by Howard Rothman

Born To Run
As a former legal aid lawyer, Rep. Denise Majette whisks into Washington with a sense of purpose

Denise Majette misses her morning run. The one-time legal aid staff attorney and former Georgia state court judge has relied on it for years to pump energy into her day. She’s proven pretty good at pounding the pavement, too: Besides competing regularly in local road races, in November 2000 she finished the New York Marathon and also took first place in her age group in the Atlanta Legal Aid Run for Justice.

New problem: There’s just no time to run. After an intense, 10-month political campaign—in which she bested a well-connected, five-term congressional incumbent in the Democratic primary and then breezed to victory in last fall’s election—the 47-year-old mother of two is now a first-time officeholder in Washington, D.C. 

Congresswoman Denise Majette represents Georgia’s 4th congressional district. Shortly before her inauguration, she was trying to figure out a way to squeeze exercise back into her morning routine. “I was just thinking that I have to talk to my district director about that,” she says.

Majette, to be sure, has already proven herself adept in the political race, bursting upon the national scene with her upset victory over former Rep. Cynthia McKinney last August. As an incumbent McKinney had defeated her challengers in all previous elections with at least 58 percent of the vote; in fact, she had not faced a primary opponent since 1996. However, her propensity for controversial remarks (particularly after 9/11) got her in some hot water back home. The summer 2002 Democratic primary marked the first time she faced another African-American woman from her party.

The result was a change in congressional representation for the more than 630,000 residents of this vibrant and upper middle-class urban/suburban district just east of Atlanta, home to Emory University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as a growing population of new arrivals from around the world. 

Majette’s upset victory, which virtually assured her November election in this heavily Democratic district, was attributed to her focus on constituents’ needs as much as McKinney’s penchant for divisiveness. Majette’s passion for the post stems directly from a legal career that began immediately after the Brooklyn native earned her bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University and her law degree from Duke University.

With diploma in hand, Majette decided to forsake the riches of large-firm life and take a job as a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society of Northwest North Carolina in nearby Winston-Salem, where she also served as a clinical adjunct law professor at Wake Forest University from 1979 to 1983. The staff position “helped me get a close-up-and-personal view of the way congressional and political decisions affect people,” Majette says of the stint that coincided with a broad array of domestic funding cuts initiated by the Reagan Administration. 

As the number of attorneys in her legal aid office dropped from 12 to six (and paralegals fell from six to three), Majette witnessed residents of her six-county jurisdiction endure further cutbacks to their already inadequate benefits. Meanwhile, the understaffed legal team scrambled to serve a tiny fraction of the overwhelming need for their services. “We had paralegals handling cases where clients actually died before their benefits could be reinstated,” she recalls.

Majette ultimately left the job and moved to Georgia, taking with her a new understanding of the “benefits of providing representation for people who could not otherwise afford it.” 

Over the next nine years she served as a law clerk to a Superior Court judge, a law assistant to a judge on the Court of Appeals, a special assistant attorney general for the state, and a partner in an Atlanta law firm. 

In 1992, she was named an administrative law judge for the Atlanta office of the Georgia State Board of Workers’ Compensation; less than a year later, Governor Zell Miller appointed her to a seat on the State Court of DeKalb County. She presided over that court for nearly a decade, handling criminal misdemeanors and a variety of civil cases. Twice, voters returned her to office. She finally stepped down last February to run for Congress.

Why the career change? “In the judicial position,” she says, “I grew frustrated sometimes because I couldn’t change the law—I had to interpret it. And lots of times, it didn’t make sense.” Now, Majette’s goal is “to help craft legislation” that is both sensible and can withstand judicial scrutiny.

Her House campaign returned to that theme repeatedly. Promising to unite the people of her district and focus on their real needs, Majette relied upon skills honed throughout her legal career, such as “building coalitions and getting people with different perspectives around the table.” Many were drawn to her inclusive message; in particular, young blacks who were energized by her focus on good schools, lower taxes, clean air and water, solid jobs, and safe streets. 

The strategy enabled Majette to raise more than twice as much money as her opponent and to capture 58 percent of the vote in the August 20 Democratic primary, despite McKinney’s support from African-American luminaries such as Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King III. Majette coasted in the general election, garnering 77 percent of the vote.

Since then, she has stayed on the run, even if she doesn’t have time to actually run. Acknowledging her relative powerlessness as a freshman member of the minority party, Majette nonetheless hopes for a productive first two years. She plans to bring her legal aid background to bear on the new job, advocating for the type of services she provided at the beginning of her career. “I’m excited by the prospect of being able to share my experiences and address the issues important to poor and disenfranchised people,” she says.

One suspects Majette’s morning jogs will resume at some point. In the meantime, there’s a country to run.