Keep Message Simple, Wallace Advised : Jackson, Heeding Old Foe, Targets the ‘Little People’

When the Rev. Jesse Jackson first considered running for President, he turned for advice to an old political foe who has since become something of a friend.

The foe-turned-friend was George C. Wallace, the former governor of Alabama who once symbolized the truculence of a segregated South, the man who “stood in the schoolhouse door” at the University of Alabama in 1963 to bar admission to black students.

Twenty years later, in 1983, as Wallace began his fourth and last term as governor, he repented, saying: “We were wrong, and we live in a new day, and the issue now is to look forward and to make this country stronger.”

That same year, according to both Jackson and associates of Wallace, the former white separatist and the black civil rights leader met and reconciled.

For Jackson, the friendship is a metaphor for the differences between the Old South and the New South, marked by a shift in issues from civil liberties for blacks to the economic and social problems shared by blacks, whites and Latinos alike, issues that are being emphasized in his campaign.

And Jackson’s second campaign for the presidency, which could hand him an influential role in the Democratic National Convention at Atlanta in July, bears some of the marks of Wallace’s advice:

Mobilize the “little people”--the dispossessed, the working poor, the alienated and the disenchanted. Send them a message and keep it simple, “down to the people,” in Wallace’s phrase.

“I know you’re a rascal,” Jackson said Wallace told him early in their acquaintance. “But, if you want to get your message across, you’ve got to run for President.”

A Gravelly Cry

Jackson’s often electrifying stump speeches seem to follow this prescription. He begins in a soft, almost hesitant voice that rises steadily to a gravelly cry, pounding hard on the urgency of reviving the war on poverty, stopping drugs, improving schools, giving big corporations incentives to “invest in America” rather than exporting jobs to the Third World.

“Keep America strong, make America better,” is the operative slogan at every stop.

His speeches, delivered three or four times a day at churches, schools and labor rallies, are peppered with memorable bumper sticker phrases--”Better to have Head Start and day care on the front side than jail care and welfare on the backside”--and enough hard facts and figures to make them stick in the mind.

Speeches Free of Solutions

Compelling as it is, Jackson’s standard stump speech is almost totally free of programmatic solutions and complicated policy talk: If he has a plan for bringing down the federal deficit, he hasn’t yet disclosed it.

Jackson is the only candidate caroming from Tarmac to Tarmac this season who never criticizes, and hardly even mentions, his rivals. Jackson says he prefers to stick to substance. But his style, almost as if campaigning in a vacuum, also seems part of keeping an uncluttered message “down to the people,” as Wallace urged him.

According to past and present aides of the former governor, the two men have a good relationship. Billy Joe Camp, a former spokesman for Wallace, said he sat in on some of the first meetings between the two men in 1983 and found some of their conversations “really quite touching.”

At 68, Wallace is in chronic pain and poor but reportedly stable health, the consequence of an assassination attempt during his 1972 presidential campaign that left him paralyzed from the waist down.

Jackson says that “we have reconciled. We’ve had some long and serious talks. I’ve had dinner at his house. Whenever I’m in Alabama, I call him.

“We won those battles (for civil rights). He lost. He regrets some things he did, and we talk about them,” Jackson said during a campaign flight last week.

‘Forgive and Move On’

“I just believe that leaders must have the strength to throw the toxicity out of their bodies, to look forward, and not be retarded by the past,” he said. “George Wallace, Jimmy the Greek. At some point you forgive and move on.”

In his campaign speeches, Jackson occasionally mentions his relationship with Wallace, particularly now that the campaign is focusing on the mostly Southern states at the heart of Super Tuesday’s 20-state Democratic primary and caucus contest on March 8.

The references to Wallace are an implicit bid for support from whites who once were followers of the governor but, like him, may now feel that economic issues outweigh old racial enmities.

Jackson faces stiff competition for the old Wallace constituency from Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt, who also is projecting himself as a populist. But, with most of the black vote--which makes up 25% of the Democratic electorate in Southern states--already in hand, Jackson needs to make only modest inroads in the white vote to carry off a major slice of the 1,307 Democratic delegates at stake on March 8.

