Running As His Own Man

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 Eventually, all the college's fraternities repealed their exclusionary clauses.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.