Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 23, 1995 TAG: 9507210019
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: HORIZON EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD L. BERKE THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: CHICAGO LENGTH: Long
Never shy about claiming credit, Jackson boasted that he had registered millions of Democratic voters, more than anyone else. He also asserted that his efforts won back the Senate for the Democrats in 1986 and were instrumental in putting Bill Clinton in the White House six years later.
But now that he is threatening to wage an independent bid against Clinton next year, one that could cost the Democrats the presidency, Jackson chafes at the suggestion that he is or ever was a party man. His desire, he said, is to advance his own agenda - and that of labor and the poor, whom he says have been shut out by the administration.
``The party's not a religion for me,'' Jackson said in a recent interview. ``It's a vehicle.'' Arguing that his efforts always reached beyond a single party, he added, ``It's amazing how the world has changed because of our struggle.''
Jackson has emerged as the president's most nettlesome election problem, an odd turn of events given that some of the help he gave Clinton in 1992 was inadvertent. Clinton turned the distaste for the civil rights leader among many white working-class Democrats to his advantage by attacking the anti-white rhetoric of a rap singer, Sister Souljah, who appeared at a conference of Jackson's Rainbow Coalition.
At 54, Jackson is showing more heft and a bit more gray hair, and his star has faded a bit. He is not as potent a political force as he was when he ran for president in 1984 and 1988. Jackson, who has a second home in Washington, still has more than a year left in his term as an unpaid ``shadow senator,'' a nonvoting position representing the District of Columbia, but he has all but abandoned his public effort to bring statehood to the capital. His familiar mantra that ``Head Start and day care on the front side of life costs less than jail care and welfare on the back side'' seems out of step in Newt Gingrich's Washington.
Still more discouraging for Jackson's supporters is that many black voters who flocked to his side here earlier this month at a convention of business leaders and at black churches acknowledged in interviews that there was another black man they would rather see as president, even though they know little about his views: Colin L. Powell, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
``Jesse tried a couple of times and it didn't work out,'' said Constance Pine, 54, a computer operator who twice voted for Jackson. ``I would like to see Colin Powell run for president. He would be more qualified.''
Deneen Winn, 29, a financial adviser, said, ``I voted for him because I wanted to show the voting power of the African American. But he's better at giving speeches than doing anything.''
Nor has Jackson been known to run particularly organized campaigns. The Federal Election Commission fined his 1988 organization $150,000 for violations including accepting excessive contributions and inadequate record-keeping. That campaign still has debts of nearly $150,000, which Jackson said he had begun to pay off. An independent run would be even more difficult logistically because of obstacles to getting on the ballot.
But it may not take much - not even scoring in double-digit percentages - for Jackson to deny Clinton a second term. As an independent, Jackson could siphon off votes in the South and in the Rust Belt that gave Clinton winning margins in 1992.
``In states where the margin is thin, he could well decide the race,'' said Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, general chairman of the Democratic Party. ``The question is whether his issues might be placed in greater jeopardy with the likelihood of giving Bob Dole or Phil Gramm the presidency of the United States. I'm hard pressed to see where he would want to be a party to that.''
Other party leaders and White House officials are divided about what Jackson will do. White House officials have sought recently to mend relations by setting up meetings on issues like a program for at-risk youth that Jackson is pushing. But the officials are also being careful to avoid the impression that they are bending to Jackson.
The spoiler label has been attached to Jackson before, as Democrats warned that he would scare white voters out of the party. Each time, albeit with varying amounts of enthusiasm, Jackson put on a game face and helped Democrats in the general election.
And each time, he insisted that he would not bolt the party. ``If a black candidate ran as an independent,'' Jackson told U.S. News & World Report in 1983, ``it would be in the role of a spoiler. If he or she ran symbolically, it would not be worth the time.''
But now, Jackson thinks that an independent bid, even if symbolic, might be worth the time. While he said ``all options are alive,'' including challenging Clinton in the primaries, Jackson and his advisers talk much more excitedly about an independent bid.
At Jackson's suggestion, Steve Cobble, his delegate coordinator from 1988, drew up for a reporter a timetable showing that the earliest deadline in any state for petitions to get on the general election ballot is next May.
Jackson said ``narrow scenarios'' about taking votes from Clinton would not be a factor in his calculations. ``We will not bear the burden and the responsibility of the president winning and losing without being accorded the respect our constituencies deserve,'' he said.
His motivation for running, Jackson explained, would be that the president has been too close to the Democratic Leadership Council - the group of moderate Democrats that Clinton once headed. He accused the president of following ``a Republican-lite agenda,'' and said he could galvanize labor because of the White House's championing of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
Sounding like Ross Perot, Jackson sought to play down his personal ambition, saying he would run only at the urging of his supporters. ``My first and best scenario would not be to run,'' he said. ``The pressure to run is the issue.'' But Jackson could not respond when asked just who was pressuring him. And some argue that he is acting simply out of his festering ill-will toward his treatment by Clinton during the '92 campaign - and his need for the limelight.
William Daley, a White House adviser and the brother of Chicago's mayor, Richard Daley, said he expected Jackson to run but that ``it would really taint him in the long term.
``People will ask: `Was this an ego trip?'" Daley said.
As he has throughout his career, Jackson sought to put the imprimateur of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on his ambitions. Noting that the slain civil rights leader worked outside the party establishment to press for voting rights laws, Jackson said: ``If I had to face Dr. King tomorrow - as we're losing affirmative action, as we're losing funding for schools, as we're losing redistricting struggles, as were are watching urban policy being ignored - I couldn't tell him that I was trying to protect the White House.''
Rather than address the issue of costing Clinton the election, Jackson said he could help the Democrats reclaim the House by turning out black voters. As Cobble put it: ``There is a value in having a Democrat in the White House. But there would be a value in having a Democratic speaker of the House, too.''
But Rep. Martin Frost of Texas, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Jackson's candidacy might discourage people who would have voted straight down the Democratic line.
``His candidacy could hurt Democrats,'' Frost said. ``It's possible people in the black community would go in and vote for Jesse Jackson and walk right out and not vote for Democrats.''
Jackson conceded that many Democrats in Congress, including some blacks, had urged him not to run. ``People in the middle of the boat don't want the boat rocked,'' he said.
But one black representative, John Lewis of Georgia, said he would have no qualms about a Jackson candidacy. Lewis' position, however, seemed to come less from a fondness for him or from a desire to save Clinton than out of a feeling increasingly common among Democrats that the main thing is to find voters for the party's congressional nominees.
``Somehow, some way, we need to find a way to increase voter registration and voter turnout,'' he said. He dismissed the notion that people would vote only for Jackson and not for Democrats.
Whether Jackson will go through with an independent run depends, he said, on whether Clinton shapes up. In the meantime, he is enjoying the role of spoiler-in-waiting. Asked about Democrats who say he would never go through with it, he replied, ``Let them live in suspense.''
``I voted for him because I wanted to show the voting power of the African American. But he's better at giving speeches than doing anything.''
by CNB