He'll Bring the Energy To Race for President

Jimmy Breslin

January 21, 2003

Al Sharpton held an intense meeting of his committee in formation for Sharpton for President yesterday in his office one flight over Madison Avenue and 124th Street.

The staff at the intense meeting consisted of the Rev. Al Sharpton, who was alone in the splendor of a new dark blue suit. He had a much shorter haircut than I've seen ever.

The decision of his meeting was to run for president.

"I spoke in South Carolina this morning," he said, "and they agreed with me. The only way to expand the party is for me to run."

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This is not as light as many would like it to be.

Take some of these Democratic candidates we've had: Mike Dukakis, Dick Gephardt, Joe Lieberman, Walter Mondale, Al Gore, and put them in a room and you'd open the window and jump out.

Sharpton may be stale in New York. But he is new practically everywhere else.

When crowds find that Sharpton can be exciting, and that he produces laughter with quick observations, he will have his moments as a candidate. He can use the language with more speed and fervor than anybody around. He is a master at "out of the past we see the future" phrases. About Martin Luther King, he told the crowd yesterday, "Celebrate the past. Fight for the future."

Yesterday, the voice was strongest when he attacked the "thugs" and stupid people who believe that you shouldn't learn anything.

"These thugs call women 'hos,'" he shouted. You can feel whites suddenly not being afraid of him.

He also knows more in five minutes about hospitals, schools, ambulance responses, prison sentences for the poor, welfare, food stamps and going into the service to fight wars than the rest of these presidential candidates have learned in their lives.

I don't know how far he goes. But at the start, he will have some of them on the verge of throwing up after appearing with him.

And somebody in that crowd of candidates is going to learn something from being in with Sharpton. Perhaps Bob Graham of Florida, who should win the Democratic primaries and bury Bush in an election. If an Al Gore, the most impossible candidate to listen to, could get 500,000 more votes than Bush, then an interesting politician will bury Bush and his phony wars.

It was 1 o'clock in the afternoon yesterday and Sharpton, alone in his office, talked about his appearance the other morning on one of the Sunday political shows, "Meet the Press." The announcer, Tim Russert, jowly, in attempted cuteness, asked Sharpton about the Tawana Brawley case. When Al didn't give much of an answer, Russert kept trying, boorishly.

Yesterday, Sharpton was saying, "The next time anybody wants to know about Tawana Brawley, I'm going to ask them, 'Do you ask Teddy Kennedy about Chappaquiddick? Do you ask Hillary Clinton about her husband? Do you ask Clinton?'"

Then he talked about the running.

"Expand the party," he said, spreading his arms.

Into the office came Mayor Bloomberg and a group and they went out into the meeting room, which had people standing two deep. The staircase leading to the hall was crowded and there were lines out on the street of people who had been waiting for over an hour and would never make it inside.

Sharpton told the crowd, "I was raised by a single mother on welfare, and she told me to only look up. I never knew I was poor until I got to Brooklyn College. I took a course in sociology. All right. They said, we study the poor. All right, I'll learn about them. Then they said they were going to study about a single mother raising a child on welfare in a housing project. I said, 'He's talking about me!' My mother told me that when I was down, just roll over and look up so you can see where you have to go. My mother came out of Dothan, Ala., and she couldn't vote at all and now she can vote for me for president."

Another phrase maker in Harlem originated in Dothan: Joseph Barrow Louis, who put into the English language, "He can run but he can't hide."

Sharpton said he sure wasn't going to worry about polls. "When he started, they told Martin Luther King he couldn't win. When I come to New York today, the schools are closed. City Hall is closed. Martin Luther King won."

He turned to Bloomberg. "I know you're having a little trouble with polls. Do like I do. Turn the numbers around and go ahead."

Down on the street, Sharon Richardson of the Bronx was first on a long line that was not moving. She is looking for a job as a computer trainee. Behind her was Gloria Saunders of Harlem, who works as a nurse's aide at Bellevue Hospital. They represented the long line behind them. They are real supporters, not people rented from unions or the streets, as most candidates must do.

At the start, their candidate, Sharpton, is going to find more of these people out there in the country than anybody suspects.