New Democratic Chief : Ron Brown: Party’s Image Is on the Line

At a critical moment in the 1980 Democratic National Convention, when dissension flared among supporters of then-presidential candidate Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, deputy campaign manager Ron Brown was dispatched to put out the fire.

“You’ve got to keep yourself together,” Kennedy’s disgruntled North Carolina floor leader Chris Scott recalls Brown telling him. “Politics is a long-term sport.”

For the last eight years, Brown has been practicing what he preached. He has diligently kept his cool and pursued his pragmatic style of politics, even as candidates he supported went down to defeat--Kennedy in 1980 and the Rev. Jesse Jackson in 1988. And Friday, he will reap a reward of historic dimensions.

Middle-Class Harlem Parents

The Democratic National Committee is expected to select Ronald Harmon Brown--the son of middle-class Harlem parents--as its new chairman, the first black to hold such a high post in either major party.

It is a step fraught with promise and with serious challenges, both for Brown and for the party he is to help lead.

Democrats command both houses of Congress, with an overwhelming margin in the House. But they remain a party in search of a national message, and their candidates have been continually rejected by voters in presidential elections--frequently by embarrassingly lopsided electoral-vote margins.

In particular, scholars and political operatives agree, if the Democrats are to regain the White House, they must find a way to make the party more appealing to the white, middle-class voters who have been deserting it in droves in presidential elections.

Among those who know him well, the husky, 47-year-old Brown--whose easy smile is almost as much a fixture as his full mustache--has built a reputation as a shrewd operative with a practical approach to issues. Friend and foe alike praise his intelligence and his even-tempered skill at negotiation.

At the same time, some Democrats believe Brown’s task will be complicated by two factors:

--A left-ish tilt in his background, symbolized by his ties to Kennedy.

Focus on Minorities

--The selection of a black to the chairmanship could intensify the concern of some traditionally Democratic voters that the party has focused too much on the problems of minorities.

In the latter regard, Brown’s recent ties to Jackson may stir particular apprehension.

“The public perception about his election is probably that Jesse Jackson is in charge of the party,” worried Bobby Kahn, executive director of the Georgia Democratic Party. “Which means that he’s going to have to show that’s not so.

“It’s going to be tough, but he’s going to have a chance to do that,” Kahn says.

Similarly, Alabama party chairman John Baker says of Brown’s impending selection as national chairman: “I think this is a giant step backward.” Baker, like other Southern Democrats, is all too mindful of last November’s exit poll figures, which showed white Southerners supporting Republican George Bush over Democrat Michael S. Dukakis by margins of more than 2 to 1.

Party ‘Isn’t Interested’

If Brown’s rise to power stood alone, it would not matter much, says Republican consultant Dave Keene. “But the fact is,” Keene contends with evident satisfaction, “that voters have been getting consistent signals from the Democratic Party that it isn’t interested in their concerns.”

“The problem for the Democrats isn’t that Ron Brown is black, it’s that he’s a liberal,” says another Republican consultant, Roger Stone, a 1988 Bush campaign aide. “Right now they are a party just of blacks, liberals and labor, and we’re going to make inroads into their labor support.”

Likewise, former Democratic Rep. James R. Jones of Oklahoma, the last of Brown’s rivals to drop out of the race, says the race issue “should not be of any importance” in judging Brown’s qualifications.” He contends that the “larger question” raised by Brown’s victory “is that the Northeastern liberal leadership continues to dominate the party.

To all this, Chris Scott, now president of the AFL-CIO in North Carolina, offers an answer: “For those who are concerned that Jesse Jackson sends a message that makes the Democratic Party unacceptable in the South, the way out is not to pretend we are a lily white party, but rather to have a variety of prominent black spokesmen who have more moderate views than Jackson.”

Brown and his supporters say his background and experience have given him the skills at accommodation that will be required to deal with this challenge: the need to keep faith with his own beliefs and the party’s core of blacks and liberals, while finding a way to extend its demographic reach.

