Clinton May Alienate Blacks, Jackson Says : Politics: Civil rights leader vows to back candidate--if only perfunctorily. He sees a Southern strategy seeking to woo white voters.

Warning that Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton’s support among black voters is hemorrhaging, the Rev. Jesse Jackson pledged Thursday to support his party’s presidential nominee--but he made it clear that his backing will be perfunctory at best.

Clinton’s campaign--including his choice of Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr. as his running mate--has exhibited a Southern strategy that risks alienating black voters that the party cannot win without, Jackson said in a breakfast meeting with reporters and editors in the Los Angeles Times’ Washington bureau.

“There has been a real obsession with regaining the white conservative vote,” Jackson said, noting that the selection of Gore, a moderate, was clearly aimed at attracting the conservative Southern white wing of the party. “But it takes two wings to fly.”

Black voters “are crucial for the Democratic Party because in the South there are more white Republicans than there are white Democrats,” he said. “The only reason the party has not become extinct in the South is the black vote. So it is, in fact, a vote that must be respected.”

And, Jackson further warned, many blacks see independent Ross Perot as filling a vacuum in the political arena and offering an alternative to continued support for a Democratic Party they fear is taking them for granted.

In fact, members of Jackson’s own family are privately pressuring him to break with the Democrats and back Perot or, perhaps, to lead a new political party. Sources said Jackson’s wife and five children--angry by what they perceive as Clinton’s disrespectful treatment of the civil rights leader--have lobbied him to reject the Democrats.

Jackson declined repeatedly to discuss his family’s political beliefs. “Keep my family out of this,” he said.

Jackson, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in 1984 and 1988 but opted not to run this year, has been involved in a series of public disputes with Clinton during the campaign--most recently when Clinton chastised a rap singer for racism at a forum sponsored by the Rainbow Coalition, the political organization Jackson heads.

But Jackson has praised Perot for positions that are more in line with his own liberal political ideology. For example, he cited Perot for expressing a willingness to send United Nations troops to Haiti, grant temporary asylum to Haitian refugees and raise taxes to ensure equal funding of public schools.

“So some people are taking a hard look at him (Perot) for reasons as direct as their jobs and education and the Haitian situation,” Jackson said. “The people are making their choices based upon their taste, based upon what they see. Some (black) people are beginning to move toward Perot without even having contact with him, out of a sense of resentment of being taken for granted.”

But Jackson reaffirmed his loyalty to the party. Asked if he had ruled out supporting Perot, Jackson said: “Well, I have. In part because of my investment in the Democratic Party. . . . My investment of time and energy is substantial. I have an interest in the party. That’s why I commit myself to fighting to expand it and to make it inclusive.”

Jackson pledged to continue his fight to change the party from within even if its leadership, under a Clinton Administration, did not welcome him. “That’s not a new experience,” he said. “So it is not unusual to be fighting to open up institutions that we have an investment in to get a return on our investment.”

The Clinton campaign has “made it clear they want distance from the Rainbow Coalition,” Jackson said. Then, with a sarcastic smile, he added: “We will not interfere with that distance because we want to be helpful and not harmful.”

If Jackson does not campaign vigorously for Clinton, it would signal potential danger for the Democrats in the fall. Jackson has traditionally barnstormed the nation to register voters on behalf of the Democratic ticket and in fact spurred turnout in ’84 and ’88.