired nurse, and Billy McKinney, a law enforcement officer and former Georgia State Representative.
McKinney was exposed to the Civil Rights movement through her father, an activist who regularly participated in demonstrations across the south. As a police officer, he challenged the discriminatory policies of the Atlanta Police Department, publicly protesting in front of the station, often carrying young McKinney on his shoulders. He was elected as a state representative. McKinney attributes her father's election victory, after several failed attempts, to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, which provided for federal oversight and enforcement of voting. Most blacks in the South had been disenfranchised by state legislative barriers since the turn of the 20th century.
McKinney earned a B.A. in international relations from the University of Southern California in 1978 and an M.A. in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in 1979. In 2015, McKinney completed her dissertation on Hugo Chavez and was awarded a Ph.D. in Leadership and Change by Antioch University.
Prior to entering politics, McKinney worked as a high school teacher and university professor. In 1984, she served as a diplomatic fellow at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. She then taught political science at Agnes Scott College in Decatur and at Clark Atlanta University.
Georgia House of Representatives (1988–1992)
McKinney's political career began when her father, a representative in the Georgia House of Representatives, submitted her name as a write-in candidate for the Georgia state house in 1986. Despite the fact that she lived in Jamaica at the time, she received approximately 20% of the popular vote. In 1988, McKinney ran for the same seat and won, making the McKinneys the first father and daughter to simultaneously serve in the Georgia House of Representatives. In 1991, she decried the Gulf War in a speech on the House floor; many legislators left the chamber in protest of her remarks.
U.S. House of Representatives (1993-2003)
In 1992, McKinney was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as the member of Congress from the newly created 11th District, a 64% African American majority district reaching from Atlanta to Savannah. She was the first African American woman to represent Georgia in the House. She was re-elected in 1994.
In 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Johnson that the 11th District was an unconstitutional gerrymander because the boundaries were drawn based on the racial composition of the constituents. McKinney's district was subsequently renumbered as the 4th and redrawn to take in almost all of DeKalb County, prompting outrage from McKinney. She asserted that it was a racially discriminatory ruling, given the fact that the Supreme Court had previously ruled that Texas's 6th District, which is 91% white, was unconstitutional. The new 4th, however, was no less Democratic than the 11th. McKinney was easily elected from this district in 1996. She was re-elected two more times with no substantive opposition.
In her first period in Congress, she served on several committees, including the House Committees on Foreign Affairs, Banking and Finance, and Armed Services. She eventually ascended to the top Democratic spot on the International Relations Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, serving as ranking member. In that role, she became a frequent critic of American foreign policy. Examples include her vocal opposition to President Bill Clinton’s interventionist policies in Kosovo, U.S. sanctions against Iraq, and other policies related to the Middle East.
On October 17, 2001, McKinney introduced a bill calling for "the suspension of the use, sale, development, production, testing, and export of depleted uranium munitions pending the outcome of certain studies of the health effects of such munitions." The bill was cosponsored by Reps. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, Puerto Rico; Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.; Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio; Barbara Lee, D-Ca.; and Jim McDermott, D-Wash.
During the 2000 presidential campaign, McKinney wrote that "Al Gore's Negro tolerance level has never been too high. I've never known him to have more than one black person around him at any given time." Gore's campaign pointed out that its manager, Donna Brazile, was black.
McKinney chastised Gore for failing to support the U'wa people of Colombia trying to oppose petroleum drilling near them. In a press release issued on February 22, 2000, entitled "No More Blood For Oil," McKinney wrote that "Oil drilling on Uwa land will result in considerable environmental damage and social conflict which will lead to greater militarization of the region as well as an increase in violence." Addressing herself to Gore, she wrote, "I am contacting you because you have remained silent on this issue despite your strong financial interests and family ties with Occidental."
Objection to the 2000 presidential election