Jackson Minimizes Front-Runner Status

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who on Monday narrowly passed Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis in the delegate tally maintained by the Associated Press, tried to minimize his front-runner status and his chances for victory in today’s Connecticut primary.

After a day and a half of campaigning in Connecticut, Jackson called Dukakis, whom he beat by 2 to 1 in Michigan, “the front-runner” for the nomination. “He’s got the most money, the most technology. I’m just plugging along.”

And Connecticut, next door to Massachusetts, is “a favorite-son state” for Dukakis, he noted.

Talks of White House

But despite his efforts to downplay his success, Jackson in recent days has begun to talk more in his speeches about what he will do when he gets to the White House, rather than what direction the country ought to go.

To his standard stump speech Monday night in Hartford, Jackson added a new line: “I cannot wait to beat George Bush in November.”

As Jackson campaigned here, reporters repeatedly asked whether, if he were to have the most delegates and votes after the primary season, the party might still try to block his nomination, fearing that Jackson’s race and lack of government experience made him unelectable.

‘Logical and Proper’

“If by the end of California we have the most popular votes, the most delegate votes, becoming the nominee is logical and proper. If I win the nomination from the people, I expect the party to embrace me, and to embrace those principles,” Jackson said in an appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“The voters are obviously in front of the press on this question,” Jackson said later on his plane flying to a Democratic debate in New York. “That’s why the voters are voting according to what they feel and see.”

“I’m using old math,” Jackson said. “The most votes, the most delegates equals the nomination. I’m not familiar with any other way of counting.”

Health Insurance

As he campaigned at a soup kitchen in Middletown, a church in Waterbury and a large outdoor rally in the center of downtown Hartford, Jackson charged that in Connecticut, “the health insurance capital of the world,” 300,000 citizens do not have health insurance.

At Mt. Olive Church of God in Christ in Waterbury, where the burgeoning press corps made it impossible for most in the audience to see Jackson speak, Jackson told the predominantly black audience: “If I can make it, you can make it.”

He seemed a bit tired Monday, and the response to his speeches was less electrifying than in Michigan. But his crowds are still larger than other candidates. Jackson drew his loudest cheers in Waterbury by condemning drug use. “We the people must say down with dope and up with hope,” he said.