Rocking to resounding gospel strains, President Clinton went to a black church in the heart of Harlem yesterday to rouse a vital constituency to turn out its vote for Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, the onetime rival whom he now praised as "the heart that you must not lose."
Mr. Clinton, in town for political fund-raising and meetings with international leaders before a speech at the United Nations today, took his sermon from an epigraph by the prophet Isaiah printed on the cover of the program at the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church on West 132d Street: "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles."
"But I want to talk to you about the rest of the verse," added the President, an old Sunday school regular who entered the venerable church -- once a stop on the Underground Railroad -- with a Bible under his arm. " 'They shall run and not grow weary. They shall walk and not faint.' "
This weekend, Mr. Clinton practiced the difficult task of promoting his party as a not-very-popular President, giving eight speeches in four cities in three days for Democratic candidates, plus the appearance for Governor Cuomo.
The implication of the President's ad lib in Harlem could not have been plainer for the embattled Democratic Governor, who declined to seek the prize that Mr. Clinton won, nominated him with soaring oratory at the Democratic Convention two years ago and now needs every shred of support any surrogate can muster. The congregation of 350 worshipers responded with applause.
"The people who don't want us to get together, and who have a very different idea about moving forward than most of us do, are hoping and praying that you will grow weary, that you will not run, that you will not walk, that you will just grow weary," Mr. Clinton said in a not-so-veiled reference to the Republicans. He added: "Do not lose heart. Show up, talk to the people in your neighborhood, tell them to show up. Scripture says we're supposed to be good citizens, too. Mario Cuomo is the heart that you must not lose."
Black turnout is especially crucial to Mr. Cuomo's prospects against State Senator George E. Pataki, and although the Governor retains strong black support in the polls, he has been at some pains to energize black voters. The symbol of that trouble -- former Mayor David N. Dinkins, who has made no secret that he believes Mr. Cuomo did not work hard enough for his re-election last year -- was absent from the group of black leaders in the church.
Mr. Clinton, facing Democratic losses in Congress and statehouses in November, retains atypically high poll ratings in New York -- well above Mr. Cuomo's. So keeping a Democrat in Albany is squarely in the President's self-interest, and the Governor's aides said the White House late last week proposed a joint appearance at a black church. Bethel's pastor, the Rev. O'Neil Mackey, got final word of the visit at 7:30 P.M. Saturday, after a trip to Brooklyn was ruled out because of travel time. He stayed up until 2:30 yesterday morning working on the details.
The President managed a bipartisan moment, too: a courtesy call in his suite at the Waldorf-Astoria with Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who ranks as one of his and Mr. Cuomo's favorite Republicans these days, having lobbied for the President's crime bill and lobbed grenades at Mr. Pataki's refusal to say how he would help the city.
"The only discussion we had of the Governor's race was a mutual agreement that it was very close," Mr. Giuliani said after the meeting.
Last night, Mr. Clinton spoke at the Waldorf to raise money for Democratic Congressional candidates from around the country, and was joined by big donors like Maurice Tempelsman. "Let's face it," the President said, "the guys we're running against are good at talking. And they have a simple system: Rule or ruin. They're not much interested in doing."
Throughout the morning church service, Mr. Cuomo was flanked on the altar by Representative Charles B. Rangel, who grew up down the block, and his Democratic running mates, Comptroller H. Carl McCall and former Family Court Judge Karen S. Burstein, the nominee for State Attorney General. The President praised them all, noting especially that Mr. McCall would become the first black man elected statewide in New York and thus, he said, a national role model.
Mr. Clinton sat on the aisle in the third pew from the front with his wife, Hillary, and daughter, Chelsea, until rising to speak at the end of the hour-and-45-minute service. He sang the hymns lustily, murmured the responsive refrains of the choral anthems and swayed to the jazz-gospel soloists, at several points putting his arm around Mrs. Clinton.
When a booming baritone began a bluesy plea for redemption that crested with the phrase: 'Oh, Lord, Oh, Lord, please work on me!" Mr. Clinton sat rapt, nodding intently. But Mr. Cuomo was oblivious, scribbling furiously in the speech notes on his lap.
For his part, the Governor also cited religious themes and maxims, albeit more eclectic and erudite ones, skipping from "Deo Gratias" (Latin for "Thank you, Lord") to "Tikkun Olam" (Hebrew for "Repair the World," one of the basic tenets of Judaism) to the writings of his favorite French Jesuit, Teilhard de Chardin, who held that one's endeavors should be based on the desire to do greater good, not ambition.
In stemwinding ad libs of his own, Mr. Cuomo barely pleaded his case, but he made one for the President, and the Democrats, that left his meaning clear, saying at one point: "I don't want a President who's going to take me wherever the political wind blows, because I don't know where it's going to blow, and maybe next year it's going to blow against Italians, and maybe it's going to blow against guys with baggy eyes. And I'll tell you, I've got to look out for winds that blow like that."
Mr. Clinton, whose talk had to compete with that archetypal New York annoyance -- a broken car alarm that began wailing just as he started -- said that Mr. Cuomo's "greatest failing is that he speaks about me better than he speaks about himself." He recited his own burdens in running for re-election as Governor of Arkansas, including an encounter with an old man at the State Fair who, asked by Mr. Clinton, "Aren't you sick of me after all these years?" replied: "No, but everybody else I know is."
But that is the price of grappling with governance, Mr. Clinton suggested, adding that for all of Mr. Cuomo's three terms in office, "in a lot of ways, this is his first term, and it's just started, because it's the first time we've had a chance to work together" as Democratic partners to face what the President said were 30 years of social problems, 20 years of economic trials and 12 years of Republican neglect.
The catch: Since Mr. Clinton took office, New Yorkers have just as often as not complained that his proposals in areas from taxes to health care to welfare would hurt wealthy states like New York, which are hardest hit by tax increases and whose rich social benefits could be squeezed in the wake of new national minimum programs and standards.
