Cover Story: The audacity of Markel

On a blazing-hot Monday afternoon in early June, the Rev. Markel Hutchins sits in his cavernous campaign headquarters on Northside Drive, looking every bit the aspiring politician: dark pinstriped suit, crisp white button-down, monogrammed cuff links, buffed and polished shoes. His voice is surprisingly quiet. He’s serious to the point of being solemn. Aside from the telltale circles under his eyes, he comes across as alert and intense. All of this makes him seem older than his 31 years.

Though it’s six weeks shy of Georgia’s July 15 Democratic primary, Hutchins is surprisingly relaxed. Never mind that he’s campaigning against U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a man he considers both an icon and a mentor. Forget that, according to the most recent campaign disclosures, Hutchins has raised $5,000 to Lewis’ $550,000. Forget that no one thinks he has a prayer of winning.

Hutchins believes he has a chance. To reach the voters of the Fifth Congressional District – a liberal, majority-black area that covers the city of Atlanta – he’s says he’s using alternative means: text messages, e-mail blasts and a fund-raising event with a guest list that includes Ludacris and Lil Jon. He says he’s counting on the support of young people to challenge the old guard from which he sprang.

That strategy makes for a rather quiet headquarters. “Hutchins for Congress” signs plaster the window, but the only other indication of the battle at hand is a quote painted on the room’s pale blue wall: “In the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it.” The words are attributed to the man whose campaign occupied the building prior to Hutchins’ arrival – and whose historic race for the presidency serves as inspiration for Hutchins’ unlikely congressional bid: U.S. Sen. Barack Obama.

Hutchins first crossed paths with Obama three years ago. They met, ironically enough, at Lewis’ 65th birthday gala. Coretta Scott King introduced them. Hutchins was transfixed by the message Obama offered in tribute to Lewis.

“When I was first asked to speak here, I thought to myself, ‘Never in a million years would I have guessed that I’d be serving in Congress with John Lewis,’” Obama told the crowd that night in 2005. “And then I thought, ‘You know, there was once a time when John Lewis might never have guessed that he’d be serving in Congress.’ How far we’ve come because of your courage, John.”

The symbolism of Hutchins’ headquarters extends beyond Obama. And it’s location is far from accidental. The building is situated in the neighborhood where one of Atlanta’s most heinous acts of police brutality took place – an act that Hutchins helped bring to light and which elevated his name from near-unknown status to regular rotation on the evening news. It also happens to sit directly between the Northside Drive campaign offices of Lewis, a 22-year incumbent, and the third candidate in the race, feisty state Rep. “Able” Mabel Thomas.

Compared to Hutchins, Thomas is the stronger candidate. She’s an experienced campaigner who’s won eight races – and was thrashed by Lewis when she challenged him back in 1992. She has a firm base of support in Vine City and on the Westside. And simply by virtue of her gender, she’s likely to win support from some women voters.

It would be a shock if Hutchins even managed to beat Thomas for second place – much less if he came in first.

Yet Hutchins believes he’ll defy the odds. He says he’ll provide a young, energized constituency a voice that more closely resembles their own. And he complains that while Lewis and other leaders from the Civil Rights era have made precious contributions to American life, they’ve left little room for succeeding generations to make their mark.

“After the 1950s and 1960s, there were no young people emerging to deal with the pressing social issues of their time,” Hutchins says. “I think it had to do with the fact that many in the Civil Rights generation spent so much time and energy trying to open doors for our generation, they didn’t recognize that the struggle for a better world wouldn’t end with them.”

There’s a generational tug-of-war in the black community between the entrenched Civil Rights leadership and the fresh faces who aspire to leadership on the grounds that their elders are out of touch. Andra Gillespie, an Emory University political scientist who’s studied the evolution of black leadership, says the race for Lewis’ seat is indicative of that wider trend.

“It’s not like the Julian Bonds or Maynard Jacksons, who were challenging whites for power in majority-black communities,” Gillespie points out. “Now you basically have younger blacks challenging older blacks under the guise that they haven’t been effective leaders.”

