Great Weird Way Puts Candidates Into a N.Y. State

Here in the kingdom of the absurd, it is tough to tell which of the quixotic campaign events leading up to Tuesday’s presidential primary deserved preeminence. But it might have been the one under the lovely 86-foot white marble arch in Manhattan’s Washington Square, which reads: “Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair.”

With a brilliant blue sky bearing down on an empty platform, a campaign worker seized upon a way to await the arrival of former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., who was almost two hours late for his premier event of the day.

“Hey! Everyone want to chant the 800 number?” the worker yelled into a microphone.

Whereupon 3,000 seemingly sane people did just that.

At least it was nonviolent. For the New York primary, where abuse is dispensed with the regularity of breathing, and mayhem is a life partner, that was something. In this city of vast and sometimes unsettling contrasts, politics turns to the extreme and most candidates count the minutes until they can doff a cheery wave and mutter “good riddance.” At least until the general election.

For the last 10 days, Brown, his Democratic presidential opponent, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, and their entourages have madly swept through New York’s boroughs with survival uppermost in their minds, even the most naive optimists among them unwilling to bet on success. It is definitely not Arkansas. It is not even California.

And it is not just grievous for the candidates and their attendant hangers-on; New Yorkers, too, get run through the mill. The last national campaign here, a cabdriver was left screaming in the street when the press bus trailing George Bush’s motorcade smashed his car and trundled on by, its police escort ignoring the hit-and-run.

There are reprieves, when the candidates flee upstate to places like Schenectady or Rochester or Buffalo--or this year, because of the coincident Wisconsin primary, to Madison or Milwaukee. But they must always come back to New York City.

So it was that Clinton found himself, twice this week, sidling down the streets of Brooklyn, cheek to jowl with chaos.

As he traversed DeKalb Avenue, a flatbed truck carrying camera crews edged alongside. Between the truck and the candidate, like particles in a giant, violent amoeba, photographers struggled to keep up, leaping over concrete benches and overturning trash cans with abandon.

“He a congressman?” asked one Brooklynite, gazing at the only thing he could see of Clinton--gray hair at the very top of his head. “Who is that guy?”

Down the street, one man was distinctly unamused. A personification of the aggressive New Yorker, he was screaming at not one but two Secret Service agents, unintimidated by their armament.

“I’d like to go to goddamn work already!” he yelled at one agent blocking a pathway. The agent was too busy to respond, engaged as he was in yelling, “Get outta here!” to yet another belligerent.

Brown’s campaign is more accustomed than Clinton’s to chaos, drawing to it like iron bits to a magnet. Still, even he was caught off guard when he staged a similar tour in Harlem. Coming down the street from the opposite direction was the Rev. Al Sharpton, the wavy-haired black activist.

Sharpton was waving a golf club. “Where’s Bill Clinton?” he chanted, the golf club a symbolic reference to Clinton’s having recently played a round at a segregated Little Rock country club.

The former California governor changed course to avoid Sharpton. But unsuccessful, Brown climbed atop a white minivan to escape a meeting by giving a speech. He still drew gibes from residents who demanded, “Talk to Al!”

Granted, Clinton and Brown are running for the same office, but the paths they are traveling are as different as the two men.

While his campaign has been bedeviled by almost constant controversy, Clinton’s appearances are usually smooth and well-produced, so much so that he at times has seemed programmed. New Yorkers show no mercy.

The other day, he went to Wall Street, where the campaign blocked off streets to provoke a human traffic jam. Visually, it was near perfect--hundreds of supporters lining the steps of Federal Hall, some carrying American flags, and the confident, camera-ready candidate before them on the back of an old pickup truck, bathed in television lights.

Except that when Clinton was introduced, the crowd booed. Little applause could be heard from the gathered mass, which was far smaller than an identical Brown rally a few days earlier.

Yet when he plays to his strength, Clinton can still rev up a crowd. He did so Sunday morning, when he journeyed to a black church in Brooklyn for services. Something from his Southern roots comes out in Clinton when he speaks in church; his accent grows more pronounced and the weight of his candidacy visibly lightens.

Introduced as “the man who is going to rescue us from that Republican Administration in Washington,” Clinton took to the pulpit like a preacher, quoting Proverbs and St. Paul and painting a portrait of a redemptive society willing to dream of betterment. Cheers rang from the balcony and the main floor.

But true emotion ripped through the congregation when the Rev. Fred A. Lucas Jr. brought Clinton to the altar rail and placed his hand protectively atop Clinton’s head.

“Bless this man,” he said. “Allow him to be your armor-bearer. Forgive him for his sins and his waywardness, and forgive us all for our iniquities.”

Clinton, rising, appeared to wipe away a tear.

At the other end of the scale is Brown, who is suffusing his rhetoric with more emotion daily, even if his campaign events are edging ever closer to the surreal.

Within three days this week, he held two huge rallies, first the one in Washington Square and a later session at 73rd and Broadway.

Psychically, the Brown events belonged in the theater district, where the air of unreality would have seemed more appropriate. At both, a young woman wrapped in an American flag and carrying what passed for a cigar box collected dollars for Brown, a foil star dangling over her forehead. .

The sartorial star, however, was Brown’s longtime aide-de-camp Jacques Barzaghi, looking like a Zen guerrilla in black pants, black jacket, red turtleneck and his ever present black beret over his shaved head. He flashed peace signs at the attendees.

“You have to have this kind of circus in New York,” said Lisa DeLisle, a potential Brown voter.

The entertainment did not exactly match the candidate, who has announced that his preferred music is the Gregorian chant. No chanters were sighted, but Brown’s organizers did bring in pop singer Carly Simon and a man who played a conch shell. Another act billed himself as Atom Bomb, screaming alleged rock music into a sound system so loud it could have been heard in Brooklyn.

Into this milieu came Brown, delivering a rageful speech in which he excoriated Clinton and vowed to protect the environment, abortion rights and the economy.

Brown left, and the crowd eased away as the last of the bands slid into a John Lennon song. They could still be heard a few blocks away at the Central Park apartment house where Lennon was killed, and where homeless men were that day sleeping on subway grates for warmth. In the long and tumultuous days leading up to Tuesday’s vote, full of campaign promises and vows of solidarity, no one had come by to talk to them.