Humor Disarms Whites’ Concerns : Jackson Seeks to Project Acceptability, Leadership

“If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, don’t call it a chicken , “ the Rev. Jesse Jackson cries from the podium with a broad smile, as his mixed audiences of blacks and whites cheer and laugh sympathetically.

“In Iowa,” Jackson continues, “they said, ‘I like what Jesse Jackson’s saying, but. . . .’ I said you’ve got to go from ‘Jesse, but . . .’ to ‘Jesse, therefore . . . .’ ”

What Jackson is talking about, in his elliptical and disarming way, is the matter of race. For “duck,” read “leader.” After “but,” fill in “ . . . he’s black.”

Although Jackson is running a decidedly conciliatory and non-racial campaign, his style and message reflect a keen awareness that his main strategic task in the 1988 primaries is essentially racial:

With a solid base of black voters in Northern cities and Southern states, Jackson is trying to reach out to two segments of the white vote that lie at opposite ends of the economic spectrum: the affluent, well-educated voters the pollsters like to call “limousine liberals” and the economically strapped, blue-collar union members and small farmers.

More deftly than in 1984, Jackson is working in ways both subtle and overt to project an image of acceptability to the many white voters who he believes, but for his race, might respond with unreserved enthusiasm to his impassioned message of old-fashioned liberalism and “economic justice” for the poor and disenchanted of all races.

Jackson’s techniques on the stump for putting skittish white voters at ease include gentle, self-deprecating humor and down-home metaphors.

And he is careful to share the stage at most campaign stops with white supporters, the more the better, who are visible not only to the audience at hand but to the all-important cameras of local television stations.

Last month in a Minneapolis church, for instance, at a campaign appearance before some 300 mostly white gays and lesbians in Minneapolis, Jackson was well into a rousing stump speech when a local campaign worker surveyed the scene from the back of the church and moaned: “We’ve got too many black faces on the stage.”

Only about a third of the supporters on stage with Jackson were black. But the volunteer explained that Jackson’s campaign staff had asked for a maximum number of whites for the benefit of local television, whose audience was overwhelmingly white.

Seeks ‘a Good Mixture’

“We want a good mixture,” the campaign’s political director, Frank Watkins, explained. The diversity of people who appear on-stage with Jackson “sends a message of inclusivity, of who’s included--blacks, whites, women and so on”--in the Rainbow Coalition the candidate seeks to build.

So far, Jackson’s strategy for garnering white support has been much more successful than in 1984, though it is likely to be less so in the 20 predominantly Southern states holding Democratic primaries and caucuses next Tuesday.

In Northern states where blacks make up no more than 1.4% of the population, Jackson has finished a strong second with 20% to 28% of the vote in Minnesota, Maine and Vermont and a respectable fourth in a larger field of Democratic opponents in both New Hampshire and Iowa with 8% to 9% of the vote.

Gerald F. Austin, Jackson’s campaign manager, acknowledged that Jackson’s ability to capture white votes on Super Tuesday next week, as he did earlier in the North, will go a long way toward determining his success in the 20 states.

Fills Most Criteria

“The question is, will we get white votes in the South the same way we delivered them other places,” Austin said in an interview aboard Jackson’s campaign plane. “Somebody devised Super Tuesday to help a Southern white Democratic male. We got three out of four of those categories, so I think we’re in good shape.”

A Los Angeles Times poll published on Friday, however, indicates Jackson will not fare as well among Southern whites as he did in the North, although overall he appears to be the front-runner.

Based on a telephone survey of 1,730 likely voters in 13 of the Southern and Border states voting on Tuesday, the poll found Jackson ahead with 23% of the Democratic vote, followed by Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis and Sen. Albert Gore Jr. of Tennessee with 16% each and Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt with 14%.

But the survey also indicated that only 4% of white voters in the Southern and Border states support Jackson, while 61% of black voters support him.

Points to New Issues

In his campaign speech, delivered four or five times a day as his campaign rockets around the South aboard a chartered DC-9, Jackson stresses that the issues of civil rights and “political violence” that once divided the Old South are essentially resolved now. They have given way, he says, to issues of “economic violence”--low wages and gaps in health insurance protection--that form a common ground for whites and blacks of the New South.

Compelling as this vision may be, Jackson acknowledged in an interview aboard his plane that the obstacles of a “society divided by race” remain considerable. Although his candidacy is a less jarring novelty than it was in 1984, Jackson said it is clear that his race still hinders his ability to attract white votes.

“Obviously, it’s a factor,” he said. “What Minnesota, Maine and Vermont showed is that it is becoming less and less of a factor. We have been divided by race historically . . . but on that question, the nation continues to get better.”

Jackson’s campaign has refined its methods of sending overt and subliminal messages to potential white voters. It projects an image of acceptability by some whites while tweaking the undecided voters who like his message but may feel inner reservations because he is black.

Tells Three-Farmer Story

A standard feature of Jackson’s campaign speech, one that frontally addresses the problem, is the three-farmer story:

“You know, I like that Jesse Jackson’s message,” says the first farmer.

“Yes, it’s a pretty good message,” says the second farmer, who adds skeptically, “but you know--he’s black.”

“You don’t understand,” a third farmer insists, in a punch line that invariably brings sympathetic cheers and applause. “The guy who was taking away our farms is white .”

While Jackson raises the subject of race in his speeches as a way of stressing that it should not matter in politics, he has also used it as a shield to deflect pointed questions from reporters.

At the televised Democratic debate at Williamsburg, Va., last Monday, moderator Judy Woodruff asked Gore whether he had refrained from criticizing Jackson--who alone has escaped the primary campaign’s back-stabbing--for fear of antagonizing his black supporters.

‘Race-Based Question’

As Gore replied that Jackson’s record was hard to pick at because he has no record as an elected official, Jackson leaped in to accuse Woodruff of asking a “race-based question.”

“Why make reference to my race?” Jackson said. “My race is self-evident and my leadership obvious.”

Jackson appeared similarly offended during an earlier campaign stop at Paine College in Augusta, Ga., where ABC’s Atlanta correspondent, Rebecca Chase, asked him why some of the most prominent black civil rights leaders had not openly endorsed his candidacy. Jackson dodged the question, but later, in the lobby of his hotel in Augusta, he drew Chase and an ABC producer aside and admonished them about asking what he called “racially based” questions.

Chase said later that she disagreed with his characterization of her question. “He was sending me a message that I should watch my mouth. I felt I was on solid ground,” she said.

Such displays of temper have been the exception this year in contrast to 1984. More typical of the 1988 campaign was the scene a few days ago in rural Griffin, Ga., population 27,000, where Jackson delivered a thundering campaign speech at the 8th Street Baptist Church before the inevitable TV cameras.

Transmits His Message

The audience of 150 or so, jammed in the tiny church, was almost entirely black, but Jackson adroitly found a way to transmit his message of “inclusivity” to the electronic audience beyond the church.

One of the few whites in the audience was a teen-age girl, the only person carrying a homemade Jackson placard. With a natural warmth that none of his Democratic opponents can rival, a beaming Jackson summoned her to the stage for a big hug and a thank-you as the cameras zoomed in.

Robert Gillette reported from Washington and Douglas Jehl from the Jackson campaign.