The inside story of how Jesse Jackson almost became America’s first Black presidential nominee

By Abby Phillip, CNN

(CNN) — Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., a civil rights leader and political outsider, ran for president in two groundbreaking campaigns that changed American politics. A son of the segregated South who went from nothing to eventually becoming one of the most well-known public figures in America, Jackson’s outsider political campaigns challenged the Democratic Party to reform its nominating process, more equitably include women and non-white voters, and appeal to Americans on a platform of economic populism.

In 1984, Jackson lost the nomination but started a movement he called the “Rainbow Coalition.” By 1988, Jackson was a force to be reckoned with. This time, he faced a crowded primary of established political hands. The race, led by Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, was heated from the beginning. Jackson, a polarizing but outsized figure, was a magnet for media attention. In both 1984 and 1988, Jackson appealed to Black voters in the South, who formed a critical voting bloc in the Democratic primary. But this time, his appeal among white voters was growing as well. In March 1988, Jackson came from behind to win the Michigan Democratic caucuses and set off a panic in his party. For the first time, the party and Jackson himself, began contemplating: What would happen if he became the Democratic nominee for president?

Below is an excerpt from Abby Phillip’s new book, “A Dream Deferred,” which publishes on October 28.

Jesse Jackson convened half a dozen of his closest advisers in his Chicago home. For the first time, he was beginning to lay out what he would have to do to build an actual presidency if he were to become the nominee.

There was plenty of fear, too. In his own mind, the gravity of the presidency — or the potential of it — descended on him all at once. This was the same man who wore a bulletproof jacket provided to him by the Secret Service as a matter of course during both his campaigns. But for the first time, he was discussing with his closest aides what they would do about cabinet positions and White House appointments.

“He was seriously thinking for the first time, ‘Wait a second, this could be doable,’” recalled campaign manager Jerry Austin, a white Jewish man from New York with a long history of political campaigns in the heartland.

“By that time, we had some momentum, and the issues that we raised were resonating,” Jackson said. “Our issues were on time, issues about economic justice and shared economic security, a connection between family farms and urban workers, how blacks and whites had to relate together, and browns. So, it was in full gear. We used to call it ‘poor campaign, rich message.’ Our message was winning.”

A similar realization had come to Democratic Party officials, who watched in shock as Jackson beat Dukakis 2–1 in a key industrial midwestern state. The Michigan victory also would, potentially briefly, leave Jackson with an outright delegate lead — a nightmare scenario for some in the party. “The party is up against an extraordinary endgame,” Democratic pollster Paul Maslin told The New York Times. “If this guy has more convention votes than anyone else, how can we not nominate him? But how can we nominate him?”

Others were blunter, though unwilling to put their names on the record. They whispered about denying Jackson the nomination if he entered the convention with the most delegates. “I’m not saying that he can do that,” one anonymous party veteran told the Times. “But if he could, we would be in an impossible situation. We’d have the choice of turning our backs on Jesse, and alienating the Blacks, or nominating him and almost certainly losing in November.”

The Dukakis campaign was suddenly under the microscope. The Massachusetts governor had plenty going for him organizationally, but almost nothing that gripped the hearts of primary voters. “We must acknowledge the strength of Jackson’s message,” one of Dukakis’s supporters, Sen. Donald W. Riegle Jr. of Michigan, said. On Capitol Hill, Democratic lawmakers were skeptical about Dukakis the man and the uninspiring campaign he was running. Even if they wanted to “stop Jackson,” they were trapped. They were deathly afraid of being called racist for opposing a Black candidate but were convinced that if Jackson were the nominee, the Republicans would run away with the race in historic fashion.

‘They were buying into his campaign’

The relationship between Jackson and Austin, his campaign manager, had been cordial but uneasy until this point. Unlike many people around Jackson, Austin was not a longtime loyalist. Yet the victory in Michigan seemed to act as a pressure valve releasing some of the distrust Jackson may have felt for Austin—at least temporarily.

The campaign finally seemed to be getting its footing. With Austin’s arrival and a more sophisticated finance team being brought on, Jackson was well positioned to take advantage of the financial windfalls that came from his better-than-expected performance on Super Tuesday. He was continuing to run, by far, the leanest of the campaigns still in the field. But the sudden uptick in fundraising among smaller donations and larger checks caught the attention of his rivals. The campaign began using mail solicitations to fundraise. And with each campaign victory, raising money from wealthy donors became easier.

On that front, Jackson was playing catch-up with the other, more establishment candidates in the race. But where none of them could touch his candidacy was with his small-dollar appeal. It was one of the great gifts Jackson had, taken straight from the pulpit. At rallies and campaign events in churches and high school gyms, the ask would start at a thousand dollars. Could anyone spare a thousand? Not one hand in the room went up—nor did Jackson expect that any would. The ask then went down to five hundred, then to fifty, then twenty and ten, until virtually every hand in the room was raised and people put what they had into the collection hat.

“Afterward, I said to him, ‘Why do you start asking for a thousand? There’s nobody in this church with a thousand dollars,’” Austin recalled. “And he said, ‘When I get to “Who will give me something?” everybody would give me something.’”

“They were buying into his campaign,” Austin said.

