WASHINGTON – One day after he suffered his third straight defeat in Maryland’s 4th District, Republican nominee John Kimble lashed out at the very black voters that he courted during the campaign, saying he now believes “they lack morals.”
“I thought these people were highly educated. . .but the (election) results have got me to think otherwise,” said Kimble of voters in the majority- black district, who rejected him by a margin of 88-12 percent.
“I honestly thought that the people have a better understanding of what kind of a man (incumbent Rep. Al) Wynn is. But there seems to be double-standard here,” said Kimble, who is white. “I now believe that they lack morals.”
But during the campaign, Kimble claimed that 4th District voters felt “disillusioned” with Wynn, who is black, for “leaving his black wife and child for a white woman.”
Kimble made the headlines this summer when he hired Wynn’s estranged wife, Jessie, as his campaign chairwoman. The two campaigned throughout the district, where some residents received tape-recorded telephone messages of Mrs. Wynn stating that “Albert Wynn does not respect black women. He left me for a white woman.”
That was followed by other messages, in which she claimed Wynn had the furniture hauled away from their house and stopped paying the mortgage after their breakup. Kimble’s campaign web site suggested that Wynn was guilty of criminal activity, and he offered a reward for anyone with information that would put the Largo Democrat behind bars.
Wynn, who made a practice of ignoring Kimble’s accusations through most of the campaign, was not available for comment Wednesday.
Kimble’s “unconventional” tactics, though able to win some media attention, now have him wondering whether it was all worth it.
“I now think that Jessie Wynn wasted a whole lot of my time,” he said. “I was being used as a tool by her to express her personal problems. . .and I don’t like being used by anyone.
“I could have just sat at home and done nothing and still got the same number of votes that I got this time,” Kimble said. “It just wasted a whole lot of my time.”
Kimble added that while the loss was a “big setback” for him, he would definitely run again, although he intends to stand as an independent or a Democrat next time.
Maryland Democratic Party officials could not be reached Wednesday to comment on the possibility that Kimble might switch parties. But Paul Ellington, executive director of the Maryland Republican Party, said the party “gladly accepts” Kimble’s decision.
“I’ll send him the necessary paperwork to switch parties straightaway,” he said. “We don’t want his kind of politics of injecting race and personal life into a campaign. Campaigning with someone’s vulnerable wife is deplorable. We encourage him to leave the party.”