TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/013089/01308900.013

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 12.2 KB | 237 lines

                                                                                PROFILE, Page 56

Running As His Own Man


It's a long way from Harlem's Theresa Hotel to chairing the
Democratic Party, but RONALD BROWN may get there -- and become
the nation's most prominent black official By Walter Isaacson

    As a freshman at Middlebury College, where he was the only
black in his class, Ron Brown found himself rushed by the most
prestigious fraternities on campus. It was a welcome embrace for
the young man whose move from Harlem to rural Vermont had been,
he recalls, "a pretty heavy transition." There was one problem:
the fraternity he chose, Sigma Phi Epsilon, like most others,
had a racial restriction in its charter.

    In the weeks that followed, there was an intense debate at
the frat house. Everyone liked Ron and agreed that he would
make a good member, but they worried about what it would mean
for the fraternity. Brown said little, though he let it be
known that he was unwilling to finesse the issue by accepting
house privileges without full membership. Finally, the
fraternity brothers rallied around and initiated him. As a
result, the national headquarters of Sigma Phi revoked the
chapter's charter. Middlebury responded by barring any
fraternity with racial barriers. Eventually, all the college's
fraternities repealed their exclusionary clauses.

    Now, 30 years later, Brown is embroiled in a contest in
which the racial clauses are unwritten but not unspoken -- the
election of the chairman of the Democratic Party. "The
Democratic Party is the last, best hope of this country to deal
with issues of race, region, religion and ethnicity," he says as
he hops around the country in a Gulfstream jet loaned by the
United Food and Commercial Workers union. "This election has
become a test of that."

    When the 404 members of the Democratic National Committee
vote on Feb. 10, more will be at stake than replacing Paul Kirk
as their top technician. Ironically, Brown could end up
rivaling Jesse Jackson as America's pre-eminent black leader and
thus steal some thunder from the man whose campaign he helped
manage and whose specter has hovered over this contest. Brown
would also become, for better or worse, a symbol of his party:
either an embodiment of the commitment to fairness and equality
that has been at the heart of the Democrats' creed or, from
another viewpoint, the final snub to those white voters who feel
the party has become beholden to blacks and special interests.

    With his impish smile and baby face, Brown, 47, hardly looks
like an agent of historic change. He has an outsize mustache,
a quick wit and an ability to energize any room he enters,
traits that conjure up comparisons with Jackson. But his hands
are those of a polished Washington lobbyist: when he speaks, his
left hand rests casually in his pocket while his right hand
ticks off the logical points he wants to make; when he listens,
his palms press together as he taps his fingers thoughtfully.
At a lectern, he talks rather than preaches. On a couch, his
relaxed body language and bemused self-assurance give him the
aura of an actor in a light-beer commercial.

    Brown is able to speak in both black and white. At the
Democratic Convention, after he and Paul Brountas settled most
of the disputes between Jackson and Michael Dukakis, the four
men gathered for a breakfast summit. One issue defied
resolution: the nature of the "partnership" that Jackson was
demanding. Finally Brown explained it as a language gap.
Dukakis and Brountas interpreted partnership as if they were
discussing a law firm. For Jackson, the term implied common
goals and respect. Brown, a partner in one of Washington's most
powerful law firms who began his career as an organizer with the
National Urban League, helped break the impasse.

    Such good deeds seldom go unpunished. At every stop, the
question of Brown's relationship with Jackson comes up. At a
small meeting in a Richmond hotel, a woman squirms on the couch,
apologizes, then blurts it out with a nervous smile. At a
Chicago forum, a man reads the question from a page prepared in
advance. They often call it simply "the Jesse question," the
perception that Brown is Jackson's candidate or is obligated to
him.

    Brown has a variety of answers:

    "The question assumes that I was born in May of 1988, when I
went to work for Jackson for three months," he sometimes says,
going on to point out his long service to the party before then.

    When the question comes from party leaders, he reminds them
that they begged him to take over the Jackson effort, knowing he
would be a unifying influence. It is unfair, he says, to
disqualify him for doing what they asked.

    If he feels the question is in fact a euphemism for unease
about a black -- and it often is -- Brown tackles race head on.
"If I were a white person who had been Jackson's convention
manager, I don't think this would come up."

    Though he says he is "proud" of his work with Jackson, he
does not highlight it. In his two-page letter to D.N.C. members
spelling out his credentials, Jackson's name never appears.

    But Brown's best defense against the perception that he is
"Jesse's man" is simply to tell people who he is and where he
comes from. His life story, in addition to bearing witness to
his own intellect, illustrates the keys to success that existed
30 years ago for a black born in the inner city: a neighborhood
that included the middle class as well as the poor, a childhood
filled with role models, a father who worked, schools that
actually educated, and the leadership opportunities that ROTC
and the Army offered.

    Ronald Harmon Brown developed his social skills at a most
unlikely place: the once famous Theresa Hotel on 125th Street in
Harlem, where he grew up. His father was the manager, a
celebrated fixture in the community. His mother was socially
prominent. Ron was their only child. The hotel was alive with
entertainers, politicians, doctors, lawyers and sports heroes,
black and white.

