One of America's strongest third parties, the Green Party, has nominated former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney as its 2008 presidential candidate Saturday, according to CNN.com. McKinney represented an Atlanta, Georgia, district for six terms - five consecutively as a Democrat.
McKinney, 53, beat out three rivals to win the liberal environmentalist party's nomination during its convention in Chicago, Illinois. She picked journalist and activist Rosa Clemente as her running mate.
Scott McLarty, the Green Party spokeswoman, admitted that McKinney was a "long shot" for the White House, but said, "Every vote that she gets helps the Green Party."
"The United States needs an alternative party," McLarty went on to say. "The narrow two-party system we have right now has not served us very well.
The most successful Green Party presidential candidate was consumer advocate Ralph Nader, garnering nearly 3 percent of the vote in 2000. Nader is again running for president, this time as an independent candidate.
Earlier this year, the Libertarian Party nominated McKinney's onetime House colleague, ex-Republican congressman Bob Barr, as its presidential nominee. Barr also represented a district in the Atlanta suburbs during his four terms in Congress.
First elected in 1992, McKinney lost a primary challenge in 2002 after she suggested in a radio interview that members of the Bush administration stood to profit from the war that followed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
In 2004 she ran again and won, largely avoiding the controversy. But voters booted her out of office in 2006 after she was accused of a physical altercation with a U.S. Capitol Police officer who questioned her after failing to recognize her at a security checkpoint.
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