March 28, 2001, Wednesday,  All EDITIONS
SECTION: EDITORIAL,  Pg. 7B
LENGTH: 823 words
HEADLINE: COMMENTARY - Follow the reverend's revenues
BYLINE: PHILIP TERZIAN

BODY:
   WASHINGTON - SEVERAL YEARS ago, when Jesse Jackson was toying with the idea of running for mayor of Washington, the in-cumbent, the indefatigable Marion Barry, dismissed such talk with a tart declaration: Jesse's never run anything except his mouth.

   I have to say that Mayor Barry was only half-right. What he meant, of course, is that the Reverend Jackson is too accustomed to his status as a civil-rights celebrity to risk his reputation by holding public office. It is one thing to march on picket lines or hold press conferences; it is quite another to assume a civic responsibility, and be ac-countable for failures and an-swerable to voters.

   It is not correct, however, to say that the Reverend Jackson has never run anything. In fact, over the decades, he has become quite adept at running the Chicago-based Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, his tax-exempt home base, which has yielded a number of allied organizations, and earned a lot of cash for his efforts: $ 17 million last year alone.

   One of my favorite pastimes is seeking to determine exactly what certain organizations do with their money. Some, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, on the Left, or the Free Congress Foundation, on the Right, are unusually adept at raising funds through direct-mail solicitation, or gaining publicity at opportune moments. But apart from keeping themselves in business by raising more funds to keep themselves in business, it is not easy to discern exactly how Congress has been freed, or Southern poverty alleviated, through their efforts.

   Now, at long last, my quest to understand what, if anything, Rainbow/PUSH does has gotten a major boost. The Washington Post, no enemy of Jesse Jackson, has begun examining the Reverend's ledger and daily schedule, and the picture it has drawn thus far is troubling, to use a polite term.  Jackson's fundraising methods spur questions was the headline of a front-page story this week in the Post.

   The spectacle of Jesse Jackson has tended to hypnotize journalistic institutions such as the Post, which knows he is a civil-rights leader and dutifully covers his well-publicized ad-ventures. But when the National Enquirer recently revealed that the Reverend Jackson had fathered an illegitimate child by a young staffer, and then used cash from his tax-exempt Citizenship Education Fund to move his mistress to Los Angeles and set her up in style, even the Post had to take notice.

   The first move, of course, was made by Jesse Jackson's detractors. Two right-wing organizations have filed complaints with the Internal Revenue Service, ac-cusing the Reverend Jackson of using charitable funds for personal purposes (paying off his mistress) and betraying the Citizenship Education Fund's tax-ex-empt status by (quoting the Post here) extracting money from corporations and, in effect, providing them with a business service for a fee. This is a polite way of saying, in the words of Gerald Reynolds, a black lawyer in Kansas City as-sociated with the Center for New Black Leadership, a Washington-based conservative think tank, that the Reverend Jackson is a hustler and charlatan . . . who plays on white executives' fear of racial controversy, as the Post describes it.

   The Reverend Jackson's me-thod is supremely clever: When corporations are most vulnerable seeking federal approval for mergers, or battling charges of racial discrimination he will insert himself in the picture, threatening boycotts and making public accusations of racism unless the companies send substantial contributions to the Citizenship Education Fund, or award lucrative contracts to Jackson friends and associates.

   By such means, Jesse Jackson has not only extracted tens of millions of dollars in donations from such corporate behemoths as CBS, Viacom, Ameritech and Citicorp, but he has made certain that his boycott threats are an-swered by the award of contracts and partnerships to Rainbow/ PUSH associates or business friends who serve on his various boards. Once the targeted companies endow Rainbow/PUSH, the Reverend Jackson customarily loses interest in the issue at
hand, and moves on to the next customer.

   Two questions arise. First, what happens to the cash that such tough-as-nails executives as Sanford Weill or Philip Condit contribute to the Citizenship Ed-ucation Fund? There is little evidence that it is used for much more than
maintaining Rainbow/ PUSH, or worse, keeping the Rev. Jesse Jackson and his family in comfort. And second, what is the difference between the Reverend Jackson's fund-raising technique on behalf of the Citizenship Education Fund, and what the law calls extortion? The fact that businessmen are frightened by bad publicity is not news. But it is news when a civil-rights leader makes threats, and those threats disappear when money changes hands.

   Philip Terzian, the Journal's associate editor, writes a column from Washington.

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