Sharpton set to announce whether he'll make mayoral run

by TIMOTHY WILLIAMS Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) - Amid the early speeches and campaign appearances from this year's crop of mayoral contenders, there has been relative quiet from one politician who is usually anything but.

Thursday night, though, the Rev. Al Sharpton is expected to break his silence and announce whether he will join the crowded Democratic field seeking to win City Hall back from the term-limited Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

Although almost no one expects Sharpton to run, his annual ''Keepers of the Dream'' fund-raising dinner for his National Action Network, will be the place to be, politically speaking, because of Sharpton's penchant for surprise.

''If he's shown one thing, it's that he's capable of surprising the city,'' former Mayor Ed Koch said. ''With him, you never know for sure.''

In recent years, Sharpton has proven he can be a serious political candidate.

In 1994, for example, he won 25 percent of the vote in a contentious, four-way Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate. Three years later, he got 32 percent of the vote in the mayoral primary against Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger, who went on to lose badly to Giuliani.

This winter, polls showed Sharpton would get 15 percent of the vote for mayor if he ran, and drain support from all four leading Democratic candidates in the process.

Still, Sharpton remains a divisive figure, despite a concerted effort to tone down his flamboyant image by adding a measure of temperance to his speech and expensive business suits to his trimmed-down body.

A Quinnipiac University poll released this week showed that 47 percent of respondents viewed Sharpton negatively, 29 percent had a mixed opinion, and 20 percent had a favorable opinion.

But any Democrat who inspires his ire will likely have a tough time winning the party primary in which more than one of five voters will likely be African Americans - a group over which the civil rights leader has wide influence.

Given that sway, analysts say that Sharpton's endorsement is one of the few that really matter this year.

''He's a player,'' said Lee Miringoff, director of polling at the Marist Institute for Public Opinion. ''There is a large group of people who take his lead and respond to his message.''

For that reason, Sharpton's announcement Thursday was anxiously awaited by the field's top Democrats: Public Advocate Mark Green; Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer; Comptroller Alan Hevesi; and City Council Speaker Peter Vallone.

His decision is regarded as especially crucial to Ferrer - who is banking on Sharpton's endorsement to build a coalition of African Americans, Latinos and liberal whites to become the city's first Latino mayor - and to Green, who currently leads in polls among African American voters.

-- Anonymous, April 05, 2001