Obama, Jackson and a faith-based grant

As an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama once arranged for a $200,000 grant to jump-start an urban venture capital fund for a nonprofit group run by the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

The state grant was the sort of faith-based initiative now at the center of a rift between Jackson and Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

Obama’s embrace of this approach, championed by President Bush, led Jackson to lash out at his fellow Democrat this week. His salty rebuke was captured on videotape and aired on Fox News; Jackson quickly apologized.

The civil rights leader supports Obama but has at times been critical. Jackson has chafed at Obama’s lecturing black fathers about responsibility and has condemned him for “acting like he’s white.”

In the African American community, there is a long tradition of church-centered activism, and Chicago politicians have made courting black ministers an art form. Assistance has included selling vacant lots to churches for $1 and providing grants for job-training and teen-tutoring programs.

As a legislator, Obama sought to tap that approach. Among the groups that received a grant was Jackson’s Citizenship Education Fund.

The grant proposal from CEF, an offshoot of Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, declared that the “centerpiece” of its work would be creation of a venture fund for private equity investment on the South Side and in adjacent suburbs. But the investment pool, intended to stimulate job growth, was never launched.

CEF spent much of its grant on consultants, including a firm tied to former national Democratic Party chief David Wilhelm.

Jackson did not respond to requests for comment.

Obama arranged the CEF grant before revelations in 2001 that Jackson had a child with CEF’s onetime executive director. There is no connection between the grant and a sizable payment that the CEF made to Jackson’s former mistress upon her departure.

Obama told the Tribune last year that he lacked the resources as a state lawmaker to vet the merits of grant requests and that almost every nonprofit group that asked him for state money got it.

“It was a pretty wide-open process,” he said.