Bradley’s Remarks on Race Stir Black Leaders

As Bill Bradley and Al Gore kept up their firefight Thursday over the best approach to expanding health care coverage, Bradley showed some uncharacteristic heat that may have won him a few converts among African American Democratic politicians.

Shedding his usual laconic reserve, a tight-voiced Bradley stoked emotion in an audience of 300 black state legislators by telling them that the racial divide separating Americans remains a critical challenge facing the next president.

“I know I’ll never know [racism] like you know it, but I know it when I see it and it’s got to end,” Bradley said at a morning meeting of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators. The former three-term senator from New Jersey said race is at the core of many of the domestic issues--health care, gun violence and economic inequality--that have surfaced in the early months of his primary competition with Vice President Gore for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Bradley rapped Gore for not giving “the whole truth” when he told the same group Wednesday that Bradley would cut Social Security benefits and dip into the budget surplus to keep the retirement system solvent. Calling Social Security the “crown jewel” of Democratic Party orthodoxy, Bradley insisted he has no plans to tinker with its “sacred trust.”

“I think we’ve reached a sad day in our political life in this country when the sitting vice president distorts a fellow Democrat’s record because he thinks he can score a few political points,” Bradley said tartly.

Gore kept up his tweaking during a campaign swing Thursday through Fort Dodge, Iowa, again questioning his rival’s intentions over the surplus and echoing his earlier criticism that Bradley’s proposed overhaul of Medicaid would be “health carelessness.”

The vice president reiterated his charge that, by planning to replace Medicaid with a mixture of direct federal aid and $150-a-month vouchers for the unemployed and working poor, Bradley would jeopardize health coverage for low-income elderly and disabled Americans who have relied on Medicaid. More than 44 million Americans have no medical insurance.

But despite his hammering at Bradley, Gore drew a careful distinction between Bradley and Republican presidential front-runner George W. Bush on Social Security. Gore gave Bradley points for not wanting to privatize the retirement system--a course he warned Texas Gov. Bush would take.

Gore also said that Bush’s new tax relief plan would cost more than $1 trillion and “put us immediately right back into budget deficits, raise short-term interest rates, take away our chances to fix Social Security and Medicare and put pressure on long-term interest rates.”

When Gore spoke to the black legislators Wednesday he said Bradley is proposing “radical changes in Social Security, such as cutting benefits and raising taxes. And a few weeks ago he said we should consider raising the retirement age in Social Security and Medicare--but then he ruled it out. Now he says cutting Social Security benefits is reasonable, and I predict his retraction will not be far behind.”

Instead, Bradley said angrily Thursday that Gore knows the charge “is not true.” Without naming Gore by name, Bradley told the lawmakers that the vice president was content to “settle” on half-measures that would extend medical coverage to some uninsured Americans but not all.

Gore’s stock remains high among black legislators, but several in the audience said afterward that a surprising number of their members--perhaps as many as half--are uncommitted.

Several black officials from Southern states--a group expected to already be in Gore’s corner--said Bradley’s speech made them reconsider their allegiance to the former Tennessee senator.

“I’ve been a Gore supporter, but listening to this man today made me remember that he’s been taking stands with us going back to his days with the [New York] Knicks,” said South Carolina state Rep. Kenneth Kennedy.

Kennedy, an eight-year Assembly veteran, said he was taken with Bradley’s reminder that, as a pro basketball player in the 1960s, he had spurned lucrative ad endorsements because he felt it was offered to him only as a white player. Conceding Gore has “consistently delivered for the last eight years,” Kennedy said that Bradley “seems to offer more change, which is what a lot of people in the black community are looking for right now.”

“It would be a mistake for Bradley to concede the South to Gore,” agreed South Carolina state Rep. Joseph H. Neal. “The more people get to know [Bradley], the more this race is going to get competitive.”

Bradley conceded that he has a long way to go before he can effectively compete with Gore among the Democratic Party’s black leaders. Several times, he plaintively admitted to the audience, “I need you.” And when he told the legislators that “I know a lot of you out there are not with me,” Bradley laughingly added, “right now.”

Black officials who have already committed to Gore tend to be satisfied with him because “he’s a key part of an administration we’ve been able to count on the last eight years,” said Kansas Rep. Barbara Ballard, a Gore supporter. “When you talk about working for the black community, he’s already done it. It’s not just talk.”

*

Braun reported from Baltimore and Gerstenzang from Fort Dodge, Iowa.