By Jill Zuckman and Tina Cassidy, Globe Staff, June 30, 1999
CONCORD, N.H. -- Reminiscing about piano lessons, the French horn, and trumpet playing, Bill Bradley brought his unconventional campaign for president here yesterday.
Along the way, he also picked up an endorsement from Mark Fernald, one of the 13 Democratic state senators, and from 13 of the 154 Democratic House members. (Vice President Al Gore, by contrast, has been endorsed by 10 Democratic senators, and a majority of the House Democratic caucus supports him.) Last night in Boston, Bradley raised about $200,000 at a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser at the Park Plaza Hotel.
As he seeks the nation's highest office, the former New Jersey senator and New York Knicks basketball player is visiting people and groups that he says do good work, listening to their stories, and telling a few of his own. He says he won't begin issuing policy proposals until the fall.
At the Concord Community Music School, Bradley almost forgot to tell the room full of activists that he was running for president. Instead, he seemed to get lost remembering the days when his mother forced him to take piano lessons in the third, fourth, and fifth grades.
"My mother insisted on it," he said. But one Christmas, Bradley said, there was an envelope under the tree. In it, his mother wrote him a note. "It said, you no longer have to take piano," said Bradley.
Bradley said he also used to play the trumpet, until switching to the French horn because there were too many trumpet players in the band.
"I'm just here today to salute the music school for everything you do," Bradley said. "By the way, I'm running for president of the United States. That's why I'm here."
Last night in Boston, Bradley's low-key style was all the more apparent. As he entered the press briefing room, where the hotel staff had set up small rows of tables with bowls of mixed hard candy, Bradley stooped over several of them to pick out the lemon-flavored drops before sitting down.
"I'm here behind the table," he said in his opening statement.
It was about the most informative remark he made during the briefing. He promised there would be a "positive" revelation, presumably dealing with endorsements from Massachusetts elected officials, several of whom attended the fund-raiser, including former senator James P. Jajuga and Senator Michael Morrissey, a Quincy Democrat.
Bradley responded to a question about the high costs of drugs for the elderly by saying he did not know how the government could fund such a program.