Tranquilizing the establishment

It was past time for Jackson to begin to calm the nerves of the party establishment in Washington. With the help of former DNC chairman John C. White and Bert Lance, former budget director for President Jimmy Carter, the campaign gathered around thirty-five Democrats representing a cross section of fundraisers, party officials, and tastemakers in a ballroom at the Jefferson Hotel in DC. Jackson worked the room. The aim was to “raise the comfort level” of party officials. One attendee called it a “tranquilizer” for the Democratic Party chattering class.

“A lot of those kinds of people wind up making up public opinion in a very small subset,” said Ann Lewis. “This was about, at the most basic level, relieving people’s anxiety because I consistently thought Jesse had been so underestimated and not quite caricatured, but unfairly portrayed by the press. … And for people to see him as he really was, which was this smart, thoughtful guy and someone who really wanted the Democratic Party to succeed. They didn’t know that.”

Jackson was buoyant as he went into Wisconsin ahead of its April 5 primary. The crowds seemed to validate the growing interest in his candidacy. He and his campaign were confident that he could appeal to the state’s college towns and urban communities. Jackson had high hopes for the state, where his rallies had been enthusiastically received even in white farming communities.

They held a rally on the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin. Paul Wellstone, who would later become a progressive US senator from Minnesota, was Jackson’s state director there. A crowd nearly the size of the town’s population of 2,800 showed up in rural Amery, Wisconsin, to hear Jackson speak. As they gathered on the Blu-Fay dairy farm, there was almost as much appreciation for Jackson showing up there as for his message. “The truly impressive thing is here’s a Black man coming up to rural Wisconsin, to a community where all the Blacks could fill that barn, and there would still be a lot of room,” said Skip Shireman, a 61-year-old retired schoolteacher.

There was interest, no doubt, in Jackson’s candidacy and message, but the campaign was ill-equipped to capture that curiosity and transform it into votes. There were memorable messages, to be sure — “We will choose farms over arms in this generation” — but Jackson was characteristically short on specifics. If anything, his candidacy was beginning to be a repository for disenchantment with the rest of the Democratic field. “The man has something to say,” said Bob Jahnke, an electric plant worker who came out to see Jackson. “We had (US Rep. Dick) Gephardt and Dukakis here last Saturday. Gephardt had somewhat of a message, but Dukakis didn’t say much.”

In more moderate La Crosse, old party hands who had thrown their support behind Dukakis or Gore found discord in their own homes. “My mother is voting for Jesse Jackson, my sister is voting for Jesse Jackson,” a state representative who had thrown his hat in for Gore told a reporter. “I can’t even convince my own family to vote for Al Gore.”

The energy around Jackson’s candidacy was unmistakable and set his opponents’ more traditional campaigns in stark relief. As the April 5 primary approached, Dukakis was feeling the pressure to better define himself and his candidacy in the minds of uninspired voters. “I have no interest in being known as the Great Communicator,” he said. “I want to be known as the Great Builder. I want to make the American dream come alive again.”

Electability concerns win out

Jackson’s growing populist appeal was rising just as rapidly as the panic among establishment Democrats and the party faithful. A U.S. News & World Report poll put a Jackson-led presidential ticket far behind Vice President George H.W. Bush in a general election. Meanwhile, a Dukakis-led ticket with Jackson as vice president would narrowly beat Bush. The survey quantified persistent reservations among the electorate about Jackson’s candidacy. Those two forces came crashing together in spectacular fashion on Election Night in Wisconsin.

Thanks to Michigan, the expectations were sky high for Jackson. Austin’s strategy banked on defying expectations by overperforming among white voters in a state where Jackson could not necessarily rely on a large Black vote for credibility. But the Michigan victory changed all that. It refocused attention in the media on the question of “electability” and set victory as the standard that Jackson had to meet.

By Election Day, the tides had turned, and Dukakis pulled out a decisive victory.

“We got creamed,” Austin said.

Instead of securing an easy victory that his large, enthusiastic crowds suggested, Jackson finished second. In a poll around the primary, about a third of primary voters said management skills and the candidate’s experience were the main factors that determined their vote—and that group overwhelmingly supported Dukakis.

Wisconsin was “the end of the hope that you might actually have this miracle take place,” Borosage said. Dukakis’s message of “competence not charisma” worked. Jackson performed better with white voters, but any momentum he was hoping for after Michigan was gone.

“In Wisconsin there were people who would have voted for Jesse but didn’t want him to be the nominee because they didn’t think he could win,” Austin said. “Dukakis was a safe haven.”

Despite a groundswell of grassroots support for Jackson’s insurgent campaign, it was never matched by elected Democrats and party leaders. Jackson finished second to Dukakis in the 1988 primary but secured leverage at the Democratic National Convention. He used it to push through a series of changes to the Democratic Party’s platform and rules, including one that would become pivotal in another primary where a Black candidate, Barack Obama, sought the nomination against a more establishment figure. Jackson hoped that he would be considered seriously as running mate to Dukakis. The two men and their wives met at Dukakis’ Brookline, Massachusetts, home in the lead-up to the convention. But ultimately, Dukakis chose a white Southerner, Sen. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas. After a sharply negative general election campaign against Vice President George H.W. Bush, Dukakis lost in an electoral landslide.

The headline on this story has been updated.

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