Bradley, Gore Mark Holiday by Focusing on Race Relations

With the federal holiday and one last pre-caucus debate defining their joint theme, Democrats Al Gore and Bill Bradley marshaled the ghosts of the nation’s civil rights struggles Monday as they hustled for support from icy Iowa.

Campaigning on a day dedicated to the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., both Democratic candidates for president focused acutely on race relations and the effect of politics on the nation’s minorities. That was also the theme of Monday night’s final pre-caucus debate in Des Moines.

Vice President Gore wrapped himself in King’s mantle as he spoke from the hallowed pulpit of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where King preached before his assassination nearly 32 years ago. He assumed King’s stamp of approval on the Clinton administration’s programs--and by inference his own campaign--and offered a point-by-point assessment of the administration’s accomplishments.

Echoing the phrasing of one of King’s most famous speeches, he also took issue with one of the hallmarks of Bradley’s campaign--a massive reorganization of the health care insurance system that Gore contends would doom Medicaid.

“I see a day when we strengthen Medicare and Medicaid--which were created in Dr. King’s lifetime and must not be torn down in ours,” the vice president said.

Bradley Issues Challenge to Youths

Bradley, refusing to change his laconic campaign style in the face of another poll showing him distantly trailing Gore among likely caucus-goers, did not mention King during a short address to about 300 elementary and high school students attending a King Day forum at Drake University in Des Moines. But he challenged young Americans to confront each other about race relations, saying it would lead to “a deeper reaffirmation of our common humanity.”

“It is your generation that can blow away the acrid odor of race discrimination and racial misunderstanding,” added Bradley, who was joined at the event by former Boston Celtic star Bill Russell. “Some people say you’ll never do that. I’m absolutely banking my whole political life on the fact that it’s possible.”

Bradley has, indeed, spent much of the campaign encouraging white Americans in particular to understand the problems facing minorities and insisting he would use the White House’s bully pulpit as a vehicle to racial understanding.

But that has yet to translate into widespread support among minority voters; Gore leads the former senator from New Jersey by a 2-1 ratio among African American voters. In largely white Iowa, a new Los Angeles Times poll of likely caucus-goers found, Gore leads 58% to 35%.

The candidates were playing to both Iowa and the national stage Monday. Gore spent three hours at King’s old church, the final speaker in a program rife with high-wattage preachers, before jetting to Iowa for the debate.

As speaker after speaker brought the Atlanta congregation to its feet, there was the vice president standing up from his seat on the dais, ready with a hug--and for Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow, a kiss too. A key supporter, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, sat in the audience alongside Teamsters President James P. Hoffa, who has been wooed by the vice president but has yet to make an endorsement.

In the two years since he last spoke from that same pulpit, Gore said, African American unemployment has fallen to the lowest level ever measured, African American poverty has fallen to historic lows and African American homeownership has hit its highest level.

“If Dr. King were with us now, I believe he would celebrate our gains,” Gore said.

Holding out the goal of greater reconciliation among races while offering a barb at unspecified Republicans, Gore added: “I hear some in America arguing that our nation’s historic struggle for justice and equality is over--that we have already reached the promised land--and that we now have a colorblind society.

“They’re confusing the wilderness for Canaan. They don’t see the same country in which we live. . . . Our journey is not over.”

Bradley opened his day at Iowa’s official King celebration in downtown Des Moines, where he joined Gov. Tom Vilsack and six children as they rang bells to commemorate the holiday.

Vilsack, a Democrat elected in 1998 with the same labor support that Gore hopes will ensure his caucus victory, has remained neutral in the presidential race--although his wife, Christie, has endorsed Gore.

At the later gathering with the students, Bradley confirmed his go-against-the-flow instincts. He responded to a questioner by noting his similarities to President Clinton--from whom most of the candidates have distanced themselves in this campaign.

Bradley Aligns Himself With Clinton on Race

“I’m more similar to the policies, particularly on the issue of race, to Bill Clinton, than I am to any other politician that I have seen,” he said. “We’re different people, but we have a common commitment on the issue of race.”

One young student asked Bradley why no African American has been elected president.

“Because too many people in America can’t see beneath skin color yet to the individual,” he said. “But you know something? There will be. Why don’t you shoot for it?”

Bradley, trying to make up ground on Gore in the final surge to Monday’s caucus, will speak in Iowa City today before heading to New Hampshire, where he currently leads in the polls. At mid-week he will launch a multi-day bus tour through southeastern Iowa.

Gore will speak today to the Des Moines Register editorial board, then hit four campaign stops before Democratic activists and organized labor before heading to New Hampshire. He will spend Wednesday casting for votes there.

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Gerstenzang reported from the Gore campaign in Atlanta and Gold reported from the Bradley campaign in Des Moines. Times political writer Cathleen Decker, in Los Angeles, wrote this story.