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Will Al Wynn Get His Comeuppance for His Corporate Fealty?

By Bruce Dixon, Black Agenda Report. Posted February 9, 2008.


Congressman and corporate tool Al Wynn faces off against progressive champion Donna Edwards in a hotly contested primary race.
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A lifelong Black progressive and a groveling tool of corporate power face off on February 12 -- a test of the power of the people to evict those who subvert their fundamental interest in peace and social justice. "Fat Albert" Wynn, the mis-Representative from Maryland's 4th Congressional District and supplicant to Big Business and nuclear power money, has stooped to describing challenger Donna Edwards and her supporters as a "left wing conspiracy" arrayed against him. But Fat Albert's desperate contortions cannot shake his past, especially his status as one of only four Black Caucus members to support War Powers for George Bush and one of ten who voted for the Republican bill on bankruptcy that has now come home to roost with millions of mortgage holders.

When "Fat Albert" Wynn, the notoriously corrupt congressman of Maryland's 4th district kicked off his re-election campaign seven months ago, he did what everybody else does.  He called in his friends, he leaned on his network.  Wynn brought in his political soul mate, the corporatist Democratic Leadership Council chairman and Fox News commentator Harold Ford, Jr., a Memphis politician so craven that in an appeal for white votes he once denied his own grandmother was Black.  But Harold Ford stood with Al Wynn as one of only four African Americans in Congress to vote for the invasion of Iraq.  Friends are friends.

Al Wynn's network has done a lot for him over the years, and the congressman has more than returned their favors.

When Big Oil, Giant Coal and the nuclear industry, joined by hedge funds and speculators demanding repeal of the laws that kept them from buying utility companies, they showered Congress with $115 million between 2001 and 2005.  In return for his share of the loot, Congressman Al Wynn was one of a minority of Democrats to join Republicans in passing the 2005 Bush Energy Bill.  Wynn voted $6 billion in federal subsidies to his benefactors in Big Oil; he put $9 billion in the Christmas stockings of giant coal companies, he bestowed another $12 billion in corporate welfare on the nuclear power industry, and voted for deregulatory steps that have already cost consumers and utility ratepayers additional tens of billions more in the short term.  But hey, that's what friends are for.

In 2006 and 2007, mammoth phone and cable companies like Time-Warner, AT&T and Verizon invested a few hundred million in congressional campaign contributions to preserve their right to digitally redline black and minority communities nationwide.  Congressman Wynn showed up for his cut, and faithfully repaid his donors by siding with House Republicans to keep broadband scarce and expensive in urban and rural minority communities.

On the eve of the Iraq war in 2003, a Gallup poll showed Black America to be the nation's most solidly antiwar constituency, with opinion running better than 70% opposed to the coming invasion.  But when George Bush needed a large Black exclamation point for his illegal and immoral aggression, Fat Albert Wynn was ready to defy the voters of Maryland's 4th district, in the mostly Black suburbs of Washington, DC.

In return for his share of another hundred million in campaign cash and favors from the banking and credit card industries, Al Wynn voted for Bush's odious 2005 bankruptcy bill, protecting predatory lenders, denying a fresh start to financially strapped families, and exacerbating the impact of the current mortgage meltdown. Wynn is such a loyal friend to the wealthy and powerful that he apes the political manners of Republicans, using staged interviews by fake reporters to field softball questions.

Fat Albert Wynn has worked to make it easier for his wealthy friends to dump ever larger sums of money into the campaign coffers of their favorite politicians. The 527 Reform Act which he co-sponsored with Republican Mike Pence was

"...designed to gut any limits on how much any single individual could contribute to political candidates and parties. As a June 24 Washington Post editorial noted, 'The Pence-Wynn 'reform' would let a single donor give more than $1 million to a single political party each election, not including checks to candidates themselves...'"


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See more stories tagged with: maryland, donna edwards, aly wynn

Bruce Dixon is editor of The Black Commentator.

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Go, Donna!
Posted by: Urstrly on Feb 9, 2008 5:49 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Donna Edwards will bring a breath of fresh air to Congress when she gets through this swamp of an election.

In the meantime, thanks for outing Wynn's corrupt friend Harold Ford, who some champion as a racial martyr after his loss for the Senate in Tennessee.

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Wynn must not win
Posted by: fifthworld on Feb 9, 2008 8:10 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I lived next door, practically, to "call me Al" back in Md. Total tool and completely evasive on issues when confronted at public events. I was tabling for the Greens at a festival and he came up to us and said "Oh yeh, I vote Green on some issues." Uh, yahhh.

I'll give almost anything to see him lose, and be out on the street with a sandwich sign, "Will take PAC money for food".

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Jenvon
Posted by: jenvon on Feb 10, 2008 7:38 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Thank you Mr. Dixon, for exposing Al Wynn for the fake he is. I was appalled when I heard his ads against Donna Edwards on the radio. He has long abandoned Black interests, just as he abandoned his Black wife, for a white woman he thought would do more for him. I challenged him to appear on my radio broadcast, to explain himself by voting for the bankruptcy bill. His office answered for him by refusing. How could someone who represents thousands of Black folks, weighed down by predatory lenders and other circumstances such as medical bills, vote AGAINST them? Fat Albert, as you so appropriately call him, does not care about the people he represents. He deserves to be KICKED OUT OF OFFICE!!!!!

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Get Hoyer next!
Posted by: truthteller on Feb 10, 2008 11:39 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Next door to Al Wynn is one of the biggest DINO's of all, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Pelosi's right hand goon, total tool of the defense establishment and Zionist lobby. He needs to go as well. He won his last election in 2006 with 81% of the vote. The Rethuglicans didn't even bother to run someone against him. I voted for the Green Party candidate. PDA needs to field a serious challenger to him. He gets softballed in interviews on supposedly progressive radio shows like Ed Schultz and Thom Hartmann. Remember, it was Hoyer who moved to table Dennis Kucinich's impeachment bill against Cheney. Hoyer also has next to no public forums for constituents like me. Last August, when Congress was in recess, I looked for a public meeting on his web page and found nothing. He is afraid to face possible conflict with the voters, and why should he with an 81% margin? He needs a serious challenge from someone as fearless and qualified as Ms. Edwards. Anyone. Bueller?

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Short Answer? No
Posted by: madmac10 on Feb 11, 2008 5:56 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Talk about whistling past a graveyard! Al Wynn is so entrenched in his congressional seat, and so beholden to corporate interests, that his handlers will stop at NOTHING to ensure that his behemoth posterior warms a seat at the Rayburn building next year and at least three more years after that.

Wynn got away with stealing the election in 2004, and even bragged about it afterwards. His kind will have an even easier time of it because there will be less oversight of irregularities in such a strongly democratic district. After the votes are tallied (or not, as is more likely,) he'll say that the outside interests funding Donna Edwards were not enough to keep the people's voice from being heard--and that will be the end of it. He is going to be even harder to catch because no one is going to be willing to chase the rabbit down the hole.

Look, I pray with all my heart that I am wrong here. I know my feet are going to be beating to the ballot box for Ms. Edwards. But I am not going to join in the chorus of ballyhooers on this forum. Wynn is an extremely dangerous new generation of corrupt politician, and his kind are stealing our republic out of our hands. There is no cause for anything but serious concern here.

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» Glad to Be Wrong Posted by: madmac10