Gingrich-Jackson Courtship: Was it Outreach or Outrageous?

It was an odd political alliance, the one between House Speaker Newt Gingrich and civil rights leader Jesse Jackson. And if it outraged conservative activists like William J. Bennett, imagine how it played with African American Republicans.

“It was a slap in the face to black Republicans and Republican activists in general,” says Faye Anderson, executive director of the Council of 100, a Washington-based network of African American Republicans. The besieged Gingrich, she adds, should focus his outreach efforts on members of “his own party.”

What rankles Anderson and other black conservatives is that the Gingrich-Jackson alliance appears to represent yet another lost opportunity to elevate someone from within their own ranks. Instead, the brief--and perhaps impractical--courtship strikes many black GOP members as one more example of their political invisibility, and a rebuke from the party’s leadership of their legitimacy within black America.

The relationship attracted notice when Gingrich showed up on Jackson’s weekly television show. More heads turned when Gingrich invited Jackson to be his guest at last month’s State of the Union address. It reached fever pitch after Gingrich appeared to be taking Jackson’s side when the speaker was criticized by the only black Republican in Congress.

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The entire episode touched a raw political nerve. Black Republicans long have felt ostracized and underappreciated within their own party. Gingrich’s attempt to reach out to black America by extending his hand to a traditional liberal like Jackson was seen as a godsend to a political enemy, the kind of gesture that even faithful black Republicans had never been offered.

The Gingrich-Jackson duet was all the more difficult for black Republicans because few believed it was being sung in honest harmony. Indeed, an examination of the symbolism embedded in the improbable pairing suggests that their joint promotion of racial healing may be secondary to the personal and partisan motives of both men, observers say.

According to this view, expressed by analysts and activists from both parties, Gingrich and Jackson have been engaging each other in an unusual political dance designed to make each of them more appealing to a skeptical public. And, many say, the public won’t necessarily regard the alliance as genuine, making the politics all the more problematic.

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“Will this partnership between Jesse and Newt work?” asks Ron Walters, director and senior scholar at the African American Leadership Project at the University of Maryland. “Well, no. Nobody believes it’s sincere.

“There’s something in it for both Jesse and Newt. Most people saw it that way--and that’s why it backfired,” says Walters, who served as a political advisor to Jackson during his two presidential campaigns.

Precisely how the rapprochement crystallized isn’t clear. It doesn’t seemed to have been plotted by the two leaders acting in concert. Rather, Gingrich and Jackson each apparently saw an opportunity and moved to exploit it, say those close to both men.

Timing was crucial. In the wake of his recent reprimand for misleading the House Ethics Committee about his use of tax-exempt funds for political purposes, Gingrich was at a nadir in his congressional career. Although Gingrich managed to hang on to the speakership, the ethics flap took a toll on his already shaky popularity with the public. A recent Times Poll, for example, revealed a 58% disapproval rating for the speaker; 60% of those polled said he should resign his leadership post.

By making a public display of compassion for the poor and disadvantaged minorities, Gingrich was seeking to soften his image and bolster his battered profile.

“It’s important for Newt that he has begun to get favorable comments from that segment of the population that previously was disposed to say dreadful things about him,” says Rich Galen, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee and a close friend of the speaker.

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It was at this point that Jackson began demonstrating public support for the speaker. Jackson, a former shadow senator representing the District of Columbia, exercised his right to be on the House floor during Gingrich’s acceptance speech after winning a second term as speaker. During the speech, Jackson jumped to his feet repeatedly to lead standing ovations when Gingrich spoke of the need to solve the nation’s racial problems and when the speaker praised Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) for working to find solutions to problems in the nation’s capital.

“I do know [Gingrich] was very much moved by Rev. Jackson’s reaction to his remarks after he was sworn in,” Galen says.

Jackson made the next move, inviting the speaker to appear on the fifth anniversary of his CNN television show, “Both Sides With Jesse Jackson,” and agreeing in advance not to discuss Gingrich’s ethics violations on the program. Assured of gentle handling, Gingrich accepted the invitation, ending his self-imposed exile from national television appearances.

Producer Lee Thornton says the decision to have Gingrich appear as the sole guest on the anniversary show was Jackson’s alone. Typically, the show tries to strike a political balance between two guests, one a conservative and the other a liberal. By doing a one-on-one show with Gingrich, who had never appeared on the program, Jackson was making the point that he would be willing to work directly with the lawmaker on common issues, such as education policies and economic development in cities.

“There was a chemistry,” Thornton says. “They talked very easily and comfortably with each other.”

Gingrich’s supporters characterize his association with Jackson as a legitimate effort by a House speaker to create harmony across partisan and racial lines. “We are the majority party now,” says Sen. Connie Mack (R-Fla.). “We’re going to have to reach out and talk with all Americans about the problems this nation faces.”

For Jackson, the idea of reaching out to Gingrich drew inspiration from President Clinton’s efforts to create common ground with the GOP leadership in Congress.

“Jackson was trying to say that if Clinton can play a game of bipartisanship and reach out, then the progressive wing of the party ought to be free to do its own dance,” Walters says. “Jackson had his own politics going on by being friendly with Gingrich.”

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Gingrich reciprocated by inviting Jackson to sit next to the speaker’s wife in the House Gallery during the president’s State of the Union address.

The symbolism didn’t stop there. Jackson, instead of bringing his own wife to the event, invited Walter G. Amprey, superintendent of Baltimore city schools. “Jackson expected the president to talk about education in the speech and he wanted to be prepared to have someone there with him to counter what Clinton might have said that he disagreed with,” Walters says. “Jackson actually used Gingrich to make his own points.”

That is exactly how some Republican leaders interpreted the episode. Bennett waged a public media campaign to chastise Gingrich for cozying up to Jackson.

“I think this is a terrible mistake and a terrible signal,” Bennett says. Gingrich, he adds, “is trying to butter up the left wing of the Democratic Party instead of leading the conservative wing of the Republican Party. It’s not going to work. [He] can play up to these folks, but at the end of the day, he’s going to get the back of their hand.”

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The speaker further outraged conservative Republicans by appearing to sympathize with Jackson when he became the target of what some considered a racially tainted insult by Rep. J.C. Watts Jr. (R-Okla.), the only black Republican congressman.

“That’s a hell of a way to reach out to black folks, by distancing yourself from the only black person in Congress from your own party,” Anderson fumes.

A key element of that anger is the fact that black members of the Republican Party are a distinct minority--outnumbered 10 to 1 by black Democrats. As such, they struggle against “sellout” and “Uncle Tom” labels in their work to build a black presence in the GOP.

Gwen Daye Richardson, publisher of Headway, a GOP-friendly political magazine aimed at black Americans, says Gingrich’s outreach to Jackson “makes black Republicans wonder: Why are we fighting the good fight if the rewards go to someone like Jesse Jackson?”

Richardson says Republicans rarely reach out to African Americans, and when they do, “they bungle it. They do something or say something dumb. I see what Newt did as an example of that.”

Richardson praises Gingrich for going into black communities and talking with leaders there. But, she adds, the rest of the GOP leadership seems content to offer “lip service” without “putting money from the party behind the effort” to explain party positions to black voters or support black candidates in elections.

“They do these one-ies and two-ies,” she says, referring to party support for a few well-recognized black Republicans like Watts and retired Gen. Colin L. Powell. “If they want to do something substantial, they have to build an infrastructure. Dealing with Jesse Jackson isn’t going to build a black Republican infrastructure.”