All of which raises several questions: In a new age in African-American politics, where blacks are less frequently challenging whites than each other, what does it take for young black leaders to assume power? Is there a right time to wrest control from the old guard? And if neither of Lewis’ current challengers stands a chance of coming anywhere close to beating him, what kind of candidate could?

If John Lewis is slowing down with age, nobody told him. The near-septuagenarian has the aura of a rock star and the energy of a twentysomething. He also has a plan.

Upon entering a room, Lewis moves as if along a grid. Starting in one corner, he works his way up, down and across. He locks gazes with each pair of eyes he greets. He shakes everyone’s hand. In a low, stately rumble, he says for the 10th or 100th time that day, “I need your help in July. I need your support.”

Lewis’ campaign manager, Tharon Johnson, says the congressman is campaigning more vigorously this year than in past elections. Yet even when he’s run uncontested – and it’s been 16 years since he faced a challenge – Lewis hit the campaign trail hard.

Lewis, 68, says he can out-campaign anyone. And he’s faced far more rigorous battles than a political challenge from a younger opponent.

His face has grown deeply lined over the decades, helping to mellow the battle scars that have been with him since the Movement began. But you can still see the fading imprint left by a bully club that cracked against his head 40 years ago as he tried to cross the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. It was one of many beatings he suffered in the battle for equality, a battle he fought alongside his friend and colleague, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Lewis was among the “Freedom Riders” in 1961 who rode buses across the Southeast in a challenge of segregation at interstate bus terminals. He and Hosea Williams led marchers out of Selma in 1964 in a protest for voting rights. They were met by Alabama state troopers, who beat them with clubs in a scene that was captured by news photographers and reporters. It marked a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement; the Voting Rights Act was signed into law in 1965.

Throughout the years, Lewis continued to possess the fire that made him a civil rights leader. He was 41 years old when he won his first election in 1981 – to Atlanta City Council. Five years later, he was elected to the Congress. U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi later dubbed him “the conscience of the U.S. Congress.” For the past 17 years, he’s been the Democratic Caucus’s senior chief deputy whip. It’s not a position he intends to give up.

In the weeks leading up to the primary, Lewis will often spend 14 hours a day campaigning. Some Sundays, he’ll hit half a dozen churches. Throughout the week, he makes appearances at union meetings, birthday parties, senior high-rises, department stores, cafes, festivals and anything in between.

On a Friday afternoon in late May, before an audience of retired union members at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers near Turner Field, Lewis takes a moment to defend his sometimes unpopular stance to protect the rights of immigrant workers. And he wins over the crowd.

Charlie Flemming, president of the Atlanta branch of the influential AFL-CIO Labor Council, watches Lewis from the back of the room and marvels at the congressman’s performance. Flemming claims there’s no way an opponent can compete with Lewis on labor issues: “How do you go against an icon who paved the way? He has a 98 percent voting record in support of labor issues. He’s the best.”

A half-hour later, Lewis is across town, chatting with two saleswomen in the men’s department at Dillard’s in Atlantic Station. Leaning against a table piled with stacks of folded polo shirts, Lewis assures the women that he’s going to fight for an energy plan that stabilizes gas prices and puts the oil lobby in check. The women praise him effusively.

The next day, at an ice cream shop in East Atlanta, a hearing-impaired man commends Lewis for his contributions to the Americans with Disabilities Act. He also thanks the congressman for helping him find a job 20 years ago. “You don’t remember, do you?” the man teases.

Across the street, at the Earl, Lewis tells the lunchtime crowd he doesn’t want to interrupt their meals with a handshake. He just wants to ask for their help in the July primary. One of the men looks Lewis squarely in the eyes and says, “Actually, I want to shake your hand.”