His occasional references to Wallace--and the governor’s advice that running for President is the best way to get his message across--reinforce the impression that an improbable reach for the presidency is not the only purpose of Jackson’s campaign, and perhaps not the main one. However, Jackson insists that his only objective is to win.

18-Hour Campaign Days

His message of economic populism--lift the minimum wage, save family farms and tax the corporations and the rich--seems aimed as much at the Democratic Party as at the general population. The 12- to 18-hour campaign days seem dedicated less to gaining the White House than to injecting these issues into the general campaign and to gaining enough delegates to give him a hand on the helm at the Democratic convention.

At fund-raisers in Philadelphia, Newark and Atlanta last week, he made little effort to feed the illusion of a Jackson presidency. There were no references to a Jackson Administration, little talk of policies and programs to be pursued.

What his candidacy was doing, he told potential contributors--mostly middle-class and affluent blacks--was broadening the spectrum of issues that the Democratic campaign as a whole must deal with. That his rivals are borrowing some of his lines, he said, is evidence of his success.

In 1984, Jackson won about 20% of the primary vote, largely by capturing most of the black vote in Southern and Border states, but, as a consequence of the party’s intricate primary rules, ended up with only about 10% of the total delegates. This was enough to gain him a prime-time speech at the convention, but no more.

This time, although his candidacy is less of a novelty, Jackson is likely to do at least as well in the primaries, and changes in the rules should produce a more proportionate payoff in delegates. In a scenario considered plausible by a number of political analysts, he could corral 800 or so of the convention’s 4,160 delegates.

Could Help Shape Platform

With the rest divided among the probable main contenders--Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis and either Gephardt or Sen. Albert Gore Jr. of Tennessee--this arithmetic could give Jackson the power to award one of them a majority and win for himself a role in shaping the party platform, or the promise of a voice in a Democratic Administration.

Jackson turns aside speculation about his underlying aims, saying only that his objective is to win. He acknowledges, however, that his 1984 campaign was not intended so much to reach for the White House as it was to raise economic issues and to “open up the party” and challenge the rules of delegate selection.

Having done this, he says, “our expectations are greater now. There are more people now who think something can really happen. They have higher hopes.”

Several factors, Jackson contends, that did not pertain in 1984 now weigh in favor of building his delegate count. One, he says, is a keener appreciation of the party’s byzantine delegate selection rules and a more sophisticated staff better equipped to grapple with the intricacies of the primaries.

Another factor, he maintains, is a more willing acceptance of his candidacy by the Democratic Party itself--”a greater comfort level” encouraged by his registration campaigns, which, he says, have added 2 million voters to Democratic rolls in the last four years.

Raised $3.6 Million

Moreover, although Jackson has raised only about $3.6 million, including federal matching funds--a fifth of the money raised by Dukakis--there is enough this time to contemplate a campaign broader than one concentrated on a few states with large black populations.

“I’m not running a 30-yard dash. I’m running a 50-state decathlon,” Jackson told a fund-raiser in Philadelphia last Sunday.

The fact that Jackson outpolled Bruce Babbitt in the Iowa caucuses (11% to 9%) and Gore in New Hampshire (8% to 7%) shows an ability to attract white votes with modest expenditures, Gerald F. Austin, Jackson’s campaign manager, said. In the Minnesota caucuses last Tuesday, with 87 delegates at stake, Jackson had a strong showing, with 20% of the vote, much of it, according to Austin, from largely white precincts.

In Jackson’s view, another factor in his favor this time is the absence of a clear front-runner who has locked up the support of labor. Jackson’s approach is to focus on what he calls “points of challenge,” like the gates of plants where workers are on strike or being laid off.

At a dusty rodeo arena in Beaumont, Tex., the other night, he had 500 striking Mobil Oil workers on their feet cheering for the benefit of local television cameras, as volunteers passed around empty Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets to gather up campaign contributions.

The event produced a startling moment even for a candidate whose central theme is the difference between the Old South and the New, and his role in both.

As the rally wound down, Jackson was introduced to a man who said he, too, had been at Selma, Ala., in 1965 for the famous civil rights march led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He wanted his picture taken with Jackson.

“I said, ‘Good,’ ” Jackson recalled in an interview. “Then he says, ‘I was on the other side. I was with the klan. I was wrong then. But I don’t want to be on the wrong side this time.’ ”

He got his picture.