A Wynn-Wynn Situation
LABASH, MATT
A Wynn-Wynn Situation It may be the most ludicrous congressional race in America. BY MATTLABASH New Carrollton, Maryland JOHN KIMBLE, a white Republican running for Congress against black...
...Since Ray failed to leave his number, Kimble has just posted a notice that he'll buy the tape...
...And Wynn's attorney says of the alleged mistress, "She's a friend...
...Kimble strikes out several more times with his Al Wynn/white woman pitch, until he interests a black passerby named Robert, sipping lemonade and eating french fries...
...The campaign signs are of two types...
...So what would normally be a sleepy, walkover contest for a four-term incumbent (accustomed to winning 85 percent of the vote) has become sideshow fodder for everyone from the Washington Post to Comedy Central...
...Jessie claims that Wynn's U-Haul truck left her with only eight possessions (two pictures, a disabled automobile, an end table, etc...
...She's really not a subject I'm at liberty to talk to you about...
...He knows where his bread is buttered—with white women...
...The notice appears right under the $5,000 reward he's offering for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Albert Wynn for felony drug and sex abuse charges...
...he inquires...
...From there, all hell was unleashed...
...I hate to hurt people," he says...
...And lately, some 90,000 voters in this 58 percent black district in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., have been treated to telephone calls from Jessie's recorded voice warning: "Albert Wynn does not respect black women...
...Wynn claims Jessie's filing bankruptcy was pure "theatrics...
...Don't you think that's a good issue...
...County where Kimble says you can buy anything from "ass to grass...
...Holding his anti-Wynn sign in front of Landover Mall, Kim-ble takes a run at a black woman who shoots a suspicious glance...
...Shunned by state Republicans for his out-of-step pronouncements (he's advocated a 10-year moratorium on immigration and once said he was seeking office because the "salary is good"), Kimble, during his 1996 run for Congress, offered to pose nude for Playgirl after he'd lost weight, bought an ab-roller, and realized that his body was "a Cadillac, not a Volkswagen...
...You don't want to get the sisters mad at you...
...The allegation seems to have Wynn on the run (if a candidate could be considered on the run whose opponent has raised under $5,000 and is still, according to Campaigns & Elections, a 15-1 long shot...
...Most others dash straight for the automatic doors, their coupons flapping, as they skirt gutter politics to take advantage of Giant's everyday low prices...
...Y'all vote...
...Start with the voluminous court file on the Wynns' pending divorce...
...Kimble admits this is a fishing expedition, but he's no fool...
...He espouses a $500-per-year tax deduction for pets, because they "help children not be so lonely...
...One simply says "Kimble For Congress...
...It's unclear, however, whether Kimble's tactics are working...
...Kimble is juiced after recently receiving a mysterious tip from some guy named Ray who said he possessed a videotape of Wynn doing drugs...
...In fact, Kimble might yet make an ideal 21st-century Republican...
...He further criticizes Jessie for working for Wynn's opponent, whose victory would leave Wynn "unemployed and unable to pay support...
...No," she says sternly, wheeling away...
...All the time," Robert winces...
...While Wynn has suggested the judge "clearly repudiated" such "wild allegations," he's been noticeably silent on the matter of the paramour...
...Such bashfulness is largely due to all the free media Kim-ble is generating...
...Most important, he wants to shut down "houses of prostitution" within a half-mile radius of schools, forcing them to relocate in industrial zones...
...Like any perennial candidate, Kimble has plenty of other issues...
...Estranged wife of the candidate who steamrolled him in the last two elections, Jessie is now "chairwoman" of Kimble's campaign...
...As we post up in a Giant parking lot in Bladensburg with Kimble displaying his sign, one agitated woman demands our phone number, while another breaks into giggles as Kimble awkwardly incorporates dated Afro-centric expressions like "perpetratin...
...I catch up with Kimble at his no-frills split-level home, shared with four cats and a mangy Corgi, located in a semi-dicey area of PG...
...All right," replies a resigned Robert...
...as he's proven in the past, he's not averse to stunt publicity...
...Wynn's lawyer, Allen Kruger, ranking this fissure a 9.95 on a 10-point scale of acrimonious divorces, says references to the race of "the Plaintiff's friend" are "the height of racism...
...It's not every day that the election gods smile on political reporters, granting them a reprieve from prescription-drug-plan minutiae to cover a race where a wife commits herself to the political annihilation of her husband...
...Jessie, a stay-at-home mother, claims Wynn failed to pay the $1,630 mortgage, and initially contributed a paltry $700 a month in support, though he makes $11,390 monthly...
