From the San Francisco Chronicle
December 4, 1998
Op-ed
chronletters@sfgate.com
Http://www.sfgate.com
"As I See It "
by Cynthia Tucker
Cynthia Tucker is editorial page editor of the Atlanta Constitution.

Bob Barr: The New GOP Monster

When Newt Gingrich announced his resignation, he said he was leaving so the Democrats would not be able to use him as a poster boy. That reasoning suggested that Gingrich was the only GOP figure with a persona guaranteed to chill voters, frighten children and upset family pets.

Gingrich was well-known for his outsized ego and his strident partisanship, traits given heightened scrutiny because of his post as Speaker of the House. But he is by no means the scariest Republican in congress for Republican excess. If Gingrich wanted to shed his party of its frightening extremists (and there are several), he should have taken Georgia Representative Bob Barr with him.

At the moment, Barr is the Democrat’s best ally. He is doing all he can to ensure that the GOP never becomes the nation’s majority party. When he is not rabidly insisting on the impeachment of President Clinton, a position soundly rejected by a majority of Americans, he is insulting gays or other members of ethnic minority groups.

Barr’s latest caper is a two-fer: He found the opportunity to insult AIDS sufferers while also interfering with the voting rights of the citizens of a municipality that happens to be predominantly black: Washington, DC. It is just the sort of maneuver that Barr has made his specialty: a stunt that accomplishes nothing but to alienate a sizable portion of the electorate.

On November 3, Washington residents joined voters in five states in voting on referendums that would legalize the medical use of marijuana for patients suffering from cancer, AIDS or Glaucoma. The ballot initiative resulted from a campaign by Wayne Turner and his partner, Steve Michael, who died of AIDS in May.

But Turner and other DC residents still do not know for sure how the referendum fared (though exit polls suggest it passed overwhelmingly). Back during the negotiations over the federal budget in the fall, Barr had attached an amendment to a D.C. appropriations bill that barred its Board of Elections from spending any money to count the votes from the referendum.

Later, Barr mocked the intentions of the districts’s voters:

"Is there legitimate speculation to think, given Marion Barry’s history and the liberal leanings of D.C. voters that they’ve decided to fight drugs?"

Funny thing is, Barr did not make similar comments about the voters of Alaska, Arizona, Oregon, Nevada and Washington State who also approved medical marijuana initiatives on November 3. Is there legitimate speculation to think, given Barr’s history, that he would stifle the democratic process only in a city that is largely black?

The American Civil Liberties Union has gone to court to force the district to announce the results of the referendum, a lawsuit that has also attracted the support of the Libertarian party. That may be enough this small bit of Barr tyranny, but the nation must depend on the voter’s of Georgia’s 7^th Congressional District to ultimately rid the nation of this plague.

Fortunately, there is a glimmer of hope there as well. Although the 7^th District is an overwhelmingly conservative piece of real estate, stretching from Atlanta’s western suburbs to the Alabama Line, the November 3 election results show a constituency less than enamored of the incumbent. Barr’s Democratic opponent, Jim Williams, was a pleasant, but unimpressive candidate. little-known and underfunded, who listed the names of his pets in his campaign literature. Williams still pulled 45 percent of the vote.

That was a result that Barr was powerless to conceal from more realistic contenders who might be eyeing his seat.