Donations Called ‘New Awakening’ : Generosity of L.A.’s Black Middle Class Aids Jackson

The Rev. Jesse Jackson has collected scattered campaign contributions from all parts of California--$25 here, $50 there. But one small corner of the state has departed significantly from that pattern: a pocket of neighborhoods that, according to a Times survey, account for roughly 40% of all the money Jackson’s California campaign committee has raised statewide.

The neighborhoods are not those of the wealthy white liberals who traditionally have been the mainstays for Democratic campaigns in the state. Instead, they are the homes of middle-class and upper-middle-class blacks in areas stretching through central Los Angeles from Compton north and west across Inglewood to Baldwin Hills.

That finding, from a computer analysis by The Times of presidential fund raising in the state, highlights an often-overlooked feature of the political landscape: The black community now can deliver not only votes but money.

The analysis also shows that Vice President George Bush, who has all but locked up the Republican nomination, has amassed millions in wealthy Republican enclaves in Malibu and Bel-Air and down the coast to Newport Beach and Irvine.

Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, the leader for the Democratic nomination, has raised more than $1 million in the state, although he has not drawn the large sums from the entertainment industry that other Democrats, particularly former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, have received in the past.

Jackson too has had comparatively little success in raising money from traditional white, liberal and heavily Jewish money centers in Hollywood and Westside neighborhoods. The black middle class has come to his rescue.

Jackson’s success, said Joseph Cerrell, a longtime Southern California activist and fund raiser, represents “a new awakening” in the black community. While some past national candidates, particularly Robert F. Kennedy and Hubert H. Humphrey, held fund-raising events sponsored by black supporters, Cerrell said, those efforts were far smaller than Jackson’s, and “the amount of money available in those days was less.”

Mal Warwick, the Berkeley-based consultant who has been handling Jackson’s direct-mail fund raising, said blacks have given for many years to candidates running for local office. “There is money and, if the candidate is one who can excite people, then that money flows,” Warwick said. But he added: “I’ve never seen this on the national scene before.”

Until recently, said Emmett D. Carson of the Washington-based Joint Center for Political Studies, fund-raisers not only for politicians but also for many charities have overlooked the growing wealth of the black community. Blacks continue to give to political candidates less often than whites, Carson said, but the gap was less pronounced among the middle class than other economic groups.

Overall, according to the Joint Center’s national survey, 4.2% of blacks reported making political contributions in 1986, contrasted with 17% of whites. But among people with household incomes above $40,000, the figures were 15% for blacks and 32% for whites. In addition, Carson noted, the survey probably underestimated black political contributions because of donations through churches.

Nationally, Jackson has raised more than $6 million for his presidential campaign, including more than $1.5 million from direct mail. Not counting proceeds from the direct-mail campaign, more than $400,000 of Jackson’s revenue has come from California.

Jackson’s staff has not tried to analyze the addresses of donors to guess at their race, said Howard Renzi, Jackson’s treasurer. Renzi estimates that Jackson has received about 90,000 individual contributions nationwide, with more than two-thirds of them coming since the first of the year. Dukakis, by comparison, claims 75,000 individual contributors. In part because the campaign has emphasized Jackson’s growing support among whites, aides try to steer questions away from discussions of his base among blacks.

Nearly all of Jackson’s contributions are less than $200, and therefore need not be publicly itemized in Federal Election Commission filings. So The Times analyzed the ZIP codes for nearly 2,000 checks contributed to Jackson in California over a 10-day period in mid-March after being given access to the check records by Jackson’s state treasurer, Jules Glazer.

Jackson has raised funds in California from a wide variety of events, including jazz concerts, house parties and church socials. For one potluck dinner, guests paid a $5 contribution to the Jackson campaign. By contrast, another house party on March 19 raised more than $100,000 from guests who included numerous black businessmen, many of whom supported Walter F. Mondale rather than Jackson in 1984, said Jackson press aide Rita Cash.

The Times’ analysis indicates that Jackson has raised at least $160,000 from the pocket of middle-class black neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Excluded from the analysis was the $1.5 million raised by Jackson through his national direct-mail campaign. How much of that has been raised from the black community cannot be conclusively estimated, but because white liberals are far more heavily represented than blacks on most mailing lists used in Jackson’s direct-mail efforts, blacks may have provided relatively little of the $1.5 million.

For Bush and Dukakis, much of whose funds come from contributions of $200 or more that must be reported to the FEC, The Times analyzed the ZIP codes of all California contributions on file at the FEC through March.

Bush, whose campaign and fund-raising efforts are now effectively finished, raised about $2.3 million in the state. The total was the fourth-highest after Texas, which is one of Bush’s several home states; Florida, where Bush’s son Jeb is a leader of the state GOP, and New York, according to Fred Bush, no relation to the vice president, the campaign’s deputy finance chairman.

As for Dukakis, he has raised “well over $1 million” statewide but substantially less than Bush’s contributions, said Karen Russell, his Western finance director. But campaign officials and political activists in the state expect the amount to grow as California’s June 7 primary approaches. Already, Dukakis’ take from California is one of his largest statewide totals outside of Massachusetts.

Dukakis’ State Visits

Dukakis has visited the state several times. Most recently, in late March, Dukakis took two days off from campaigning on the eve of Michigan’s caucuses for a fund-raising trip to California.

He raised nearly $400,000 on that trip, campaign officials say. At the same time, however, the diversion cut into Dukakis’ campaigning in Michigan, where his subsequent defeat by Jackson was the most severe setback his campaign has so far received.

So far, the base of Dukakis’ financial support in the state appears to be such areas as Westwood, Hollywood, Santa Monica, Brentwood and Beverly Hills, which usually contribute heavily to Democrats. His supporters there, however, are not necessarily the traditional givers.

Only recently has Dukakis begun to build support in the entertainment industry. On the other hand, Dukakis has benefited in California, as he has elsewhere in the country, from strong support from his fellow Greek-Americans.

As with most Southern California contributor lists, Dukakis’ contains a share of well-known names: David Geffen and Norman Lear, for example, who contributed the $1,000 maximum; San Diego Padres owner Joan B. Kroc, who gave $1,000 to Dukakis as well as separate $1,000 contributions to rivals Albert Gore Jr., Richard A. Gephardt and Paul Simon, and actor and director Leonard Nimoy, who has both contributed to Dukakis and raised funds for him.

Dukakis, who has received strong support from executives at high-technology companies in Massachusetts, has also had considerable success in some parts of Northern California, particularly the Silicon Valley, which has provided about 10% of his statewide total, and the Sacramento area, which provided an additional 14%.