On the same block, inside the music memorabilia store Rock Star Gold, Lewis and his campaign workers browse the relics. Lewis staffer Andrew Aydin pulls from a stack of vintage magazines a 1971 double-issue of Life titled, “The ’60s: Decade of Tumult and Change.” The magazine’s cover is a montage of faces: Bobby and John F. Kennedy, the Beatles and Marilyn, Martin Luther King Jr. and Muhammad Ali, and, in the middle of it, two young men leading the march from Selma to Montgomery: Hosea Williams and John Lewis.

Markel Hutchins could have picked an easier battle. He could have run for City Council first, like Lewis did. Or perhaps the state Legislature.

But that’s not Hutchins’ style.

Hutchins isn’t interested in those other seats. His goal is the U.S. Congress. And he’s bold enough to say it was Lewis who inspired him to go after that goal.

“One of the things Lewis always says in his speeches across the country is, ‘Young people, you need to get in the way,’” Hutchins recalls. “He talks about his days as a twentysomething leader, how they saw a need in America, and how they got in the way. It’s about time for some of us in the younger generations to start getting in the way.”

Hutchins is less than half Lewis’ age. He has no firsthand knowledge of the civil rights struggles Lewis personifies. He didn’t encounter any difficulty while registering to vote. He attended the fully integrated Stone Mountain High School. His family was solidly, comfortably middle class.

Nor has he held public office. He hasn’t worked in any branch of government, in fact. He’s not a lawyer or a business leader. Instead, he rose to his level of prominence on activism alone.

Hutchins argues that he’s faced some of the most significant problems to plague African-Americans in modern times, starting with his own struggle at home. When he was 8 years old, he says, he discovered that his father – who owned his own construction business and helped give other men in the neighborhood a leg up – was addicted to crack. The family soon lost its car, its home and, for a time, its patriarch.

Throughout the ordeal, Hutchins’ parents remained married. Ten years later, when Hutchins was 18, his father finally got clean. By then, Hutchins was imbued with a powerful desire to help others overcome their hurdles. He says that by speaking out against the hardships other people suffered, he’s better able to handle his own.

Hutchins was the first black president of his high school class. By the time he graduated, he was an ordained minister. While studying at Morehouse, he helped found a nonprofit group, the National Youth Connection. He says he modeled the group on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which had been led by Lewis, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led by Dr. King.

In 2004, the 26-year-old preacher made an audacious – and unsuccessful – bid to be elected president of the SCLC, even though he barely had a constituency in the organization. And by then, he had begun to gain recognition for another cause: standing up for the victims of alleged police brutality.

He says that in 2002 he was asked by a friend to become the spokesman for the family of Corey Ward, an 18-year-old who’d been shot to death by a plainclothes Atlanta police detective in Buckhead. The officer and his partner said they thought Ward was driving a stolen SUV and had attempted to run them over. But the Chevy Tahoe belonged to Ward’s mother, and his friends in the car said Ward panicked when two white men jumped in front of the vehicle, guns drawn. Three years later, Atlanta police officer Raymond Bunn was indicted for Ward’s murder. (He hasn’t yet been tried.)

In 2006, Hutchins found himself at the heart of another, higher-profile police shooting: the slaying of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston.

Three Atlanta officers from the department’s narcotics squad used false information to obtain a no-knock search warrant. When they burst into Johnston’s home, she fired a shot with a rusty revolver. The officers responded with a barrage of 39 rounds, then planted drugs in her house in an attempt to cover up their mistake. Two officers pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter; the third was convicted of lying to federal investigators.

From the earliest days of the investigation into Johnston’s death, Hutchins served as the liaison between the family and the outside world. (He says he was introduced to Johnston’s family by a mutual friend and that the family sought his help.) In the ensuing months, in front of crowds of reporters and film crews, Hutchins repeatedly claimed the police had committed an egregious and intentional wrong – a claim that turned out to be true. As the Johnston family spokesman, he says, he helped shine a light on systemic ills in the Atlanta Police Department.

He also says he worked closely with police Chief Richard Pennington, whom he considers a friend, to address those ills. In fact, Hutchins claims he’s forged relationships with officers, police chiefs and prosecutors across metro Atlanta in an attempt to advocate for victims of injustice.

