Bradley Switches Gears, Courts Young

Think of the Little Bighorn. You’ll have some idea what Bill Bradley walked into one night this week when he ventured to Evergreen State College in search of votes in his struggle to win next Tuesday’s primary in Washington state.

Evergreen gained fame last year when it selected convicted murderer Mumia Abu Jamal to be a graduation speaker. One student leader looked around the library building and guessed that quite a few of the students there had been gassed at the demonstrations against the World Trade Organization meetings several months ago.

Into this roiling caldron of activism, idealism and iconoclasticism walked Bill Bradley. He was shouted down when he tried to deliver his speech. They didn’t want speeches. They wanted answers. While his aides fumed, Bradley calmly took on his interlocutors. He let them vote on whether to scrap his speech. Sentiment was divided, so he gave a shorter version.

By the time it was over, Bradley had done the seemingly impossible, wooing over much of the crowd, who gave him an enthusiastic hand. “He’s the best major candidate,” said Brian Frank, 20. But still, Frank and many of his friends would be voting for Ralph Nader.

That says a lot about what Bradley is facing as he tries to get back into the race against his Democratic rival, Vice President Al Gore.

With just days before the Washington primary, the soft-spoken intellectual still appears to be a candidate in search of a constituency. Despite Bradley’s long and consistent record on health care, labor rights, the environment and racial equality, Gore’s grip on the Democratic Party’s voting blocs has held firm. Bradley’s own aides concede he is 20 to 25 points down as he heads into the Tuesday primary.

Bradley won’t allow himself to be cornered by the question, but it is apparent that Washington state has become his Dunkirk. If he doesn’t stop Gore here, where his concern for the environment and his old-style, never wavering liberalism mesh well with many Democrats, where can he stop him?

His strategy appears aimed at courting the young. Of Bradley’s first five events since his return to Washington, four were before college crowds. On Friday, he continued appealing to the young and the green at an art center overlooking Puget Sound. To the activists who say there’s not that much difference between himself and Gore, he says, look at my record. He has a lifetime rating of 84 from the League of Conservation Voters. Bradley brags that he tore down dams, filibustered against coal mining in Utah, and made agribusiness take better care of its lands.

Why did Gore get a 64 rating from the league? “Maybe it’s because he never saw a dam he didn’t like.”

If he can defeat Gore here, or come close, maybe finish within 10 or fewer points of Gore, it could be proof that his message is finally getting through to voters who ignored him in New Hampshire and Iowa. If all goes well, he could get just the bump he needs as he heads into the vital March 7 primaries, where 65% of the delegates will be apportioned.

So far, however, only one thing seems to have helped, going on the attack. In Monday night’s debate in Harlem, Bradley consistently took hard shots at Gore’s record in his ongoing strategy of trying to show there are two Al Gores: the loyal No. 2 to Bill Clinton who was on the right side of most issues Democrats care about and the Southern conservative who Bradley likes to call the poster boy for the National Rifle Assn. Since that time, Bradley has seemed more focused, more certain of himself.

His old friend, basketball great Bill Russell, who attended his speech at the University of Washington, noticed the change. “He’s getting better,” Russell said.

“He’s reluctant to blow his own horn. Now, he’s more willing to say, ‘I’m OK.’ ”

This is partly a process of Bradley being who he is, an odd combination of star athlete who lives in his body, and Rhodes scholar who spends much of his time in his head. The two can come in conflict, but they can also work together, according to those close to Bradley. Like an athlete who sees the whole court as he dribbles, Bradley saw he needed to separate himself from Gore. Too many people thought they were so similar, so why upset the status quo; go for the guy already in the White House.

And like an athlete who knows when it’s time to get tough under the boards, Bradley hasn’t looked back since he went on the attack.

But it has been tough for even the new, tough Bradley to break through the wall of silence that descended on his campaign after he lost in New Hampshire and Iowa. Some television reporters on the Bradley bus refer to it as a news blackout. Everyone wants to know what Bush and McCain are doing.

On Friday, the campaign gathered hope that their efforts here are bearing fruit in the signs that Gore is taking Washington more seriously. Bradley campaign spokesman Eric Hauser said Gore has tripled his radio ad buys in the past few days.

On Friday, Bradley showed up at Everett Community College in Everett, Wash. When asked whether the campaign was targeting the young, Hauser said, “I’ll grant that.”

Bradley’s first stop on arriving Wednesday night in Washington was Seattle Community College, where he received a friendlier reception than at Evergreen. In the crowd were Jenny Hilden and Tyler Saltonstall, both 24, sharing an apartment on Capitol Hill because that’s all they can afford.

She’s a geologist; he hasn’t landed a job yet and admits he’s the cynical one. When he talks about his and the nation’s future, he is despondent over the devastation of the environment and the tragedy of social injustice, but he and Jenny do like Bill Bradley. He “comes off as having more idealism” than Al Gore.

But he said, he kind of likes Ralph Nader too.