Black Candidates Weigh Influence : Jackson Coattails: Not All Are Finding an Easy Ride

For Rep. Mike Espy of Mississippi, the question of whether the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns will translate into more permanent political gains for blacks takes on a very personal note.

As Espy went to bed on primary election night in 1986, his political career seemed to have ended almost as quickly as it had begun. Espy, at age 32 seeking office for the first time, had hoped to ride to victory in the Democratic congressional primary on the wave of enthusiasm and increased black registration generated by Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign. With all precincts reporting, he was a hair’s breadth short of a majority and facing the prospect of a run-off against a white opponent, and that would severely dim his chances.

Then, late that night, a county chairman of the party--one of 20 blacks swept in as county chairs and co-chairs during state caucuses in Jackson’s 1984 campaign--discovered a 243-vote error that gave Espy the margin he needed to win.

“Any fair-minded person would have found that 243-vote error,” Espy said. “He was both fair and diligent and a Jesse Jackson delegate. It could have been argued that, in other times, some people would have ignored that error.”

When one of Espy’s opponents appealed for a recount, he had to do so before six Jackson-dominated county election committees, again the spillover from the 1984 caucuses. The committees ruled in Espy’s favor and he went on to become the first black congressman from Mississippi in more than 100 years.

Black candidates elsewhere, however, had a different story to tell that year--Newark City Councilman Donald M. Payne in New Jersey, Hosea Williams in Georgia, Israel Augustine in Louisiana, Ken Mosley in South Carolina and Simeon Golar in Queens, N. Y. All were congressional candidates in predominantly black districts, all were endorsed and supported by Jackson and all were defeated.

Those examples in many ways sum up the paradox of Jackson’s political emergence. On one hand, Jackson and his Rainbow Coalition have inspired blacks to register to vote and participate, have sharply quickened the pace of blacks entering politics and, in some cases, facilitated broad-based victories in local and state elections.

Coattails Not Enough

Yet Jackson’s coattails often have turned out to be no longer than those of most other politicians, and the Rainbow Coalition’s ability to organize and have influence on local and state elections so far has been weak to nonexistent.

To Democrats, Jackson’s political track record suggests an even more immediate question as they head toward the general election in November: Can Jackson, who won more than 7 million primary and caucus votes in 1988, turn out black and liberal votes for presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis?

“There’s no question that a lot of the new voters are really committed to Jesse Jackson,” said Linda Williams, political analyst for the Joint Center for Political Studies in Washington, which studies black politics.

“But when he goes to them and says ‘vote for Michael Dukakis,’ he might not be able to transfer his image to them. So far, that’s been true even with black candidates. That will be a question for Mr. Dukakis.”

That is also the question for blacks and black elected officials. Will they be able to harness the wave of political enthusiasm that Jackson has generated, particularly in 1988? Many political observers think the prospects for that are good.

“Waves have a way of crystallizing themselves into machines,” said Charlie Schroeder, legislative director of the Georgia Democratic Party. “That’s where your leadership comes in at that local and state level and takes that raw material and shapes it into an organization, or a somewhat more organized mass than you have now. Then you have something that you can go back to again and again.”

In most minds Jackson has become the nation’s No. 1 black politician. He has eclipsed nearly 7,000 black elected officials, but “the efforts of black officials at the local and state level for many years should not be overshadowed,” Virginia Lt. Gov. Doug Wilder said.

“While Jesse Jackson’s campaigns have indeed opened the doors for other blacks, Jesse Jackson has had some doors opened for him through those efforts. I’m one of the first to acknowledge the significance of his campaigns, but in some cases people want to put the cart before the horse.”

Some white party officials have even suggested that Jackson’s ascendancy has been a detriment to the advancement of black officeholders.

“Because he has dominated the stage, Jackson has stifled the growth of broad-based black leadership,” said one party chairman from a Midwestern state. “He has made it difficult for other black politicians to rise to the forefront.”

Most black politicians say, however, that if anything, Jackson has enhanced their position.

‘America Now Listens’

“I feel what Jesse has allowed to happen is that America now listens to black politicians,” said Seattle City Councilman Norm Rice, a congressional candidate this year. “For so long we were like Ralph Ellison’s ‘Invisible Man.’ Sometimes people chose not to hear us because we are black. I’ve noticed that people are much more receptive.”

California Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) argues that if not for Jackson, the numerous black elected officials who represented him on the Democratic Party’s national rules, platform and credentials committees this year would not have been there.

