Jackson Will Help Recruit Black Votes for Democrats : Campaign: After meeting with party leaders, he agrees to lead bus caravan from New Orleans to Chicago. He says that’s different from stumping for ticket.

Democratic Party officials said Monday that they have reached an agreement enlisting Jesse Jackson to help the Clinton-Gore presidential ticket by heading an effort aimed at aggressively recruiting black voters for the fall elections.

The agreement includes a Jackson-led, four-day bus trip to whip up grass-roots black support for the Democratic presidential candidate. However, Jackson emphasized in an interview that he had agreed to work for the party--not directly for its presidential standard-bearers.

Democratic National Chairman Ronald H. Brown “called me two weeks ago and asked if I would work for voter registration with the (Democratic National Committee), and I said yes,” Jackson said Monday after the announcement. He said that is different from directly campaigning for the ticket.

Jackson said he endorsed Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and his running mate, Tennessee Sen. Al Gore Jr., at the Democratic National Convention but has not been formally asked by Clinton to campaign with them.

The party’s announcement followed a series of closed-door meetings between Jackson and Brown. The announcement did not mention the bus trip, but Clinton campaign staffers said Jackson will lead a four-day bus caravan from New Orleans to Chicago this month.

Sources close to the talks also said the party promised to provide Jackson with about $1.2 million for the voter registration effort in 12 states with large black voting-age populations. That amount is roughly equivalent to the $1.5 million given to a group of Latino leaders for a similar voter registration drive in 12 states with large Latino populations.

Jackson, whose on-again, off-again relationship with Clinton has played out like a backstage drama, said he talked with Clinton on Monday. He said Clinton thanked him for agreeing to work in the voter registration campaign and promised to meet with him soon to discuss the details of the campaign.

That meeting may come as soon as Wednesday in Atlanta, where Jackson is scheduled to receive an award from the National Baptist Assn. and where Clinton will also address the organization of black ministers.

Bobby Rush, a senior Clinton adviser and head of the campaign’s national voter registration drive, said the Jackson-led bus trip “is in the works, and we’ll have more details on this no later than Wednesday.”

However, Bruce Lindsay, another high-ranking Clinton campaign official, sought to make clear that the party, not the campaign, is handling the bus tour.

The difference of opinion over the campaign’s involvement in the Jackson-led voter registration drive reflects the tensions between Jackson and Clinton.

Jackson has been sharply critical of Clinton’s failure to court blacks and other minorities in his presidential campaign. For example, Jackson charged recently that the Clinton campaign is employing a policy of “distancing itself from blacks” at the risk of reducing enthusiasm among black voters.

Jackson has complained that “urban America, organized labor and the Rainbow Coalition,” the organization he heads, have been downgraded as the nominee seeks support from conservative, suburban and middle-class whites who have crossed party lines to vote for Republican candidates in recent presidential elections.

If plans for the bus trip materialize, it will be the campaign’s most visible attempt to reach out to black voters. “You’re going to see predominantly blacks involved in this bus tour,” Rush said.

Rush said in an interview that tentative plans call for a bus caravan beginning Sept. 16 in New Orleans and ending Sept. 20 in Chicago. The trip would be “aimed primarily at black voter registration” in Southern towns and in urban areas in the Midwest.

Recently, other black leaders have complained that Clinton has failed to act on a $6-million voter registration plan proposed by a group of black congressmen and has been avoiding campaign appearances in largely black communities.

Last Friday, Clinton heard similar complaints from a group of prominent black ministers at the campaign’s Little Rock, Ark., headquarters. A delegation of more than 50 ministers first met among themselves to coordinate their individual concerns about the Clinton campaign and then held private talks with Clinton to impress upon him the need to extend his campaign into black communities, officials who attended the meetings said.

Included among their concerns was their view that the Clinton campaign was distancing itself from Jackson and other black leaders, said Rush.

“They wanted to know whether there will be any opportunity for a mutual working relationship with Jesse Jackson in the campaign,” he said. “And the answer was a resounding yes.”

Today on the Trail . . .

SEPT. 8

Bill Clinton in Portland, Conn., Westchester County, N.Y., and Atlanta.

President Bush in Washington, D.C.

Vice President Dan Quayle meets with former President Ronald Reagan in Los Angeles, tours Condor Freight Lines in Covina, attends Bush-Quayle ’92 rally in Upland and spends the night in San Diego.

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TELEVISION

Quayle will be interviewed on KTLA “Morning News” at 8 a.m. PDT.

Hillary Clinton will be interviewed on “Dateline NBC” at 10 p.m. PDT.