‘Protect My Integrity’

“I’m going to protect my integrity and my conscience,” he said in an interview last week from his seventh-floor office overlooking Washington’s Foggy Bottom. “But I have a role and responsibility now . . . that requires me to think about . . . what is best for the entity that I’m working for.

“I’m going to start from the point that says that things are not in shambles, that we have got some solid principles upon which to build. But I also realize that there are certain things it takes to be credible in national elections, where we have to do better, where we have to send a different kind of message.”

Brown dismisses the distinction between his color and his political beliefs as “slightly disingenuous,” adding: “If I was white and I had been the convention manager for Jesse Jackson, these issues would not be raised, certainly not with the same vehemence.”

A night law-school graduate, he is a partner in the high-powered Washington law and lobbying firm of Patton, Boggs & Blow. There, as elsewhere, he showed himself to be a pragmatist, not an ideologue, laboring on behalf of such politically controversial clients as Japanese electronics manufacturers and the Duvalier government of Haiti.

And with his impeccably tailored dark suits, his gold Rolex and his Jaguar, he looks and lives the part of successful power broker.

As with other Washington lawyer-lobbyists, Brown’s wide contacts in political, governmental and civic organizations have helped him bring business to his firm. And his frequent travels to meetings earned him the nickname of “out-of-town Brown.”

“He has always been a get-along kind of guy,” said a colleague in another law firm. “He’s not particularly abrasive, but he can be assertive. His style is to grease things and smooth things so they slide right along.”

There is no better example of Brown’s negotiating skills than his work at the 1988 Democratic convention, where talks between Jackson and Massachusetts Gov. Dukakis bogged down over Jackson’s demand of a “partnership” at the top of the party.

According to participants, Brown sensed the essence of the problem and told the Dukakis team: “The problem is, you’re looking at partnership as if this was a law firm. To Jesse, all the word means is mutual respect and shared goals.” That broke the deadlock and brought Dukakis Jackson’s full endorsement.

Brown had a chance to show his tougher side during Ted Kennedy’s abortive 1980 presidential campaign, when local black leaders in one Southern state asked him for money in return for their supporting Kennedy’s candidacy. They claimed they needed the money to organize support, but “we assumed they had figured in a substantial commission for themselves,” said one Brown colleague.

Elect a President

“If that is what you think this is about, you’re wrong,” Brown responded, according to another Kennedy campaign aide. “We’re trying to elect a President.”

Ultimately, Brown’s colleague says, Kennedy got support from some members of the group--without his campaign having to pay for it.

In a way, it is surprising that Brown’s imminent election has stirred as much controversy as it has. Historically, national party chairmen have not been famous for catching the public’s eye.

A good part of the job has to do with responding to relatively mundane chores and grievances from a limited constituency of committee members, some of whose concerns run no deeper or broader than the quality of hotel rooms and the number of floor passes they can obtain at the next national convention.

Richard Moe, a former Minnesota party chairman and aide to Vice President Walter F. Mondale who turned down a chance for the chairmanship early in the Jimmy Carter presidency, dismisses the job as “the fire hydrant of the Democratic Party.”

Former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt, one of several prominent party leaders including New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley and New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo whose endorsements gave Brown’s candidacy a big boost, takes a more positive, though still notably non-cosmic, view of the chairman’s duties.

“The job of the party chairman,” Babbitt said, “is to stoke the party’s boilers and make the trains run on time.”

Brown himself contends there’s more to the job than just that.

“Aside from mechanics, you have to be a good advocate, a good spokesman for the party, somebody who has a view of where we want to try to get as a party, someone who helps the party develop a message.”

And he believes the attention focused on his candidacy has added a dimension to the job.

“I think the stakes are higher,” he said. “I think there is more interest. I think it’s probably made the Democratic national chairmanship more important than in the past, or at least more visible.

“And that in itself probably establishes a different kind of role, a stronger role.”

As far as his ties to Jackson are concerned, Brown’s first chance to emphasize his independence could come in Chicago, a city noted for its racially divided politics. There Richard M. Daley, son of the city’s longtime mayor and strongman, is challenging Acting Mayor Eugene Sawyer, a black, who has been endorsed by Jackson in the Feb. 28 Democratic primary.

