Other People's Money

WHEN A TV CAMERA was shoved in the face of Georgia state representative Billy McKinney on August 20--the night that his daughter, Rep. Cynthia McKinney, lost her Democratic primary race--he spewed venom like a challenged cobra. Asked about the fact that former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young had withheld his support from McKinney's campaign, he replied, "That ain't nothing. That's nothing. Jews have bought everybody. Jews." If that were somehow too subtle, McKinney spelled it out: "Jay, Eee, Double-U, Esssss," he hissed.

Billy McKinney's lip is nothing new. In 1996, after making an anti-Semitic comment, he was forced to resign from his daughter's campaign--and she's no slouch herself when it comes to asinine babbling. What's more surprising is that his sentiments, if not his language, are being echoed by black politicians who should know better.

"I've been receiving angry calls from black voters all day saying they should rally against Jewish candidates," Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas told the Miami Herald after McKinney's defeat. Johnson, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said that blacks were concerned about Jews "from around the country putting millions into a race to unseat one of our leaders for expressing her right of free speech." She told the Washington Post that "at the grass roots," there is a growing perception that "Jewish people are attempting to pick our leaders."

These comments have not endeared her to some of her white colleagues. "These are still, at the end of the day, black voters who are making the decisions, and black candidates getting elected, so I guess I'm not buying the whole 'gullible' argument, that whole congressional districts can be hoodwinked," says one Democratic congressman who asked not to be named. "Frankly, that doesn't speak very highly of Ms. Johnson's perceptions of those constituents."