Bradley Enters the Game, Will Challenge Gore

With a ringing call “to help unleash the enormous potential of the American people,” former Sen. Bill Bradley signaled Friday that he intends to challenge Vice President Al Gore for the 2000 Democratic presidential nomination.

“I am taking an enormous step, a step I have not taken before,” the former Rhodes scholar and star of the New York Knicks professional basketball team said as he officially established a committee to promote his candidacy.

Emphasizing broad themes more than specific proposals, Bradley talked about helping parents balance the responsibilities of family and work, reinvigorating America’s international leadership and encouraging the kind of grass-roots activism symbolized by the New Community Corporation Neighborhood Center where he spoke.

“I believe in a type of leadership that doesn’t stand in the spotlight as much as call attention to millions of Americans whose actions shine every day,” he declared in his formal statement.

Though Bradley, 55, formally established what is known as an “exploratory committee,” both he and his aides made clear that he already has decided to run and will begin assembling the means to do so. One of his first steps will be a trip to Los Angeles on Monday to raise money and meet with supporters.

Announcement Made on Basketball Court

Bradley, who stood on the neighborhood center’s basketball court as he spoke Friday, likened this exploratory period to a sports training camp. “You get the team together, see how they relate to each other, kind of work out plays, and in the regular season is when you perform in the official campaign. I can tell you, I have never gone to training camp without expecting I will be playing in the regular season.”

First elected to the Senate from New Jersey in 1978, Bradley served three terms before retiring in 1996 with a blast at both parties, declaring: “On a basic level, politics is broken.”

Since then, he has traveled the country, lectured at colleges, contributed video essays to “CBS Evening News,” written a book on life lessons from basketball titled “Values of the Game” and poked fun at his stiff image in a memorably irreverent commercial for ESPN’s “Sports Center.”

One of the Democratic Party’s leading lights in the 1980s, Bradley’s luster faded somewhat when he won only a narrow 1990 reelection over Republican Christine Todd Whitman, who was then a virtual unknown and now is New Jersey’s governor. Ironically, as President Clinton has redefined the Democratic approach to issues in the 1990s, Bradley has been less central to the intellectual debate in the party than he was during Republican Ronald Reagan’s administration.

Still, Bradley remains one of the Democrats’ best-known national figures, with a reputation for independence, seriousness and personal integrity.

Bradley suggested how he may run his 2000 campaign Friday when he refused to be drawn into direct controversy with Gore. “This is not about Vice President Gore and me. This is about telling the country what I believe and going out and talking to the people, as I have done for 30 years.”

Bradley, Gore Talk Before Announcement

Aides to Gore said that the two men spoke briefly and cordially before Bradley made his announcement.

With this step, Bradley joined liberal second-term Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota in establishing a formal exploratory committee. Other party leaders considering the race include Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, two-time candidate Jesse Jackson and House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri.

Gore has taken no formal steps toward a candidacy, but he has left little doubt about his intentions. Recently he tapped White House political director Craig Smith, a longtime Clinton ally, as the campaign manager for his 2000 effort.

While Gephardt, Wellstone and Jackson all would run primarily as tribunes of the left, and Kerry and Kerrey have indicated that they may run campaigns challenging liberal orthodoxy, Bradley’s positioning is more complex.

On many issues, Bradley takes traditionally liberal positions. For instance, he opposed the 1996 welfare reform bill that Clinton signed into law. But he also has been a staunch internationalist and free trader, priorities that he emphasized Friday.

“I believe, as the most powerful nation in the world today, we have an obligation to give the world a map to democracy, a sense of physical security against blatant aggression and a set of economic institutions that allow more people a chance to turn their dreams for a better life into reality.”

And his overall profile is more cerebral than ideological. His most significant achievement during his 18 years in Congress was his co-authorship of the sweeping tax reform plan of 1986--a blueprint for simplifying the system that was ambitious, thoughtful and difficult to put into a category on the usual dimensions of left to right.

Judging by his speeches since he left the Senate, much of Bradley’s message in 2000 may similarly center on relatively non-ideological themes of reforming government and restoring America’s sense of community--a potentially resonant theme after the relentless ethical controversy and conflict of the Clinton years.

“He is a little bit harder to pigeonhole than the other guys,” said Guy Molyneux, a Democratic pollster unaffiliated with any of the likely candidates.

That judgment applies not only to Bradley’s potential role in the debate but also to his potential stature in the field. He has shown surprising strength in several early polls. A September television station survey in New Hampshire, a late-October national Gallup Organization survey and a November survey in New York all found him running second to Gore, though in some cases substantially behind.

Yet Bradley has no on-the-ground presence in either of the key early states, Iowa and New Hampshire. And his ability to raise the huge sums of money required to compete effectively remains to be proven. Though he has strong ties on Wall Street and in Hollywood (where he has been close to Disney Chairman Michael Eisner), Bradley has not raised money since his last Senate race in 1990.

Perhaps the largest question among Democrats is whether Bradley has the stomach for the grind of raising that money--indeed, for the relentless treadmill of the entire primary process.

It is characteristic of Bradley’s singular sense of self-direction that he has reached that state of engagement this year, when the Democratic race has a prohibitive favorite in Gore, after deciding not to run when there was no clear front-runner in 1988 and 1992.

Asked Friday why he was finally stepping onto the court, Bradley had a simple reply: “I am at the top of my game.”

Goldman reported from Newark and Brownstein from Washington.

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Profile: Bill Bradley

Name: William Warren “Bill” Bradley

Born: July 28, 1943 in Crystal City, Mo.; his father was a small-town bank president and prominent local Republican, his mother a school teacher.

Education: Attended Princeton University, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history in 1965 and starred on the school’s basketball team. As a Rhodes scholar, attended Oxford University in England, earning a master’s degree.

Sports: Won a gold medal as a member of the U.S. team at the 1964 Olympics; played professional basketball with the New York Knicks, 1967-77.

Career: Elected to the U.S. Senate from New Jersey in 1978; reelected in 1984 and 1990. Author of four books; the latest, “Values of the Game,” was published in October.

Personal: Married; one child.

Source: Times Washington Bureau