Bill Bradley Gets Campaign Assist With Jock Dollars

The political fund-raiser last Sunday at a secluded mansion in the Blue Ridge foothills began like any other.

A well-dressed, name-tagged brunch crowd plucked drinks from waiters’ trays on a tented deck near the rose garden and the pool house. In the distance, a hawk circled lazily over the valley.

But then the mountainous frame of Wes Unseld, a legendary pro-basketball center in the late 1960s and ‘70s, filled the entryway; a group surged toward him seeking handshakes and autographs. Another guest, a real estate developer, tapped his 22-year-old son. “Look,” he whispered, craning his neck, “Tom McMillen,” another former pro basketball player.

There were enough alumni of professional and college basketball teams, one observer noted, to field a strong starting five and a bench. He included in his calculations the guest of honor: Bill Bradley, the former New York Knick who is running for the Democratic nomination for president.

During his 18 years as a U.S. senator from New Jersey, Bradley often downplayed his background: All-America three times at Princeton, gold medal Olympian and a Knicks standout for a decade. “I wanted to prove myself according to the standards of the Senate,” Bradley recalled.

Now, though, Bradley is leveraging jock dollars, a seldom-mined vein of wealth and glory, into a stockpile of millions in campaign cash, confounding political experts who thought he wouldn’t raise enough to contend strongly with Vice President Al Gore.

He is not the first athlete-turned-politician to look to the sports world for support: Former football quarterback Jack Kemp was accompanied by former San Diego Chargers teammates on the trail in 1996, when he was the Republican nominee for vice president. Legendary Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams campaigned in New Hampshire in 1988 with George Bush, who had played first base for Yale.

But Bradley is reaching out in a much more systematic fashion, involving big-name athletes as celebrity magnets at a level unprecedented in a presidential campaign. Revving up excitement among core money donors--lawyers, investment bankers and computer tycoons, all rabid fans--the athletes and coaches serve as a reminder of Bradley’s theme that he has a very different resume than that of his fellow cerebral policy wonk, Gore.

“This may be a frontier for drawing attention to campaigns,” said Ellen Miller, executive director of Public Campaign, a nonpartisan campaign-finance reform organization. “Sports and politics haven’t really mixed before.”

Luring Voters With Marquee Names

Unlike Hollywood celebrities, who delight in taking on public causes, sports stars have traditionally resisted expressing political views. But Bradley strategists hope former players and coaches, especially those with marquee fame, can pull disaffected nonvoters into the process, much as former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura did in his surprise victory as governor of Minnesota.

“You use whatever is necessary to get to that next step, to reach out to the voters and America,” said Phil Jackson, Bradley’s very close friend, former Knicks teammate and a highly respected coach who left the Chicago Bulls last year after taking the team to six championships.

So far, the strategy seems to be working. Teammates and opponents, sports lawyers, agents and coaches donated more than $26,600 in the first quarter of the year, according to a computer analysis for The Times by the Campaign Study Group, an independent research firm based in Springfield, Va.

More important, they have mingled with contributors from all types of industries at events that have raked in more than $6.8 million, a big chunk of the campaign’s change, said Rick Wright, Bradley’s national finance director and a former Princeton forward.

Of 40 Bradley fund-raisers, nine have featured athletes’ and team owners’ support, with one more scheduled for June in Arizona. Another event is in the early planning stages for Chicago in July.

So far, the fund-raisers with sports figures “have been the big ones,” Wright said. He wouldn’t disclose the total take so far, but “we keep surpassing our expectations so much that we don’t know where to put our expectations anymore.”

He is confident that, with the athletes’ help, Bradley will reach his goal of $20 million to $25 million by December, far less than Gore will net but enough to underwrite advertising for primaries nationwide.

In a telephone interview, Bradley said the sight of his old basketball friends helps him relax during the endless rounds of dinners and brunches: “It’s like going into a comfortable room and sitting in your favorite chair.”

Campaign officials predict that by summer, baseball and football players will join basketball stars in touting Bradley.

The campaign even has its eye on the biggest superstar of all, Michael Jordan, whose $1,000 gift to Bradley was his first direct political donation ever. Two Bradley operatives in Chicago are discussing with the retired Bulls guard a more active role on Bradley’s behalf. A Jordan agreement to make public appearances, commercials or even videotapes for rallies would be electrifying news.

