Courting the Black Vote

...I don't know of much support for the former senator in the black community," says John Conyers, a veteran black congressman from Detroit...

...Given all the attention Bradley is devoting to racial issues, I thought I ought to find out who his advisers on race are, so I called his campaign headquarters in New Jersey...

...Fattah, by contrast, hasn't spoken with Bradley since he started running for president...

...Bradley will have the enthusiastic backing of former hoop stars like Wes Unseld, Dave Bing, and Oscar Robertson, though they too are likely to be of limited value...

...Because he's already popular with blacks, Gore hasn't had to place race at the center of his campaign...

...Last year, he reached out to Jesse Jackson Jr., whose wife gave birth prematurely, resulting in the death of their child (Jackson appreciated the gesture, but hasn't endorsed either Gore or Bradley and has been flirting with Warren Beatty...

...Indeed, West's fingerprints were all over Bradley's ill-advised decision to visit Harlem on the evening of August 23 and spend two hours at the headquarters of the National Action Network, by the Reverend Al Sharpton (West endorsed Sharpton's 1992 Senate candidacy and has been supportive of his activities...

...He closed with a racial unity pledge, saying, "If I'm president and you want to please the boss, you're going to have to show how in your life, in your company, in your department, you promoted racial unity and racial understanding in this country...

...The final obstacle is that on policy matters, Bradley and Gore have few real differences, the 1996 welfare bill being a notable exception...

...his interview with Black Enterprise appears in the magazine's September issue...

...Gore can also point to a roster of high-profile blacks who work for him (Donna Brazile, political director of the presidential campaign), advise him informally (John Hope Franklin, Christopher Edley), or have worked for him in the past (Thurgood Marshall Jr...

...Later, he asked, "Isn't it just common sense that we . . . do what it takes to achieve racial unity...

...West's years of intellectual posing have earned him fame and fortune in the academy (his previous teaching job was at Princeton...

...Jesse Jackson Jr...

...As a former professional basketball player, Bradley has been tapping the well-heeled fraternity of black athletes...

...Then, addressing Jackson personally, he said, "Your idealism and your commitment make this country a better place...

...Gore also, on occasion, tells black audiences about when he was eight years old and his father took him to the basement of a Tennessee mansion and showed him where slaves had been kept chained to a wall...

...The lengthy bio on Bradley's Web site specifies that when the senator delivered his Rodney King speech, "he spoke from the heart...

...Gore is much better known than Bradley, particularly in the South, where 55 percent of all black voters live...

...While a survey published last month by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington found 41 percent of blacks viewing Bradley favorably, and just 11 percent viewing him unfavorably, the survey's more noteworthy finding was that 42 percent of black respondents didn't know who Bradley was...

...And throughout his career in politics, Gore has devoted considerable time and energy to winning black support...

...his prodigious writings are, in the words of Leon Wieseltier of the New Republic, "monuments to the devastation of a mind by the squalls of theory...

...He hadn't been invited...

...states like South Carolina, Georgia, Maryland, New York, Michigan, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas...

...More recently, when Gore flew to Houston last month for the National Urban League convention, he invited black House members like James Clyburn, Donald Payne, Earl Hilliard, and Albert Wynn to join him on Air Force Two and then spent an hour talking with them on a wide range of issues...

...That Cornel West is the only person the Bradley campaign could name as advising the candidate on racial issues speaks volumes...

...But as a tactical matter, emphasizing race is smart politics...

...and he's pushed for the federal government to place more ads in black publications...

...Racism disturbed me then," he said, "and still angers me now...

...Bradley has none of note supporting him, and has never spent much time in the world of black politics...

...He told the audience JackAl Sharpton says that 20 candidates have appeared before his group in the past two years, and Bradley received the warmest welcome...

...I asked...

...Later, he touted his 1992 Senate speech condemning the treatment of Rodney King and mentioned that he had hit the podium 56 times, symbolizing the number of police baton blows that struck King...

...It's no coincidence Gore's picture has appeared in Jet, a black weekly magazine, 26 times in the past two years, while Bradley's has appeared just 5 times...

...And after John Street won the Democratic mayoral primary in Philadelphia in May, Gore called Rep...

...That Cornel West, a black professor at Harvard University, is the only person the Bradley campaign could name as consulting with Bradley on racial issues speaks volumes about Bradley's racial crusade...

...Regardless of the audience, Bradley is prone to launch into discourses on a variety of race-related issues, and he's always sure to mention that one of the reasons he decided to run for president was to promote racial reconciliation...

...Anyone else...

...No, I think he would be best," replied Wyche...

...Chaka Fattah, who had supported Street, and said he'd be happy to help out in the general election...

...His demagoguery in the case of Tawana Brawley, a teenager who pretended to have been raped and abandoned in a trash bag by white policemen, earned him the moniker "Al Charlatan...

...BY MATTHEW REES When Bill Bradley kicked off his presidential campaign last week in his hometown of Crystal City, Missouri, he recalled that his Little League baseball team had walked out of restaurants in a southeastern Missouri town that wouldn't serve the team because its catcher and left fielder were black...

...Instead, he advocated such a left-wing agenda that when he finished, the Sharpton-friendly crowd gave him a standing ovation...

...This earnestness frequently shades off into sheer silliness...

...Bradley doesn't seem to have much of a southern organization, which is odd for someone who's making race a centerpiece of his campaign...