...Though Prince George's is the most affluent black suburb in the country, large pockets of it still represent Canaan only to liquor store owners and Keno players...
...Robert assures Kimble he'll vote for him, then spoils the good news by admitting he lives in Laurel, outside Kimble's district...
...I'm not going to say she's just a friend...
...Kimble asks, not waiting for an answer...
...Likewise, in 1998, Wynn tried to scare black voters to the polls, sending out mailers depicting Bull Connor's baton-wielding police force in a statewide effort to unfairly depict Ellen Sauerbrey, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, as a racist (several black Democrats dissented...
...He left me for a white woman...
...Kimble's attack pageant is enough to make one pity Wynn for getting so mercilessly demagogued on the race issue—or it would be, if Wynn didn't so frequently do the same...
...The other says "Wynn Left Black Woman For White"—also the theme of a van-length banner he often strings up when Jessie goes along on campaign outings, as she did during a crab feast at IPG...
...It's an irony that's not lost on Kimble, who, in a naked pander to IPG.'s burgeoning Hispanic electorate, says that pan-partisan, post-Gingrich Republicans have lost "their cojones," failing to go on the attack when warranted...
...6-year-old daughter ("I'm at my mother's and have nowhere to go"), and how he carted off the "bed we slept in...
...But Kimble recognized a good thing when Dame Fortune brought Jessie Wynn into his life...
...When I called the IPG...
...Sporting an Angel Gabriel haircut and motorcycle-tough facial shrubbery, Kimble escorts me past his impressive living room cookie-jar collection, up to the war room—a one-man campaign operation that features an autodialer, an American flag, a bust of some classical Greek figure ("I used to know who it is"), and a computer where Kimble does most of his damage...
...After all, children need pets, and whorehouses need relocating...
...BY MATTLABASH New Carrollton, Maryland JOHN KIMBLE, a white Republican running for Congress against black incumbent Democrat Albert Wynn in Maryland's Prince George's County, did not initially envision making interracial adultery the flagship issue of his campaign...
...Please send your donations to Kimble for Congress...
...The thrice-married congressman kicked off the festivities, filing for divorce in June 1999, seven months after he allegedly left Jessie for a white woman...
...You ever had a sister mad at you...
...A quotas fetishist, Wynn cries racism with great regularity, at one point even implying it was responsible for the impeachment of Bill Clinton, who was still white the last time anyone bothered checking...
...As he shows me the latest addition to his website, he gleefully rolls up the sleeves of his dress shirt, baring two wolf tattoos on opposing forearms...
...Additionally, Jessie—who clearly gets the best of the exchange—claims she is in need of food stamps, was driven into therapy, and was humiliated by not being permitted to ride in Wynn's car, though he liberally shuttled his paramour around in public...
...Community College...
...Kim-ble has made available on his website four of Jessie's recorded messages (sometimes augmented by pathos-enhancing Celine Dion background music) in which Jessie further relates how Wynn abandoned her and their Matt Labash is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...A part-time inventor, Kimble advocates handgun control through the use of his own "Intelli-Gun technology"—a sort of Lojack for guns...
...A self-described animal behaviorist who also claims to do covert surveillance for the government, Kimble is currently at work on a novel called The Wolf Pnnce—"a Lion King type thing...
...We have a lot of frosty people in District Four," he explains...
...He says if his opponent wasn't such a "dirtbag," he'd simply campaign on the issues...
...This is where Kimble chooses to evangelize...
...On October 18, Wynn was given some relief, gaining expanded custody, while the judge opined there was no evidence Wynn abused drugs, struck his wife, or sexually abused their child (allegations bandied by both Jessie and Kimble, though Wynn passed his court-appointed drug test...
...Still, in his latest filing, Jessie's attorney, Stephen Armstrong, allows the possibility that the "father exposed himself to the child," maintains that Jessie caught Wynn "free-basing with cocaine," and that the child told Jessie after visiting her father, "Daddy is going to kill you...
...Wynn recently skipped out of a Maryland Public Television debate with Kimble, and his October campaign schedule lists only four events, including a pharmacy ribbon-cutting and a haunted house visitation...
...So we are off to the farthest reaches of what Kimble already calls "my district" in his Ford Aerostar van, strewn with Whiskas Ground Kitty's Stew cans and campaign signs...
...Calls to both Wynn's campaign and his congressional office went unreturned...
...All this rejection makes Kimble reflective...
...Al Wynn left his black wife for a white woman," Kimble informs him, "You gotta vote for me...
...county public schoolteacher commonly known as "the white woman," she abruptly hung up the phone...
Vol. 6 • November 2000 • No. 8