Hutchins says he wants to strike a conciliatory, rather than antagonistic, tone when standing up for people’s rights. On one occasion, however, Hutchins’ desire to defuse the tension in a well-publicized human rights case backfired.

Last year, Hutchins took it upon himself to meet with Douglas County District Attorney David McDade and state Attorney General Thurbert Baker about the case of Genarlow Wilson. Wilson had been sentenced to 10 years in prison for having consensual oral sex, at age 17, with a 15-year-old girl. Hutchins says he wanted to reach out to see if a compromise could be reached between the prosecution and Wilson’s family – one that would allow Wilson’s immediate release from prison.

Hutchins then called a press conference, during which he told reporters, “Genarlow Wilson will remain behind bars for 10 years if we don’t have the courage to sit together and dialogue and find a way out of this.”

Wilson’s attorney, B.J. Bernstein, didn’t appreciate Hutchins’ intervention. She responded with an angry statement that slammed Hutchins for not having contacted Wilson’s attorney or family: “While we welcome direct dialogue with the D.A., people who notify the media first and inject themselves into the story without knowing any of the legal issues are opportunistic and attempting to gain media attention for themselves at the expense of Genarlow Wilson.”

Hutchins maintains that despite his “unpopular” position in the case, he helped get a conversation going.

Others say Hutchins’ media image – even his more favorable reception in relation to the Kathryn Johnston case – doesn’t help his viability as a candidate.

According to Emory’s Gillespie, Hutchins’ activism might improve his name recognition, but his qualifications for Congress are questionable. “Markel Hutchins comes to notoriety in Atlanta because of the shooting of Kathryn Johnston,” Gillespie says. “That’s episodic. And because it’s episodic, that’s eventually going to die down. So what is his claim to fame?”

Other politicians question whether Hutchins has paid his dues.

State Rep. Thomas points out that Hutchins lacks the political experience she possessed back when she first challenged Lewis.

Thomas was a 25-year-old graduate student at Georgia State University when she won a seat in the state House in 1984. She was the youngest person ever elected to Georgia’s Legislature, and she served four terms before running against Lewis in 1992.

“I did not run just as a person who’s saying it’s time for a change,” she says. “I ran as an eight-year legislator.” She won all of 24 percent of the vote.

Now she’s pitching herself as the happy medium between Lewis’ “old” age – he’s 68 to her 49 years – and Hutchins’ political inexperience. “I’m not just someone off the block saying I want to get into politics,” Thomas says. “I’m someone who has paid a lot of dues in terms of community work.”

Atlanta City Councilman Kwanza Hall says that often it’s the less glamorous work – the work done at the local level of government, where cameras are seldom focused – that helps prepare someone for higher officer.

“I’ve seen him in the media for his activism,” Hall says of Hutchins. “Is that activism enough?”

Lewis doesn’t discuss specifics about his two challengers, as incumbents are wont to do. But he does venture a guess as to why, in this particular election year, he’s facing competition for the first time in 16 years.

“I think that some people have probably been inspired by the Obama campaign,” he says. “They saw the participation of so many people, and especially young people. And they saw this as an opportunity.”

It’s true that Lewis’ challengers are invigorated by Obama’s presidential bid. Both Hutchins and state Rep. Thomas argue that Lewis’ initial decision to endorse Clinton is a sign that the incumbent is out of touch with the times.

Hutchins was the first to act: He announced his candidacy on Feb. 20, two weeks after Lewis’ district voted overwhelmingly for the Illinois senator. A week later Lewis switched his support to Obama. Nearly two months passed before Thomas jumped in the race.

The congressman explains that his decision was a difficult one; he’s been a friend of the Clintons for years. “Mrs. Clinton has said from time to time, when I would introduce her some place, ‘When I want to grow up, I want to be just like John Lewis,’” Lewis recalls.

He also says the Clintons understood his choice. After all, the decision was rooted in history – a history he helped define.

