Gore, Bradley lock horns over legislative records

By Ian Christopher McCaleb and Amy Paulson/CNN

February 22, 2000
Web posted at: 12:03 p.m. EST (1703 GMT)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Vice President Al Gore and former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley assailed each other's voting records during their multiple years in the U.S. Congress on Monday night, with each accusing the other of backpedaling on a series of issues important to the predominantly African American audience gathered at Harlem's Apollo Theater for their 90-minute debate.

Vice President Al Gore

These two bitterest of rivals squared off over police brutality, racial profiling, affirmative action, and disparities in criminal sentences meted out to African-Americans. The two also revisited traditional Democratic concerns -- and staple Gore-Bradley items of contention -- including gun control, health care and education.

As expected, Bradley attacked Gore for what he called his "conservative congressional record" through the duration of the Time/CNN Democratic debate. However, the vice president seemed not only unfazed by the verbal barrage -- he sometimes baited his rival.

Bradley took numerous shots at the vice president, and repeatedly tried to show that Gore attempted to preserve the tax-exempt status of schools such as Bob Jones University, a conservative Christian school in South Carolina that bans interracial dating among other prohibitive policies.

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To prove his point, Bradley highlighted five votes taken by Gore when he served in the House of Representatives in 1979 that Bradley characterized as favorable to institutions like Bob Jones, which has come under intense scrutiny since GOP contender George W. Bush paid a visit there prior to this past Saturday's Republican primary in South Carolina.

"I've brought copies of these votes for members of the panel of journalists participating in the debate," a steely-eyed Bradley said, directly confronting Gore. "I'd like you to have it now, Al," Bradley said as he held out a small stack of papers to the vice president, who stood only three feet away at his own lectern.

Gore, who steadfastly refused to accept the documents from Bradley, said the issue 21 years ago was not about providing tax exempt status to "schools that discriminate," as Bradley had charged, but was rather about stopping the Internal Revenue Service from determining which institutions would be accused of discrimination through a quota system.

"You have to face up to this if you're going to be a strong leader," Bradley chastised the vice president.

"You're sounding a little desperate because you're trying to build yourself up," Gore shot back. "It's very clear."

"I believe that we need a strong president that is not going to back away from affirmative action," Bradley said at one point during the debate.

The charges were "phony and scurrilous," Gore said, before lobbing his own grenade Bradley's way.

Bradley, Gore said in turn, was guilty of voting in a Senate committee to block certain affirmative action provisions from being applied to minority-owned broadcasters. Bradley did his best to brush off the charge, saying he believed more broadcast outlets should be owned by minorities.

The lead-off question, asked by activist Al Sharpton, pertained to police brutality and the very public case of Amadou Diallo, who was shot 41 times by New York police as he went to retrieve his wallet.

"Many in our community have to live in fear of both the cops and the robbers," Sharpton said. "What concrete steps would you take to end police brutality and racial profiling?"

Saying he was outraged by the incident, Bradley vowed to issue an executive order prohibiting racial profiling -- and as he has before, needled the vice president as to why he has not "walked down the hall" to President Bill Clinton's office to urge the president to do the same thing.

Former Sen. Bill Bradley

"I would say quite clearly that white Americans can no longer deny the plight of black Americans," Bradley said. (252K wav file)

Of the Diallo shooting, he said: "I also think it reflects racial profiling in the sense that seeps into the mind of someone so that he sees a wallet in the hands of a white man as a wallet, but a wallet in the hands of a black man as a gun."

Not do be outdone, Gore promised that the "first civil rights act of the 21st century would be a law outlawing racial profiling ... in insurance and in banking, inside school rooms and inside people's hearts." (388K wav file)

"I think we have to do a lot," Gore said of the race issue. "We have to say that we will become one people by putting as much money into education as we do into incarceration." (384K wav file)

And in aiming to get a rise out of Bradley, Gore claimed, "Look we have taken action, but you know racial profiling practically began in New Jersey, Senator Bradley."

Gore had a number of supporters on hand throughout the night's proceedings to back his claim. Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Sharpe James told reporters that he had approached Bradley while he was still in the Senate, and Bradley told him that racial profiling was an isolated problem that "would go away."

The Gore camp has consistently played up James' claim, and has used it to great effect against Bradley since the two met in a racially themed debate in Iowa prior to that state's caucuses.

The next 40 minutes of the debate opened up in a free-for all between the Democratic rivals, as Bradley charged that Gore voted in the Senate to protect "big tobacco" over Medicare patients, and Gore asserted that Bradley's health care plan would leave millions of minorities without health insurance.

Even the Republican presidential candidates were not spared, as a question regarding the flying of the Confederate flag over the South Carolina capitol caused Gore to say: "It is the everlasting embarrassment of the modern Republican party that both candidates ... went to South Carolina and were scared to say anything about the Confederate flag. I think that was a very serious mistake."

Moderated by CNN's Bernard Shaw, the debate allowed for questions from the audience, the Internet and a panel of journalists.

When asked whether he believed African-Americans were owed reparations, Gore said: "I believe the best reparations is a good education and affirmative action to make available the direct assistance that has been denied." (176K wav file)

"I believe we still need affirmative action in this country," Gore added. "The average African-American family wealth is less than one tenth that of the average white family wealth. To me that justifies making available capital for young entrepreneurs and making available advancement in every sphere." (400K wav file)

Bradley said that "white Americans are in denial of black Americans' contributions through slavery, through Jim Crow (segregation laws) ... and I believe we can change that through a major new investment in education." (208K wav file)

While the two Democrats were in general agreement on the reparations issue, each served up a volley of assaults on others.

"That's not a plan, that's a magic wand and it doesn't work that way," Gore said of Bradley's plan to overhaul Medicaid and provide HIV/AIDS patients with private insurance. "The problem is that the insurance companies don't want to take them. They want to get rid of them."

"What you see is what I call an elaborate Gore dance," Bradley said of Gore's position on the licensing of hand guns. "It is a dance to avoid facing up to your conservative record on guns." He then said that while he was in Congress, Gore was the "poster child" of the NRA.

"You've made personal attack after personal attack. Problem is, these personal attacks don't solve problems," Gore retorted. "They distract us from the real enemy: the right-wing extremist Confederate flag waving Republicans."

The show after the show

Monday night's debate, perhaps more than any other this Election 2000, Democratic or Republican, drew an unusual assortment of celebrities, sports figures and Harlem community activists, most of whom stumbled over each other at the end of the candidate forum to give their post-game analysis to anyone who would listen.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who commands great attention throughout the city of New York and the African-American community at large, said he was pleased that the presidential candidates were "fighting over (the African-American community) rather than taking them for granted."

Sharpton's endorsement -- yet to be made -- is of great importance to many in New York, and is highly anticipated by Bradley and Gore, who believe Sharpton will pull a large number of voters to the polls during New York's March 7 primary.

Bradley drew kind words from Los Angeles Lakers head coach Phil Jackson -- who played with Bradley on the New York Knicks in the 1970s -- filmmaker Spike Lee; controversial New York University professor Cornel West; former Washington Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly; and Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York.

Those who rushed to out-shout the Bradley supporters included Labor Secretary Alexis Herman, former New York Mayor David Dinkins and actress Whoopi Goldberg, who said of her preference for president, "I don't want to have to train a new guy."