‘Working Men and Women’ Are Winning, Jackson Says

After a week of campaign stops that seemed like revival meetings, of anti-drug speeches at high schools and roaring crowds in union halls, the Rev. Jesse Jackson seemed almost subdued Saturday night.

“It’s a lot of poetry,” he said of his Michigan victory and his campaign’s growing momentum. “A lot of history--but we also have the most numbers, (so) it’s a lot of reality.”

Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis had conceded defeat in the popular vote more than an hour earlier, and Jackson was preparing to speak at a Democratic dinner here.

“The excitement comes when you consider the common people, the working men and women are winning,” he said. “Cab drivers are winning, cooks are winning, maids are winning--people who want to save their jobs and to save their farms are winning.”

Earlier, before the vote count began, Jackson said the fight for the nomination was now coming down to a choice between “the message and the authenticity and the soul of Jesse Jackson versus the money and technology of the opposition.”

‘People Will Have Spoken’

He also dismissed the notion that Democratic Party leaders might withhold the nomination from him if he is the leader in popular votes and delegates. “The people will have spoken, and we must respect the will of the people. In a democracy, ‘we the people’ is where the power lies.”

Jackson spent caucus day in Michigan touring public housing projects and polling places in Detroit’s black ghetto in a last effort to inspire blacks, his core support group, to vote in mass. The results suggest they did so.

At the Sojourner Truth housing project, Jackson’s last stop before leaving for Wisconsin, he was joined by legendary civil rights figure Rosa Parks. The 75-year-old Parks--whose refusal to sit in the back of a bus in Alabama in 1955 prompted the historic Montgomery bus boycott and proved a seminal event in the civil rights movement--had checked out of a hospital in Baltimore to return to Detroit to vote.

“If all of us get together and work together, then Jesse Jackson can and will be our President,” Parks said in the tiny voice that had been heard round the world a generation ago.

Draws Overflow Crowds

In the week leading up to the caucuses, the campaign was a study in momentum. Jackson drew overflow crowds, most of them 70% to 80% black, and frenzied receptions. On Tuesday, for example, he spoke to more than 10,000 people in five campaign stops; the smallest crowd was 1,000.

By Tuesday, Jackson’s staff began to sense it could win, and as the week unfolded, Jackson, who seemed increasingly relaxed and confident, began to refer increasingly to himself in the White House.

“When I get elected, the maid and the janitors and people in wheelchairs will have a friend in the White House,” he said at a United Auto Workers rally in Dearborn.

Increasingly too, Jackson in his stump speeches took on not his Democratic rivals but Vice President George Bush, the expected Republican nominee.

He attacked Bush for his silence on such issues as the Iran-Contra scandal, his complicity as CIA director with Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega, and his record as director of the Reagan Administration’s task force on drugs.

“Hear nothing, see nothing, say nothing,” Jackson taunted in a speech in Grand Rapids.

Doubts About Organization

All week, the enthusiasm was there for all to see. The big question as the caucuses neared was whether Jackson’s organization, which barely existed in 1984 in Michigan, could transform the enthusiastic crowds into votes.

The organization this year was still ragged, consisting in large part of church ministers who were willing to spur their congregations and volunteers who took the names of everyone who attended Jackson’s rallies and then followed up with phone calls.

Even Saturday, at a rally at Fellowship Chapel in Detroit, the power of the Jackson effort seemed to owe more to the candidate’s personality, speaking talent and message than it did to organization.

Frantic Volunteers

At a table where those confused about polling sites were supposed to get information, two volunteers riffled frantically through voter books and tried to write the answer on note cards. Nothing had been printed in advance to save time.

Yet inside, the all-black crowd was roaring.