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By JEFFRY SCOTT
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Former Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney is on the political comeback trail again. This time, she's running for president.

In a speech posted on her campaign Web site, runcynthiarun.org, McKinney, 52, ended weeks of speculation and officially announced her run as a Green Party candidate. She sounded the theme "Come Home To The Green Party" while attacking both major parties as supporters of the war in Iraq and tools of corporate interests.

"The Democrats, no different than their Republican counterpart, eat out of the hands of corrupt lobbyists and feed at the same corporate trough," McKinney says in the video. "I am proud to say the Green Party is my new political home."

In recent weeks, McKinney has traveled to campaign rallies and fund-raisers in Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin trying to organize party support and get her name on state ballots. She said she plans to campaign in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Hugh Esco, who works on the McKinney campaign and runs her Web site, declined to comment Wednesday.

The firebrand six-time Democratic congresswoman from Georgia's 4th congressional district was defeated in 2002, bounced back and won in 2004, and then was defeated by Hank Johnson in 2006. At least six Green Party candidates are running against her. The July nominating convention for the Green Party will be in Chicago.

McKinney is the only former major-party candidate running for president as a Green in 2008, but she is the second black woman from Georgia to declare her Green Party presidential candidacy.

Elaine Brown, 64, of Brunswick, , a former chairwoman of the Black Panther Party, is on the ballot in California. The party plans to stage a debate between Green Party presidential candidates in San Francisco Jan. 13.

In the spring, McKinney quietly moved her residence from DeKalb County to Marin County, in the suburbs of San Francisco, where she is now registered to vote and has enrolled in graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley. She is pursuing a doctorate in African American studies.

In her campaign video, she invites voters to embrace a "new vision for this wonderfully beautiful and amazingly diverse country of ours." She asks people to forsake Republicans "who have deceived us" and Democrats "who have failed us" and allowed the "illegal, immoral, and undeclared war" in Iraq to continue.

"It is time for peace," McKinney said. "It is time to break the vicious cycle where the poor go to war and veterans come home wounded and ignored."

In the 2004 campaign, the Green Party presidential candidate, David Cobb and running mate Pat LaMarche, gathered slightly more than 100,000 votes, less than half of 1 percent.