    "I'd be peeking around the hotel, always conscious of who
people were and how they operated," he says. Richard Nixon, who
campaigned at the Theresa in 1952, was the first politician to
be photographed with Ron ("I immediately decided I wanted to
become a Democrat," he jokes). Joe Louis, a frequent guest,
gave him a pair of his boxing gloves. From the roof of the
Theresa, 13 floors high, Ron and his friends would gaze out on
the excitement of 125th Street -- the Apollo Theater, the
street-corner orators, the hustlers -- and the poverty beyond.

    Education was a high priority for his parents, both
graduates of Howard University. His ability to glide
effortlessly between different worlds was enhanced when he
began taking the bus from Harlem to the Upper East Side to
attend white schools. "When I was young," he says, "making
white friends was no problem." At Middlebury he helped pay for
his education by joining ROTC.

    When he was called to active duty, he and his wife Alma put
everything they owned into a brand-new 1963 navy blue Mercury
Comet convertible and headed for Fort Eustis in Virginia. At a
drive-in near Newport News, Va., the waitress came out and told
them that because they were black, they would have to park
across the street. Instead, they drove on. He can still recall
every detail of the scene.

    He was assigned, at 21, to take charge of logistics at a
base in West Germany, with 60 German civilians working under
him. He rose to the rank of captain, then went to Korea as
commandant of a school, where he trained Korean soldiers to
work with the U.S. Army. "I learned to be comfortable taking
command," he says. Indeed, those who have been with him in
political or lobbying efforts say he is the type people turn to
when a decision needs to be made.

    When he returned to the U.S., he became Whitney Young's
protege at the Urban League, where he ran a job-training
program. At night he attended law school at St. John's
University. There he forged a bond with a teacher the other
students considered intimidating, Mario Cuomo. "We had an
instant rapport," says Brown. Cuomo, who endorsed Brown's
candidacy early on, agrees. When Vernon Jordan took over the
Urban League in 1971, he persuaded Brown to move to Washington
to take over the organization's office there.

    Brown's chance to play politics on the national level came
when Ted Kennedy tapped him to be his deputy campaign manager in
1980. He ran the Senator's California primary race, juggling the
rivalries there to produce one of the campaign's few successes.

    Brown had made little money, but he had developed a taste
for the good life. So when Tom Boggs, one of Washington's
paramount lawyer-lobbyists, talked to him at a party given by
Kennedy, he was open to an offer. Brown signed on as a partner
at Patton, Boggs & Blow with a salary comfortably in the
six-figure range. "He has a deft touch on Capitol Hill, just
like he has on a basketball court," says former Army Secretary
Clifford Alexander, a Washington lawyer who plays ball with
Brown on Saturday mornings. "He makes his opinions clear in a
way that seems logical and fair, and he never boxes people into a
corner. His approach is designed to get the job done."

    The partnership allowed Brown to live in the manner to which
he wanted to become accustomed. He sports Hermes silk ties
accented with a silver collar pin, well-tailored suits and
monogrammed shirts with French cuffs. He and Alma live in a new
four-bedroom town house just west of Washington's Rock Creek
Park, with a sleek black Jaguar in the driveway. Their son
Michael is a law student at the University of Delaware;
daughter Tracy is a senior at Boston College.

    When the 1988 election approached, Brown initially turned
down Jackson's request for him to run his campaign. But as the
primaries were ending, Jackson gave a speech at a Washington
fund raiser about how his quest had changed America and the
role of blacks. "What we've accomplished has been historically
meaningful," Jackson said. "Now it's time to put my first team
on the field." While he was speaking, he had his hand on
Brown's shoulder. Brown was moved. He agreed to come aboard as
convention manager.

    During the Atlanta convention, he had 20 telephone lines in
his hotel suite. At least twice a day, he met with the Dukakis
camp, using a three-page game plan he had hammered out with
Jackson and his entourage during an all-night session in
Nashville the Friday before the convention opened. A menagerie
of Jackson hangers-on and media executives produced a constant
din of demands on his time. Through it all, Brown moved at his
amiable pace, never snapping. He shows the same style as he
travels in pursuit of the chairmanship amid the crisp flutter of
his professional staffers. Only small signs show that the calm
is partly a facade: eyes that keep darting and miss nothing, a
leg that shakes back and forth like a place-kicker's as he sits
and talks.

    Many of those involved in choosing a new party chairman say
-- as did the frat brothers at Sigma Phi -- that they like Brown
personally but worry about the effect his election would have
on the party. "Ron is a great guy, talented, intelligent and
articulate," says Senator John Breaux of Louisiana. "But I think
he's the wrong person at the wrong time and the wrong symbol."
Brown refers to this as his "but" problem. "My goal is to make
it more difficult for people to say `but.' "

    The longer Brown campaigns, the closer he gets to this goal.
Though he is running against three former Congressmen and one
state party chairman, all white, he is clearly in the lead. That
has put the party in a bind: his election would alienate many
whites, but a last-minute defeat would be seen as an abandonment
of party principles. Because of his connection to Jackson and,
yes, his color, Brown's talents as a cajoler and conciliator
have been thoroughly tested during this campaign. If he succeeds
in becoming the symbolic leader and video face of a party that
has won the White House only once since 1964, those talents will
face an even more rigorous workout.