CAMPAIGN ’88 : Nomination Requires Majority, Democrats Say

California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, national campaign manager for the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Paul G. Kirk Jr., chairman of the Democratic National Committee, agreed in separate interviews on ABC’s televised “This Week With David Brinkley” that the party’s presidential nomination should go to the candidate who commands the support of a majority of delegates at the Democrats’ July convention in Atlanta.

Neither official subscribed to suggestions advanced by some supporters of Jackson, the first black to become a serious contender for a major party nomination, that the convention will be guilty of racism if it fails to award the nomination to the candidate who reaches the convention with the largest number of delegates, even if he has failed to win majority support.

“I do not believe that,” Brown said. “You can have a plurality of the delegates and still not be able to reach the 2,082 or 2,083 required to secure the nomination. I only believe he’s entitled to the nomination if we succeed in producing the appropriate number of delegate votes.”

Kirk, too, rejected a suggestion that the convention might pick a candidate who lacks a majority.

“That’s not what the rules say,” Kirk said. “The rules say that the person who attains the majority of delegates will be the party’s nominee.”

Pressed on this point, however, Kirk conceded that he had said recently that if a candidate commanded “a very, very substantial plurality of delegates” and “has the nomination virtually within his grasp,” perhaps “the party ought to sit down . . . and talk about--” He was interrupted before he finished the thought.

If, as seems likely, no one reaches Atlanta in command of a majority, Kirk said, the decision may rest with “people who are maybe uncommitted, may have been with other candidates who have gone to the sidelines,” and their judgment will be “based on who has the best chance of winning.”

Asked if he could conceive of a Democratic ticket that found no place for Jackson, who has lopsided support from black voters, Kirk said he surely could and urged his questioner not to write off Sens. Paul Simon of Illinois and Albert Gore Jr. of Tennessee.

Former Democratic Chairman John White, another participant in the program, called it too early to comment on a warning that a Jackson nomination would mean the loss not only of the presidential election but of both houses of Congress. But Ben Wattenberg of the American Enterprise Institute, another participant, predicted that “that’s exactly what will happen.” He warned that Republican researchers are waiting with computer printouts of past Jackson comments praising Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and Nicaragua’s Sandinista regime.