POLITICS 88 : Jackson Draws Wisconsin White Support

The Rev. Jesse Jackson won endorsement from Rep. Richard A. Gephardt’s former state campaign chairman Thursday, as well as enthusiastic receptions from mostly white audiences as he campaigned through Wisconsin’s dairy land.

Richard Congdon, a Milwaukee attorney who led Gephardt’s campaign effort until the congressman quit the race for the Democratic presidential nomination earlier this week, said Gephardt’s supporters might add as much as 6% to Jackson’s standing in the Wisconsin primary on Tuesday. That could be a significant boost for Jackson. A poll published by the Milwaukee Sentinel, current to March 22, showed Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis leading Jackson by the narrow margin of 28% to 25%.

Jackson’s ability to expand his base of white support from the Democratic Party’s most liberal fringe, is particularly important in Wisconsin, where black voters make up only about 5% of the population, or half that of the largest Northern and Western states still to hold primaries.

Wooed by Dukakis Forces

Congdon said staff from the Dukakis campaign approached him for an endorsement but that he chose Jackson on the strength of his appeal to the “socially and economically disenfranchised.”

“While Gephardt has been fighting for fair trade and to save family farms,” Congdon said, “Jesse Jackson has been fighting the same battles . . . on the streets and in the fields.”

Before Gephardt withdrew from the race to run again for his congressional seat, independent polls showed that he had the backing of about 11% of Democratic voters in Wisconsin, Congdon said. He predicted that about half would switch now to Jackson.

At a midday rally in rural Sheboygan, Jackson won a warm reception from a nearly all-white audience of 2,000 at the local armory auditorium, a substantial showing in the middle of a working day in a community of 50,000. Although he was running more than an hour behind schedule--a good day in the traditionally chaotic Jackson campaign--few had left the auditorium by the time he arrived.

Babies, Cheese and Bratwurst

Clearly enjoying the cheers, Jackson swept around the bleachers, deftly hoisting babies for the trailing television cameras, then accepting gifts of Wisconsin cheese and a package of the local bratwurst that is the pride of Sheboygan. Jackson received a similarly warm reception at a labor rally that drew about 200 in Wausau, before flying on to a third rally at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh.

In Sheboygan, Jackson joined the queue of political figures urging Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, beset with allegations of impropriety, to resign. Jackson argued that regardless of Meese’s guilt or innocence, his preoccupation with grand jury probes means “the administration of justice is being sacrificed to the defense of the attorney general.”

“George Bush says that he doesn’t want to prejudge Ed Meese, but we have focused too much on whether Ed Meese is guilty or innocent,” Jackson observed, to heavy applause.

Depending on Mrs. Reagan

“Ed Meese deserves due process, but the country deserves an attorney general,” Jackson said. “Ed Meese does not have the judgment to submit his resignation. The President does not exercise leadership strength and ask for it. The vice president, now the leader of his party, does not have the strength to get the President to act. So the nation must depend, once again, on Mrs. Reagan.

“When Mr. Reagan asks her, should Meese stay on, Mrs. Reagan should just say no,” Jackson said in an oblique swipe at what he calls the First Lady’s ineffectual campaign against drugs.