Bradley Skips State Gathering

Fifteen years ago, Judy Keen met Bill Bradley at a coffee klatch in San Francisco. Her maiden name was the same as his and when she told him that, the senator from New Jersey planted one right on her cheek. She never forgot it.

Now he’s running for president and she’s in her 70s. Part of her weekend was spent passing out literature for seniors’ rights at the state Democratic convention that ended here Sunday. Everybody around her was ga-ga over Al Gore. But she would have liked to hear more from the other guy in the race.

If only he’d shown up.

“I’ve met Al Gore several times and I like his straightforwardness. . . . But I love Bill Bradley,” said Keen, who came up from Porterville, just outside Bakersfield, for the Democratic joyfest. “I wish he’d come.”

Of the nearly 2,000 buoyant party activists in the packed convention hall, Keen seemed one of the few remotely aware that the former basketball star and ex-senator is in the running for the Democratic nomination, much less its only formally declared candidate.

There were no Bradley signs, no Bradley bumper stickers, no Bradley hospitality rooms, not so much as a Bradley button. California may be one of the biggest, most important states in the quest for the White House, but Bradley’s candidacy is so far below the radar it doesn’t even register with some of the savants who make politics their business.

“Oh, that Bradley!” one key legislative insider said when asked about this convention’s invisible man. “At first I thought you were talking about the late mayor.”

The Democratic underdog spent the weekend in Florida raising money. But his aides say that he has hardly written off California, citing a San Francisco fund-raiser scheduled next month and hinting at bigger plans down the road. “By the summer, we will undertake an unprecedented campaign step in California,” spokesman Eric Hauser promised, saying no more.

But some party strategists spoke of an opportunity lost at the weekend convention, a once-a-year gathering of the party’s precinct-walking activists and big-picture strategists.

President Clinton was to have been the star attraction, doing the vice president’s bidding while Gore campaigned in New Hampshire, the leadoff primary state. But Clinton canceled late last week because of the war in Kosovo, leaving a vacuum that Bradley might have filled nicely for news-starved reporters. (A tepid Tipper Gore was about as good as it got.) Not to mention face-time with scads of the same delegates who will choose the Democratic nominee in 2000.

“The best thing Bradley could have done was hop on a plane and get out there. He could have created a little presence, a little splash, gotten in their faces and made some noise,” said Democratic strategist Darry Sragow, who most recently oversaw the campaign nuts-and-bolts for state Assembly Democrats.

A rousing, well-timed speech might have given Bradley a toehold in the uphill climb he faces in California, and nationally as well. No vice president has ever been denied his party’s nomination, and this one has worked California from top to bottom, slathering the state with federal dollars.

While Bradley has come West half a dozen times since announcing his candidacy three months ago, Gore is scheduled to swoop in again soon for what will be about his 55th trip to California since taking office in January 1993.

And if Gore wasn’t here in Sacramento in body, he surely was here in spirit. His wife, subbing at the podium, ticked off a litany of successes from job creation to increased high-tech funding, as posters declaring California “Clinton-Gore country” bobbed from the floor below.

Nevertheless, Bradley--who is running to the left of Gore with proposals to fight child poverty and provide universal health care--might have found a receptive audience in the decidedly liberal crowd that was less than stirred by Gov. Gray Davis’ flagrantly moderate address.

“Activists tend to be more liberal. And if indeed he is to position himself to the left of Al Gore, many of the party activists he will have to address were in Sacramento,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a Claremont Graduate University political science professor who attended the convention.

But many saw Bradley’s absence as part of a broader strategy to ultimately win California by making a good showing in the all-important Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.

An impressive performance in the early contests could provide Bradley with campaign momentum that would slingshot him into the later primaries--including California’s crucial March 7 election. It also might draw invaluable news coverage that could spare the cost of advertising in wildly expensive TV markets like Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco.

“What is the sense of doing a dog-and-pony show like this?” one veteran strategist said as conventioneers watched a motivational video set to rock music. “The voters aren’t paying attention to the convention. If you are really lucky you might get a mention on the 6 o’clock news that you were even here.”

Despite Bradley’s conspicuously low profile in the state, few suggest that Gore has California locked up with nearly a year to go before the primary.

Bradley has some ties to Hollywood--Disney chief Michael Eisner recently hosted him at a meet-the-candidate session with potential donors. He recently spent a year teaching at Stanford. And Bradley’s credentials as a basketball Hall of Famer are not lost on a large segment of the sports-loving electorate.

“I watched Bill Bradley play,” said Glenn Plunkett of Huntington Beach, a convention delegate who favors Gore but is hardly wedded to the vice president. “Just because Al Gore’s been in Washington, doesn’t mean he can walk right into the presidency.”