CAMPAIGN ’88 : No Jackson Anger Seen

If the Rev. Jesse Jackson does not win the Democratic presidential nomination, he will not go home mad and hurt the Democrats’ chances in November.

That is the strong view of Jackson’s national chairman, California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, who met with reporters Friday in Los Angeles.

“The Democratic Party will owe a debt to Jesse Jackson even if he does not win the nomination,” Brown said. But the Speaker said he does not expect Jackson to get angry or form a third-party movement if he is not given a place on the Democratic ticket or, should the Democrats win the White House, a significant job in a new Administration.

“Jesse Jackson will be a player in the Democratic Party in perpetuity,” said Brown, who noted that that is one reason he has agreed to help Jackson this time after opposing him in 1984.

“The Jackson campaign is quite different this time,” Brown said. “Jackson’s own conduct, his utterances and his execution, reflect a respectability, as distinguished from a decided activist, protest cast” in 1984.

Brown said he and other black politicians who opposed Jackson’s candidacy in 1984 are now with him for two reasons: First, Jackson is no longer running against the Democratic Establishment, which upset some black leaders.

And second, Brown said, the success of Democratic U.S. Senate candidates in 1986--particularly in the South--has been traced directly to the large number of blacks added to the voter rolls by Jackson’s 1984 campaign.

“It has become very important for black politicians to have a piece of that action (new black voters) this time,” he said.