Beatty Says 2000 Presidential Bid Is Very Unlikely

Addressing renewed speculation about his political ambitions, actor Warren Beatty all but ruled out a run for the White House on Tuesday--though he left the door open just a crack.

“I’m not a candidate,” he said in a phone interview from New York. “I don’t have a campaign. I have no organization. I have no campaign staff and no advisors.”

In a speech last week at Harvard, Beatty, 62, was decidedly less clear-cut about his political intentions, although he spoke extensively about the need for campaign finance reform.

But speculation about a possible Beatty presidential candidacy heated up after the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday recounted a lobbying effort--which Beatty subsequently disavowed--to place the actor’s name on California’s March 7 primary ballot.

So, is he going to run in 2000?

“It’s extremely, extremely unlikely,” Beatty said.

When pressed again whether that meant “no”-- as in absolutely not--he replied: “I won’t play that game.”

Beatty said that a friend, William Bradley, who pushed hard in the last week to get the actor on the California ballot, was not acting at his behest.

“This has nothing to do with me,” Beatty said. “If I wanted to be on the ballot I would have called and said, ‘Would you put me on the ballot?’ And I would have met the criteria. But I had no desire to be on the ballot because I’m not a candidate. I told Bill Bradley that.

“If people have some sort of enthusiasm to do one thing or another,” he added, “I’m not going to say something negative about doing that. But nobody represents me.”

Bradley, a Sacramento political activist, denied lobbying on Beatty’s behalf and said he was simply seeking information from Secretary of State Bill Jones’ office when he contacted officials regarding the criteria to qualify the actor for the primary ballot.

Bradley acknowledged meeting last week with Beth Miller, a spokeswoman for Jones’ office, to discuss the rules for qualifying a candidate for the primary ballot. Miller said Bradley “represented himself as asking on behalf of Warren Beatty.”

Beatty acknowledged discussing those criteria with Bradley, among others, but said he never gave anyone marching orders to press further, because he hasn’t put himself forward as a candidate--an important requirement to get on the ballot.

Bradley “indicated to me that he had been in contact with Warren Beatty and that Mr. Beatty knew about his conversation with me,” Miller said Tuesday. She said Bradley followed up that conversation with several phones calls, faxes and e-mails pressing the case for placing Beatty’s name on the ballot. But Miller said Beatty was omitted because neither the Democratic nor Reform parties considered the liberal actor a candidate for their parties’ nominations.

The criteria for placement on the state primary ballot, established by Jones’ office, include fund-raising strength, support in reputable public opinion polls, inclusion in presidential debates and a stated intention to seek the White House. The secretary of state has until Dec. 30 to add names to the ballot.