Majette the Messiah?

If you’d been waiting for an actual Democrat to replace Zell Miller in the U.S. Senate, before Monday the future looked bleak.

That changed when U.S. Rep. Denise Majette, 48, announced she would run for Miller’s seat. Finally, the Democratic Party has someone in the race with decent name recognition.

Not that many party members contacted by CL are too thrilled. The response to the former DeKalb County judge’s announcement Monday that she would run for the seat of the retiring Sen. Miller ran the narrow gamut of restrained enthusiasm to the questioning of her sanity.

The congresswoman in the 4th District, which encompasses most of DeKalb and a little of Atlanta, didn’t exactly follow party rules for entering the race. But given the party’s dismal performance in the state during the last four years, one might wonder why anyone would follow the niceties of protocol.

During the last six months, national Democratic pooh-bahs have courted prospective candidates to run for Miller’s seat — the latest being Cliff Oxford, a millionaire Atlanta entrepreneur — but hooked none.

Majette, meanwhile, didn’t even tell her own congressional staff that she was shooting for a seat in the Senate — and abandoning her House seat — until Monday morning. The deeply religious Duke Law School grad says she prayed about the race and read the Bible for guidance but didn’t make the decision until days before the announcement.

“I was certainly never wined or dined,” Majette says. “I had a conversation with Sen. [Jon] Corzine, [D-N.J.], [chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee], several months ago, but this is a decision that I made. Just like last time, nobody tried to talk me into it, and of course, there are people who have tried to discourage me from taking this on.”

Can she win? Maybe, but it will be difficult. First, there’s the obvious question: Can a black woman win a statewide race in Georgia? It’s never been done. Still, the pro-choice, Democratic grassroots funding group EMILY’S List conducted a poll months ago to see how Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin might do in a run for the U.S. Senate. Surprisingly, the results showed Franklin competing well against whichever Republican survives the primary — Reps. Johnny Isakson, R-6th, Mac Collins, R-8th, or businessman Herman Cain.

A number of Democratic state legislators had hoped the field would remain without a high-profile name — that they might win by losing. (Attorney Gary Leshaw; state Sens. Nadine Thomas, D-Decatur; Mary Squires, D-Norcross; and government watchdog George Anderson of Rome have also declared their intentions to run for Miller’s seat.) Even though it would indicate to most voters a decline in the party, they figured that a relatively weak opponent to the winner of the Republican primary would mean fewer trips to Georgia by President George Bush and a slightly lower GOP turnout. And that would help them maintain their margin in the state House and possibly win back the Senate.

“That was a hand grenade yesterday,” Oxford says of Majette’s announcement. He says he’ll continue to evaluate the race and plans to give the party an answer by April 1.

If Oxford chose to enter the race, Majette would still be the front-runner, but what makes Oxford an appealing candidate are his downstate ties, his profile as an entrepreneur and (most importantly) his willingness to spend $4 million from his own bank account to fund his campaign.

Majette will be able to point to the $556 million she helped secure for her district during her two years in office and her reputation as someone who can work with people from both parties. But Majette’s liberal slant — the very thing that would have made it difficult for ultra-liberal and former 4th District Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney to run against her in the U.S. House race — will be used against Majette in a general election campaign against a Republican.

Majette was short on specifics Monday but suggests her campaign will try to come up with new strategies to reach voters turned off by a Democratic Party that has largely been content to co-opt Republican issues — welfare reform, for example — and protect New Deal programs.

One need only look at the results of these last several elections to see that the current Democratic strategy is failing.

“With each election, we have a lower percentage of people voting, and in some respects, people have turned away from the Democratic Party values,” Majette says. “We are intending this to be a way of re-directing those energies and getting people involved so that they feel their vote does matter.”

Even with Majette out, McKinney won’t be lonely in the 4th. Atlanta City Council President Cathy Woolard declared Tuesday her intention to run for the seat, and others may soon do the same.

kevin.griffis@creativeloafing.com


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