The forgotten history is that the civil rights hero lost to Julian Bond among black voters. He only won his seat in the first place by appealing to white voters. Lewis’ “beloved community” wasn’t in Atlanta. The short answer is that this is what you do when you’re a career Washington D.C. Lewis spending a fortune on digital strategy for elections he couldn’t lose in order to raise a lot of money from out of state Democrats? Where did all that money go? Hundreds of thousands of dollars were paid to Mothership Strategies, an aggressive Democrat fundraising firm which had been condemned for a “wildly deceptive, unrelenting approach that treats supporters like garbage.” Why was Rep. Checks from the AT&T PAC, from two major unions, and a health care company still came pouring in to the John Lewis House Victory Fund. The checks were still coming in for an election that would never happen. But there was another story that wasn’t being told. His decision to stay and fight was hailed as courageous. Instead he stayed on until his votes were being cast by a proxy while he was in hospice care. Lewis was diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, he could have stepped down. A steady stream of maxed out donations from special interest groups to Lewis. But this is what the bridge story really bought. The photo of a single moment made Lewis’ career and created his brand as a civil rights icon. That old tale has been told and retold a thousand times.

The real story of Lewis’ career didn’t take place on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. So did assorted PACs: Delta Airlines, Honeywell, American Crystal Sugar, Johnson & Johnson, and the Director's Guild of America. Unions, including the American Federation of Teachers and the NEA, whose activities have starved countless black children of a good education to subsidize the Democrat political machine, maxed out their contributions to Lewis. The cash poured in from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Newton, Massachusetts, and Washington D.C. Lewis’ top contributors didn’t come from his own impoverished district. But he still raised almost $4 million for a race where he was running unopposed and for a race that he could not have lost even if he had been facing a political opponent in either the primary or the general election. John Lewis ran unopposed in both the Democrat primary and the general election. Lewis didn’t do much for the “beloved community”, but he did quite a bit for the party that oppressed it. The average income, unemployment, and poverty rates in Lewis' district fall well short of national averages. As President Trump noted, the beloved community had seen better days, “Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested).”Ī quarter of families with children in the 5th live below the poverty line. Lewis has always claimed that his goal was to represent the “beloved community”. In 1981, he won a spot on the Atlanta City Council, a post he continued drawing a pension from even as he was in Congress, and then it was on to the House of Representatives. He went from working for the Voter Education Project, funded by the New World Foundation, to running for public office. Unlike his fellow 80-year-old, Lewis never retired and had spent his entire life in politics. John Lewis, who has been in Congress since 1986, has the media’s attention. The victims include an 80-year-old retired mechanic and an 8-year-old girl.īut only one man’s death, that of Rep. Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.Ī lot of people have died in Georgia’s 5 th congressional district over the summer.

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