“He empowers us all,” said Waters, who co-chaired Jackson’s California campaign. “I wouldn’t be on national TV, I wouldn’t be talking to thousands of reporters, I wouldn’t be doing many of the things I’m doing and having my voice heard on many issues if not for Jesse Jackson. The same thing is happening for black politicians all over the country.”

Also, it is largely because of Jackson, political analysts said, that black voter registration is up--an estimated 4 million blacks have registered since 1983--and this broadens the base of support for blacks and other minority candidates.

In Mississippi, Jackson’s 1984 campaign tripled the number of blacks attending precinct caucuses, where, aside from deciding presidential preferences, county chairmanships, county election committees and other party positions are filled. The number of blacks in county chairmanships and co-chairmanships there leaped from four to 20.

Two years later, Ed Cole was selected the nation’s first and only black state party chairman.

New England Power

In Vermont, the vice chairman and the secretary of the state Democratic committee are Jackson supporters, as are the chairmen in four of the state’s 14 counties. In Tennessee this year, blacks in the Rural West Tennessee Minority Affairs Council won more than a third of the party executive offices in 12 counties west of the Tennessee River.

Overall, though, blacks have made no significant gains in the party structure in most states.

“That just hasn’t taken place yet,” said Schroeder of the Georgia Democratic Party. “Part of it is the youthfulness of his campaign. They aren’t really educated in the process. The old boys sitting there aren’t going to just hand it to anybody.”

And, while the raw number of black elected officials continues to rise, the percentage has grown at a smaller rate each year since 1976 and throughout Jackson’s ascendancy. “The notion that Jackson can run, and will then sweep in thousands of black elected officials is false,” political analyst Linda Williams said. “His impact so far has been negligible.”

New Challenge to Blacks

There are two fundamental reasons for this, political analysts said. One is that the number of predominantly black districts not represented by a black is rapidly diminishing. (Payne in New Jersey, for instance, won the primary in his district this year and is almost assured of a seat in the House this fall.)

The second reason is the failure of Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition to materialize as a political force, coupled with the failure of local blacks to take advantage of that potential new base of support.

As Jackson campaigned in 1984, the Rainbow Coalition talked of fielding some 10,000 candidates for local, state and congressional elections. This lofty goal proved to be largely rhetoric. In fact, in its early days, Jackson’s organization appeared to be powered from the top down rather than from the grass roots.

Any organization then tended to be in the hands of an incumbent elected official, said Ron Walters, a Jackson adviser in 1984. If that official “chose to take down the shingle of the Rainbow Coalition,” he said, “then there was no Rainbow Coalition left. After 1984, I traveled around the country and found nothing there.”

Mandate for Action

This year, Jackson sent his delegates home after the convention in Atlanta with a mandate that to “keep hope alive” they must be more active and better organized at the local level.

“By and large, new equations for power come from local struggles,” he told them. “This sense of new coalition and new equation and empowerment . . . will manifest most acutely in congressional races in 1990, in governors’ races in 1989 and 1990, because that’s where the action continues.”

He announced the formation of a “Keep Hope Alive” political action committee that would help raise money for local campaigns, train prospective candidates and train others for campaign management.

Democratic Party officials say there is no lack of talent or enthusiasm to be harnessed. Jackson’s campaigns involved thousands of political newcomers--field organizers, press secretaries, regional and district coordinators, campaign managers and advance staffers--who seem eager to continue in the process.

The Congressional Black Caucus in Washington reported that this year’s field of black congressional candidates is one of the largest and strongest ever. There are three blacks (one a Republican) in Wisconsin, one in New Jersey, one in Vermont, one in New Mexico, one in Washington, another in New York. Faye Williams, who lost her last bid by just 3,000 votes, is a Democratic candidate for Congress in Louisiana.

Thousands of minority candidates are pursuing municipal and county positions, party officials said.

“People feel like if Jesse Jackson can run for President, we can run for these little offices around here,” said Minnie Bommer, a Covington, Tenn., alderman and chairman of the Rural West Tennessee Minority Affairs Council.

“We’re seeing parts of the impact, but the lasting impact we won’t see until over the years,” said Al LaPierre, executive director of the Democratic Party in Alabama. “It’s like when a lot of guys my age got started in politics, 90% of us got started because of George McGovern. There is no doubt that five, 10 years from now there will be a lot of blacks involved in key areas of this country, and they will have gotten involved purely because of Jesse.

“It’s not instant. It’s nothing you put in a cup of water and it happens overnight. It’s a lasting impact.”