“I saw the Obama effort as part of that movement, as part of that spirit that we were involved with during the ’60s,” Lewis says. “And I wanted to be part of that effort. And that’s why I switched.”

Hutchins counters that Lewis’ early support for Clinton is “proof that the congressperson, while well-loved and respected and admired for his contribution to history, is out of sync and out of step with the people of the district.”

Hutchins also argues that Lewis’ indecision – he denied initial reports that he was switching to Obama – shows a lack of conviction. “His flip-flop back and forth between Clinton and Obama speaks to politics as usual in Washington,” Hutchins says.

Yet Alan Abramowitz, a professor of political science at Emory University, doesn’t view Lewis’ early support for Clinton as a fatal misstep. He also says it’s a weak premise on which to launch a campaign against one of the nation’s most popular congressmen.

“I don’t think having initially supported Hillary Clinton is enough to threaten his seat,” Abramowitz says. “Usually it takes some sort of major controversy or scandal, or someone whose voting record is ideologically out of line with the district. And Lewis is certainly not in those categories.”

It’s a rule of nature that, eventually, the young will replace the old. One generation of leaders is replaced by the next. And the issues that define an era will give way to a new set of issues.

“Our fathers and mothers were trying to integrate lunch counters,” says the Rev. Raphael Warnock, the 38-year-old senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached. “We’re now more focused on trying to own the lunch counters.”

Warnock says that today, the battle for equality is more complex than integrating school systems and registering minorities to vote. Today, the fight has shifted to economic equality and fairness in the legal system.

But despite the shifting issues, Warnock also views Lewis as someone who remains indispensable when it comes to fighting for people’s rights. “I personally think that the congressman’s record on the issues is impeccable,” Warnock says. “I think he is as fierce an advocate of civil rights today as he was during the Civil Rights Movement.”

Abramowitz, on the other hand, says the generational gap between Lewis and his constituency is widening. And he says Lewis’ age might one day play a factor in the race to represent the Fifth Congressional District.

“He’s getting on,” Abramowitz says. “There might be perceptions that he’s getting too old, and maybe it would be better at some point to have someone a little bit younger in there, someone more in touch with the younger voters in the district.”

But Emory’s Gillespie says that doesn’t mean Hutchins, or for that matter Thomas, would be the right candidate to mount such a challenge. She says that to successfully campaign against a giant such as Lewis, a challenger would have to be better funded, with better connections and more crossover appeal than either of them. And she says that across the country, candidates who fit that description are emerging.

Gillespie describes new and distinct groups of young, black, aspiring politicians. She says Hutchins is part of the group that distinguishes itself by its “grassroots bona fides.” Thomas is a grassroots politician, too. But her age places her between Lewis’ generation and the young demographic that’s successfully challenging entrenched black leaders across the country. “She’s definitely not part of the newer vanguard,” Gillespie says.

Members of the young, grassroots group model themselves on the old-fashioned traditions established by yesteryear’s activists. The problem, according to Gillespie, is that its members tend to focus on the issues that impact one portion of society: lower-income, inner-city blacks. “They seek to lead communities that don’t have a lot of resources and can’t empower them,” she says.

The bigger threat to the old establishment is the emerging group of young, supereducated, Ivy League leaders. Gillespie says that group has sometimes been criticized by the old guard for lacking “authentic blackness.” Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick fall into that category. So does Obama. In fact, Obama manages to draw from both the Ivy League and the grassroots traditions.

Gillespie says that as the next generation matures, the young “technocrats” are likely to compete with those who draw more directly from activist roots. “I suspect that there are going to be serious debates,” she says. “I don’t think the cleavages that we see are going to really die down. It’s not going to be about generation any more. It could very well be about class. It could very well be about cultural style.”

Regardless of any competitors the future might bring, Lewis is confident that the time hasn’t yet come for the old guard to step aside. He says he plans to be around for years to come.

“I know some young people are going to emerge,” Lewis says. “But I don’t think someone can be self-selected. I think leaders come out of struggle. You have to have tasted the hardship. You have to have been tested.”