1988 Democratic National Convention : Jackson Takes Helm of Party’s Left Wing: Can He Build on It?

When Jesse Jackson concluded his first quest for the presidency four years ago, he was the undisputed leader of black Democrats. When his second campaign for the White House all but ended Monday, he had emerged as something more--the dominant leader of the party’s left wing as well.

“The youngest, the newest, the most renewed, the most loyal, the most solid,” Jackson calls his supporters, declaring “It is not the fringe. It is the foundation.”

What Jackson can build on that foundation is still an open question. His materials at hand are 7 million voters, a newly organized political action committee, a voter registration operation and the somewhat undefined entity known as the Rainbow Coalition.

For all that, however, Jackson has never held elective office. Some of his advisers see him moving to fill that gap in his resume before he takes on another presidential race.

The 46-year-old civil rights leader, who honed his political skills during the confrontational social movements of the 1960s, hopes to exert a new kind of leverage over the party and the nation.

‘Threat Is to Stay’

“Twenty years ago, the threat may have been to leave,” he has said. “Now the threat is to stay, and by staying, change everybody’s options.”

Both his supporters and detractors are scrutinizing his words and actions during the Democratic convention--particularly the tone of tonight’s address to delegates and a prime-time television audience--for clues as to what his strategy will be.

“The convention is not the finish line for him. It’s the starting line,” House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.) said.

In the eyes of his supporters, Jackson has been handed the mantle once worn by Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, his predecessor as the Democrats’ leading liberal voice.

But in some ways, what Jackson is seeking to do draws comparison more easily with the accomplishments of a failed presidential contender from the other end of the ideological spectrum: former Sen. Barry Goldwater. While the Arizona Republican’s positions had once been dismissed as extreme, they ultimately formed the basis for the GOP dogma that persuaded an enormous national majority to support Ronald Reagan.

Jackson’s biggest challenge might be figuring out how to be tough enough to please his core constituency without losing the credibility that he needs to move the party Establishment.

‘Play the Game’

“I think he has got to come around and play the game with us,” said Gene Mahan, South Dakota Democratic Party chairman.

But Cindy Ayers-Elliott, a Mississippi delegate, countered: “I don’t think he would ever sell out. That’s not his plan. That’s not Jesse Jackson.”

His immediate future will be shaped by the fall campaign. Many believe that the worst disaster that could befall Jackson is a defeat for Michael S. Dukakis--particularly if Jackson is seen as somehow having contributed to the Democrats’ losing their third national election in a row.

At the same time, however, if the Democratic ticket wins, Jackson will find it more difficult to mount a presidential campaign in 1992, when Dukakis presumably would be running for reelection. And without the standing of an elected office while his own party is in power, he might find it more difficult to make his voice heard in the national arena.

While gaining public attention proved little obstacle when he was a recognized voice of opposition to a Republican Administration, it could become more daunting if Dukakis were elected, and Jackson felt bound to temper his criticisms of his own party.

Other Offices

But in rallying speeches to supporters this week, Jackson has given no indication that he might seek election to an office other than the presidency. “There are two facts you must know,” he told 4,000 cheering supporters in Atlanta’s historic Fox Theater Sunday night. “Either (my) family will get to the White House, or because of it, yours will.”

Jackson said in recent interviews that his focus in the next few years will be to involve himself more deeply in state and local politics.

His coalition, he said, will figure in scores of congressional, mayoral and gubernatorial races across the country, finding “new equations of power (that) come from local struggles.”

Some have suggested that Jackson might himself enter one of the hottest of those local battles--the Chicago mayor’s race. However, others insist he might find that stage too small.

“A Senate seat would be a natural for Jesse Jackson,” said California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, who was Jackson’s national campaign chairman.

Brown noted that both Jackson and Dukakis expressed support at their press conference Monday for statehood representation for the District of Columbia, where blacks constitute a majority. That would open up two U.S. Senate seats, a voting member of the House of Representatives and a governor.

Long-Stalled Dream

With the active backing of Dukakis in the White House and Democratic control of both Houses of the Congress, Brown suggested it would be possible to move the country closer to the long-stalled dream of Washington residents for full representation in Congress.

By Monday afternoon, only half an hour after his public declaration of unity with Dukakis, it was clear that Jackson’s focus was already shifting toward the future.

In a pre-convention speech to his 1,300 delegates Monday, his sights seemed at times to have slipped beyond the convention and on to the enormous political task with which he has charged himself.

Halfway through a discussion of the convention agenda Jackson began to appeal to delegates to contribute to his Keep Hope Alive Political Action Committee--an organization originally dubbed the Jackson Action Political Action Committee--which will seek to aid progressives running for statewide and national office.

Jackson hopes to raise $2 million from 400 contributors who ante the $5,000 legal maximum.

“We need people to do several things,” Jackson said, “It is in our distinct interest to have an independent political apparatus for campaigning.”

Bitter that his popular candidacy won little support from established party leaders, Jackson hopes to persuade Democrats that a “new political equation” now makes it imperative that they heed the progressive wing.

“Our future for development is still in the South,” Jackson said at an earlier convention week fund raiser. “In every state that we won, we must visit the senator and governor and find out why we did not get their support, and find out what their plans are for their future public--and private--lives.”

‘Open Up Process’

“We’ll get candidates running for senator, candidates running for governor,” Jackson said. “They may not win. . . . But only by running are you going to open up the process. No one’s going to open it up for you.”

Washington-based political scientist Ron Walters, a longtime Jackson adviser, said the organization that Jackson built during his second presidential campaign must be better equipped and organized for such a task than the 1984 operation.

The problem, he said, was that “we tried to build from the top down, and tried to believe that the rudiments of the campaign organization did exist. It was not strengthened as it should have been.

“After 1984, I traveled around the country and found nothing there,” Walters said. “The rainbow effort was in effect the political organization of an existing elected official. When that person chose to take down the shingle of the Rainbow Coalition, then there was no rainbow coalition left.”

Organization is even more important as Jackson tries to hold together a far broader base of support from his 1988 campaign--white liberals, gays and lesbians, trade unionists, farmers and others for whom the candidate has sought to define “common ground.”

Even as the party prepares to nominate a presidential candidate who has reached out to lure back its more conservative voters, Jackson has vowed that he will not allow it to neglect the groups he represents.

It is a “new political arithmetic,” Jackson often says. “You cannot fight for a bigger party, while making it a smaller party at the same time.”

Also contributing to this article were staff writers John Balzar, Maura Dolan, Sara Fritz and Ron Harris.