Athletes Mobilize for Their Candidate

But for now, the campaign is relying on what one fund-raiser delicately calls “the vintage guys” who played with and against Bradley, growing familiar with him long before he was running for anything.

They are mostly new to campaigning. Unseld, for example, has only limited political experience. He supported his brother, a Louisville city councilman; in 1968, he escorted Lynda Bird Johnson to a Hubert H. Humphrey event.

He offered to work actively for Bradley because “he was talking about kids and education back when he was a player,” Unseld said. “I knew what he stood for. He hasn’t changed.”

Billy Cunningham, former Philadelphia 76ers player and later head coach, never before dabbled in politics beyond voting, usually for Republicans. This week, he is drawing up a solicitation letter to send to 100 people asking for donations to Bradley’s campaign, and he expects to attend a fund-raiser in Philadelphia at the end of June.

The willingness of Bradley’s basketball peers to mobilize “speaks worlds for the man,” Cunningham said. “He’s a quality person.”

In New York, in April, contributors mingled with Bradley’s fellow Knicks alumni Willis Reed and Dave DeBuscherre in an event that brought $2.2 million into campaign coffers, according to Wright. In San Diego, former Princeton teammate Larry Lucchino, now president of the Padres, got franchise owner John Moores to pledge to raise $1 million for Bradley.

On invitations to fund-raisers in Raleigh and Charlotte, N.C., retired University of North Carolina coach Dean Smith was the main attraction, creating far more excitement than a former governor, who was listed as a co-sponsor.

Oscar Robertson, who played ball in Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Milwaukee, has volunteered to organize events in those cities.

Phil Jackson has been the most committed. In recent months, he served as a featured speaker at Bradley fund-raisers in Brunswick, N.J.; San Francisco; and on the Bulls’ home turf, Chicago, where, at the United Center, as the hotel ballroom was plunged into darkness, spotlights roamed the floor and the Bulls’ public-address announcer made the introductions.

While rumors fly about various NBA teams furiously courting him, Jackson said the campaign may provide reason enough to forgo coaching altogether next season. “It could, it really could,” he said. “I haven’t made a decision. This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, the chance to have an effect.”

He is well aware of his value. “Bradley is known in the 40- to 70-year-old age group. The 20- to 35-year-old group was pretty much teething when he was a star,” Jackson said.

By contrast, the recent Bulls glory teams are so universally known that when Bradley and the coach traveled in Turkey last summer, it was Jackson whom strangers in Istanbul instantly recognized.

And, of course, there’s the tie to Jordan.

He was among the Bulls that Jackson took to Bradley’s Senate office several years ago; Bradley talked about issues and post-basketball careers and then guided everyone on a tour of the Capitol. It was Jackson who placed Jordan’s name on the Chicago fund-raiser invitation list, which resulted in a check for $1,000, the maximum an individual can legally contribute to a single candidate, along with a matching check from Jordan’s wife, Juanita.

Juanita Jordan has been a Democratic patron, donating $2,500 last summer to Gore’s political action committee, listing the couple’s M&J; Endowment Fund as her employer. The fund also granted $5,000 to the Democratic National Committee in October 1997.

But Jordan himself has conspicuously avoided taking sides, apparently fearing the effect on the endorsements of sneakers, phone companies and underwear that have brought him untold wealth. He reportedly rebuffed a 1996 plea to help a North Carolina Democrat with the memorable reply, “Republicans buy shoes too.”

He is not the only younger player to shy away from politics. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has been meeting resistance even in getting current athletes to engage in voter registration drives. “So many of the agents have made it so complicated,” said Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), who is organizing the committee’s outreach effort. Without compensation for the clients, agents “don’t want them involved.”

But Bradley is networking through friends who still move in today’s sports world. Aside from Jordan, Jackson lobbied Steve Kerr, a Bull who moved to the San Antonio Spurs this year, about stumping for Bradley. “Kerr is extremely interested,” Jackson said.

Calvin Hill, the former football star, has considered a leave from his Dallas Cowboys job to help Bradley, and he could approach his basketball-playing son, the Detroit Pistons’ Grant Hill.

And Unseld, now general manager of the Washington Wizards, said he’ll mention to his team’s players that Bradley could use their help.

It’s their decision, Unseld says, but he figures that, if he can be persuaded, any of them can.

“That was the one thing I had to get over about the man: He was a New York Knick. That wasn’t easy,” Unseld growled.

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Times researcher John Beckham contributed to this story.