Last week, with Jackson in tow, Dean wowed a packed-to-the-rafters college audience, then did the same at a nearby AME church. Jackson was sold. “He’s inspiring to young people, and that’s critical,” said Jackson. The trip infuriated the volatile Sharpton, who has been campaigning assiduously in South Carolina and in other Southern states where the black vote bulks large. He responded by branding Dean “anti-black” and black leaders who endorse white candidates as “Uncle Toms.” Undaunted, Jesse Jr. will return to South Carolina soon, NEWSWEEK has learned, to formally endorse Dean. Conveniently for the former governor, Jackson is a native son of Greenville, S.C., where he was born in 1965. The elder Jackson isn’t expected to be at the Dean endorsement in Greenville, or to endorse anyone soon. If and when Jesse Sr. does bestow his blessing, Dean fervently hopes it’s on him.
So it goes in the gritty ground war of the Democratic presidential contest, where the countdown clock shows only a dozen weeks until voting begins. Dean leads in fund-raising and Internet buzz and is tied for the lead (at 13 percent) with Gen. Wesley Clark in the new NEWSWEEK Poll. Even so, the race remains open and amorphous to a remarkable degree. In three states in which delegates will be picked first, three different contenders now lead in the local polls: Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri in Iowa, Dean in New Hampshire and late entrant Clark in South Carolina. If Dean fails to pull off an early sweep–and his rivals’ obvious goal is to prevent one–a war of attrition could last for weeks. From Feb. 3 through March 9, there are 32 primaries, many in states of the black belt South and rust belt North–places where Jesse Jackson Sr.’s presidential crusades thrived in the ’80s. “The black vote could be decisive,” says Rick Sloan, communications director for the machinists’ union.
So while the focus is on Iowa and New Hampshire, where minorities are few, maneuvering for position in the black community is intense elsewhere. In South Carolina, Sen. John Edwards is counting on his own rural North Carolina roots and his career as an anti-corporate trial lawyer–as well as his home state’s contingent of black congressmen. Sen. John Kerry is looking to Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford, a rising young Democratic star. Clark has Rep. Charles Rangel of New York on his side, as well as the Army’s role as an engine of integration.
Gephardt is relying on Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, a fellow Hill baron with a culinary approach to politics: he sponsors fish fries and brings home the bacon. Why Gephardt? Clyburn’s first reply was unsentimental: Gephardt, as a House Democratic leader, had put him on the appropriations committee. But he also likes Gephardt’s national health-care plan.
Dean, who has come the farthest in the last year–from obscurity to front runner–still has the farthest to go to make good on his vow to represent “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.” Launched on the Web, run from an office park in woodsy Burlington, the Dean campaign at first had the feel of an Internet start-up in a Middlebury College dorm. That changed with the hiring of key African-Americans and Hispanics and with the pending support of the Service Employees union.
It’s harder for Dean to explain away past positions attuned to the Vermont of the ’90s–but not the national (let alone black) Democratic Party of 2003. Foes focus on several: Dean’s former down-the-line support for the NRA’s views, including opposition to a federal ban on assault weapons (he now supports one); his occasionally caustic comments about Medicare (he now fervently supports it), and his suggestion that affirmative action might be based more on class than on race (he now repudiates the notion).
Off-balance on the NRA issue, Dean shot himself in the foot last week, telling an interviewer that he opposed additional gun-control measures because “I still want to be the candidate for guys with Con-federate flags in their pickup trucks.” That won’t help in South Carolina, where banishing that official remnant of Dixie is the hottest of hot buttons among African-Americans.
It’s ammo not only for white opponents, but also for Sharpton, a more combative soul than the other black candidate, the sunny Carol Moseley Braun. Televised debates have given Sharpton a measure of credibility (and 8 percent in the news-week Poll), even though he is widely regarded as a media-savvy expert in race baiting. Party insiders worry privately that he could do far better than expected, starting with a nonbinding “beauty pageant” primary in Washington, D.C., next Jan. 13. Sharpton took the offensive last week, declaring war on a “whole new generation of Uncle Toms.” He didn’t mention Jackson by name; Jesse Jr., in any case, was unfazed. “This isn’t about anything other than beating George Bush,” he said. “That’s what black people really care about.” We’ll find out soon enough what they care about–and the answer could well decide the outcome of the Democratic race.
