Posted on 03/08/2004 6:07:49 AM PST by Land_of_Lincoln_John
The former congressman heads down 79th Street just east of Jeffery, wearing a baseball cap from his college alma mater and flashing the gap-toothed grin that first charmed voters more than a decade ago.
Back then, former Rep. Mel Reynolds was a rising Democratic star and congressman from the 2nd District, which es-covers much of the South Side and south suburbs. That was before 1995, when a sexual misconduct conviction stemming from an affair with an underage campaign worker sent him to prison and destroyed his political career.
On a recent Monday morning, most remember the face, even if they can't quite recall his name.
The little red flier Reynolds, 52, stuffs into the hands of passersby sums up his ambitions.
"Never Give Up," it reads.
"I like that in you," Howard Portis says as he takes one of the fliers from Reynolds, who wants his old job back. "I thought it was bogus anyway," Portis said of the charges against Reynolds.
"I like Jesse Jr., but I don't think if it wasn't for his father he'd be as popular as he is," said Portis, who is leaning toward voting for Reynolds.
This is sweet music to Reynolds, who says Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., the 38-year-old son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., was "born with a platinum picket sign in his hand" and has "lost the common touch."
By any stretch of the imagination, Reynolds has an uphill climb as he takes on Jackson in the upcoming Democratic primary, but on the streets of the South Side where any political trick or triumph is possible, who knows.
Reynolds says he's convinced that he can topple Jackson, who has helped expand the family's interests from civil rights marches and sit-ins to board rooms and campaign posters.
Jackson is convinced Reynolds -- along with two lesser known candidates -- is part of a plot by the Jacksons' arch political enemies, Dolton Mayor Bill Shaw and his twin brother, Cook County Board of Review Commissioner Bob Shaw.
Jackson blames the Shaws for trying to thwart his last election by putting up a candidate named Jesse L. Jackson. But like a couple of kids who just finished a bag of M&Ms, the Shaws say: Look, their hands are clean.
Crisp and polished with neatly manicured enunciation, Jackson sees the Shaws and Reynolds as pests buzzing around his political ambitions, and his goal to build a third regional airport in the Peotone area.
With the same passion his famous father uses on the pulpit, Jackson promises the airport will put the southern region on the map, geographically and economically.
Jackson said he always knew the airport fight would take time but that the 15,000 jobs he promises will be worth it.
Reynolds and the other candidates -- the Rev. Anthony Williams, an Englewood pastor who lives in Dolton, and Everett Drayden Shumpert, a former Chicago cop who lives in Harvey -- say the airport has distracted Jackson from taking care of the district.
Jackson counters that while pushing for Peotone, he's still managed to secure $330 million in grants and appropriations for health care, housing and education.
After serving five years in prison, Reynolds was granted executive clemency by President Bill Clinton in 2001. Many politicians and activists -- including the senior and junior Jacksons -- lobbied for his release. But now the Jackson name -- junior or senior -- unhinges Reynolds.
"I think it's just absurd on its face that the press would give credit to Jesse Jackson Sr. for getting me out of prison," he said. "The person that got me out of prison was Bill Clinton." He admits to taking a job as a consultant with the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition when he got out but says it's only because the Rev. Jackson needed his services so badly.
He blasts the younger Jackson for overstating his role in lobbying for his clemency, although the Jackson camp produces letters Reynolds wrote from prison thanking Jackson for his support.
Reynolds says reporters give Jackson a free ride and he makes handy newspaper articles about Jackson using his credit card in 1991 to help buy a car for a man who later was convicted of running an international drug ring. Jackson acknowledged knowing the man, but denies he knew anything about the man's involvement with drugs.
Reynolds also accuses the media of being unfair in reporting on his volatile marriage to ex-wife Marisol.
When asked to explain Reynolds' complaints against him, Jackson looks totally perplexed and is, for a few seconds, speechless.
"I wrote letters to the president to help Congressman Reynolds get clemency," Jackson said, adding he lobbied the Congressional Black Caucus on Reynolds' behalf and took his calls from prison. "I have no idea what occurred in Mel Reynolds' mind," Jackson said. "None whatsoever."
Reynolds has built his campaign around an image of a self-made man who was born in Mississippi and went on to earn a bachelor's from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A Rhodes scholar, he also earned degrees from Oxford and a master's in public administration from Harvard.
But there is an irony in Reynolds' common-man campaign, which includes walks down 79th and soul shakes with brothers who, like him, have prison in their pasts.
In the 1990s it was Reynolds who was seen as the candidate put up by the establishment to muzzle maverick congressman Gus Savage.
Savage was the target of a House Ethics Committee inquiry into charges that he made improper sexual advances toward a young woman on a 1989 trip to Zaire. Savage portrayed the allegations as race-based. In Reynolds' successful 1992 campaign, he ridiculed Savage for "race baiting" and being "a national embarrassment."
While Jackson says he does not dispute Reynolds' right to run, he appears irked when reporters raise some of Reynolds' arguments.
"I don't understand the equating of the media with what we have accomplished for the people of the 2nd District of Illinois with any of Congressman Reynolds' charges," he said.
Regarding his lineage, Jackson makes it clear that he is not his father, but he doesn't run from his family name. "I've been very fortunate to have grown up in a household with Jesse Jackson, and I've learned a lot from him," he said.
At a senior citizens complex on the Southeast Side, it's clear that Jackson has inherited his father's skill at charming crowds.
"Even though I disagree with his father many times, I find the son to come up to the expectation of the Democratic Party," said Glory M. Maynard, 77, a resident at the complex.
On Reynolds, Maynard said, he's "a highly intelligent man, and I think that he just got a bad deal." She said Reynolds paid the price and now should be able to go on. Still Maynard plans to vote for Jackson.
Forgot about that. That was response to the teenage threesome that was offered to him.
Which one? Jesse "I've got a Scam" "Poverty Pimp" Jackson Jr. or Mel "Threesome" "I won the Lottery" Reynolds. :)
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