...And when Gore talks about racial preferences, it's only to disparage the critics, claiming such people are "in favor of affirmative action if you can dunk the basketball or sink a three-point shot" (I've tried, without success, to figure out what this means...

...Bradley's outreach to blacks, in the South and elsewhere, has mostly consisted of speaking to old-line civil rights groups like the NAACP Last month he addressed Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH annual convention and trotted out all the usual tropes...

...So far, though, he's striking out...

...Bradley might have used his visit to Harlem as an opportunity to challenge Sharpton for his divisiveness, as Bill Clinton challenged the rap singer Sister Souljah in 1992...

...Even if Jordan did work for Bradley, it's doubtful how much value his effort would hold...

...He spoke at this year's conventions of black newspapers and minority journalists...

...The Washington Post noted earlier this year that "the Gore team believes it can continue to capitalize on the anger many blacks feel toward Republicans in the wake of the presidential impeachment proceedings...

...He concluded his speech with a promise that for the duration of the campaign he would "urge Americans to bridge the divide of prejudice...

...Gore is also tied to Clinton, a big plus with blacks...

...Complementing this support is Gore's assiduous stroking of the black media...

...son's life reminded him of the saying "One person with courage makes a majority...

...What's changed in the presidential campaign is that while in the past he occasionally acknowledged that blacks were responsible for some of their misfortunes, these days one is more likely to conclude, as Jay Nordlinger put it in National Review, that "drinking fountains are still separate, little girls in pretty dresses are being blown up in churches, and Bull Connor's dogs continue to bark...

...That Bradley would appear alongside Sharpton undermines his earnest pleas for racial healing, as Sharpton has made a comfortable living in New York as a race hustler, turning every perceived slight into grounds for a racial jihad...

...You might try Cornel West," deputy press secretary Tony Wyche told me...

...Consider black elected officials, whose endorsements carry considerable weight with black voters...

...The surprise here wasn't that Bradley talked about race three times, but that he didn't talk about it more...

...On September 9, he traveled to the Capitol and joined the Congressional Black Caucus for lunch...

...Blacks will be between 20 percent and 40 percent of the Democratic electorate in early primary Matthew Rees is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...

...Rather than bore his hosts with a stump speech, he took their questions on subjects like education, environmental racism, and access to capital...

...That Bradley would turn to figures like Sharpton and West is the logical culmination of his racial journey...

...During this period he's pushed a conventional liberal line, cloaked in the fuzzy, high-minded rhetoric for which he became known as a senator...

...The more fundamental problem for Bradley, as he seeks black votes, is his opponent...

...And Bradley...

...When he was a senator," says Conyers, "I don't remember him having any relations with the African American community...

...He, like Bradley, regularly invokes hate crimes and other mistreatment of blacks (Jasper, Texas, and "driving while black" are two of his favorites...

...Speaking at a Detroit NAACP meeting in April, Gore compared Conyers, who loyally defended the White House during the impeachment debate, to Thurgood Marshall...

...His pandering, though, has been just as shameless as Bradley's...

...Gore, by contrast, has a star-studded list that includes House members like Charlie Rangel, John Lewis, and Eleanor Holmes Norton and mayors like Marc Mori-al of New Orleans, Wellington Webb of Denver, and Michael White of Cleveland (he's also got cabinet members like Alexis Herman and Rodney Slater...

...I don't think most people know what Michael Jordan stands for," says Rep...

...Sharpton, who says he's leaning toward an endorsement of Bradley, later told me he's had 20 candidates appear before his group over the past two years, and Bradley received the warmest reception...

...All of these factors prompt David Bositis, senior political analyst at the Joint Center, to conclude that "Gore pretty much has the black vote...

...But the University of Maryland's Ron Walters, who was Jesse Jackson's deputy campaign manager in 1984, points to another problem...

...And during a speech at Cooper Union in New York in April, he recounted the contact he had had with different minority groups and then observed, "When I experience all these things I'm reminded by how much I care...

...I spoke to five members of the caucus afterwards, and all were beaming over his performance...

...Michael Jordan and his wife have each contributed $1,000 to Bradley's campaign, though it's considered unlikely Jordan will campaign for Bradley (he famously refused to back a black candidate running against Jesse Helms in 1990, saying "Republicans buy sneakers, too...

...If Bradley can make inroads among the black voters of these states, his chances of knocking off Al Gore will improve considerably...

...He's talked about race regularly since he was a pro basketball player in the 1960s and '70s, but over the past ten years he's become almost obsessed with it...

...Fiery black House member Maxine Waters affirms, "I love Cornel West...

...This may seem an odd platform on which to run a presidential campaign, particularly at a time when the black unemployment rate is lower than ever before and magazines like Newsweek are writing articles about how it's "a great time—the best time ever—to be black in America...

...This may change, of course, assuming Bradley remains a viable candidate over the next six months...

...Bradley has even hired Sharpton's campaign manager from the 1997 mayoral race, Jacques DeGraff...

...All have been out of the spotlight for years, and none has any real experience in politics...

...The rest of the speech was a lot like all the others Bradley delivers about race...

...Indeed, Gore isn't leaving anything to chance...

...Gore, unlike Bradley, is also good at schmoozing blacks...

...Visit his Web site (billbradley.com) and you'll find only three speeches from his 18-year Senate career, and all three are devoted to race...

...He mentioned how moved he had been as a Senate intern back in 1964, watching the Civil Rights Act being passed...