There is considerable speculation that if Sawyer loses, Jackson would throw his support to another black candidate, Alderman Tim Evans, who has already announced he will run on an independent ticket in the April 4 general election.

Asked what he would do in such a predicament, Brown says:

“I’m not looking for opportunities to have a disagreement with Jackson.” But he adds: “I think it would be very difficult for the chairman of the Democratic National Committee not to support the candidate who has won a Democratic primary. I think I’d be expected to do it.”

But whatever happens in Chicago, some professionals in both parties say that Brown will have to work to overcome the public perceptions about his background and the meaning of his capturing the national chairmanship.

Brown has broken racial barriers before. His father was manager of the renowned Theresa Hotel in New York, much frequented by celebrities black and white, from Joe Louis to Richard M. Nixon.

His parents, both graduates of Washington’s Howard University, put great emphasis on education and sent their son by bus to predominantly white schools, some public and some private, on Manhattan’s posh Upper East Side, which gave him a solid grounding for Middlebury College in Vermont, where he was the first black in his class.

Nevertheless, the reaction to his candidacy for chairmanship took him aback.

“I guess I was surprised at how much it was an issue,” he said. “When we started off, I was absolutely confident. But about two weeks later I began to wonder why I was so confident. I guess I was surprised at the vehemence of the race and the Jesse (Jackson) issue.

“I had to be pretty thick-skinned. When people tell you that you’re the best candidate, you’re the most qualified but say, ‘I can’t vote for you,’ that causes you to take a deep breath.”

While nearly everyone involved in the chairmanship competition agrees that race has been an issue, different participants have different views of its impact.

For example, race did not prevent Brown from getting the endorsement of the AFL-CIO, which turned out to be critical to the success of his candidacy.

At the meeting early last month where the endorsement was voted, Brown had such strong support from some unions--the United Steelworkers, the American Federation of Teachers, the Communications Workers of America among them--that if the federation had refused to endorse him “it would have seemed as if we were anti-black,” one union operative said.

For his part, Alabama Chairman Baker claims that the race issue handicapped the opposition to Brown.

“The Democratic National Committee is not interested in having input from moderate-thinking people,” Baker said in an interview. “One problem is that a lot of our leaders who should be our spokesmen have been scared to death to speak out, because if you speak out (and criticize Brown) the strategy of Brown and others is to blast you as a racist.”

For all the harshness of the battle that he won, Brown says he feels “very good about the campaign and myself.”

Certainly his self-esteem seems intact. Asked about speculation that he intended to be “a black Bob Strauss,” like the former party chairman from Texas who was, and is, a celebrated wheeler-dealer, Brown said: “I’m not modeling myself after anybody else. I want people after this to want to be like me as chairman.”

And that positive view is shared by other party activists: “I basically think of the choices available to us, Brown is the best-equipped to run the party,” said M. Buie Sewall, Democratic state chair in Colorado. “I want the toughest, most competent personality to deal with Lee Atwater,” the aggressive national chairman of the Republican Party.

Veteran Democratic political operative Carl Wagner agrees. “Brown’s color may be the only thing people remember about his election as chairman. But it won’t be the only thing they remember about his chairmanship.”

RONALD H. BROWN

Brown is expected to be named Democratic Party chairman on Friday.

Personal--Age, 47. Birthplace, New York City. Captain, U.S. Army 1963-67. Married, two children.

Education--Middlebury College; St. John’s Law School; Institute of Politics, Kenedy School of Government, Harvard University (fellow, 1980).

Professional--Deputy Executive Director of National Urban League 1968-79. Chief Counsel of Senate Judiciary Committee 1981. Partner in law firm of Patton, Boggs & Blow 1981 to present.

Political--Deputy Campaign Manager of Edward M. Kennedy presidential campaign 1979-80. Deputy Chairman of Democratic National Committee 1982-85. Convention Manager of Jesse Jackson presidential campaign 1988.