EW YORK - When Al Gore and Bill Bradley debate at Harlem's Apollo Theater tonight, it will be a historic event - the first time in recent memory, and perhaps the first time ever, that a presidential debate has been held in the city's black community.
African-Americans play a potentially vital role in elections here. They constitute nearly a quarter of registered Democratic voters statewide, almost half the party's vote in New York City.
Yet they have rarely been courted so assiduously as in this primary contest. The idea of a debate at the Apollo - a renowned site in Harlem - is to make the courtship formal and permanent.
''This debate is so important because it breaks the marginalization of the African-American community,'' the Rev. Al Sharpton said in a phone interview Friday. ''It means politicians can no longer act as if this community is not presidential material. It means that four years from now, and four years after that, everybody will have to debate in the black community and will have to address our issues.''
The plan for an Apollo event was hatched two weeks ago, when Bradley attended services at the Rev. Floyd Flake's Allen AME Baptist Church in Queens. Sharpton was also there. He and Flake jointly proposed a candidates' debate at the Apollo sometime before the March 7 New York primary. Bradley agreed. The challenge went out to Gore, and he could hardly say no.
It is an interesting, even an eyebrow-raising, alliance. Sharpton, of course, is the flamboyant, street-marching, protest-rallying activist. Flake, a former congressman who gave up his House seat to spend more time with his congregation, is a conservative who writes a column for the New York Post. Although a Democrat, he has often supported the policies of the Republican mayor, Rudolph Giuliani.
Both men have their followings. Flake is especially influential among church leaders. Sharpton has his detractors, as well, for championing some disreputable causes - most notably, Tawana Brawley - and for associating with anti-Semites.
Sharpton admits that, for this primary election, the debate will probably have less impact - and will give the black community less leverage - than it might have had a couple of months ago, when the Demcratic contest was more even. The polls show Gore has since zoomed ahead of Bradley in New York - and is favored by a 2-1 margin among black voters here.
Still, Sharpton said, ''It's the precedent that counts.''
Sharpton has not yet endorsed either candidate. He said he will do so a few days after the debate.
But in the past two weeks, Gore has picked up the endorsement of nearly every other prominent black political leader, including Representative Charles Rangel, state comptroller H. Carl McCall, former mayor David Dinkins, Manhattan borough president Virginia Fields, and Flake, who gave his blessing a week ago from his pulpit, with Gore standing by his side.
Bradley has picked up endorsements from several black celebrities - basketball star Michael Jordan, film director Spike Lee, actor Laurence Fishburne. But in New York he has no major black politicians and only a few black ministers with him.
Bradley's strength here lies mainly in the fact that, as a former New York Knicks star, he is one of the few white politicians anywhere who has worked, on a professional and collegial level, with black people. One of his campaign films shows him, as a young Knicks player, visiting Harlem youth centers. He has also promised, in several speeches, to encourage the hiring of blacks in all federal agencies and Cabinet departments.
Gore's strength is his association with President Clinton - an ambiguous factor elsewhere perhaps, but a clear boost here. Nationwide, 88 percent of blacks give Clinton positive ratings (compared with 55 percent of whites), and he is at least that popular among New York blacks.
There is some residual suspicion of Gore from his 1988 run for the Democratic presidential nomination, when one of his opponents was Jesse Jackson, and Gore's top local supporter, then-Mayor Edward Koch, proclaimed that Jews would have to be ''crazy'' to vote for Jackson.
Still, that was a long time ago, and in this campaign, Koch, who no longer enjoys much pull, supports Bradley anyway.
Gore's favor among church leaders is crucial because churches are the centers of African-American life in this city - partly because, through decades of poverty and powerlessness, there were few other institutions, or forums of any kind, for organized activity, leadership, and expression.
Their influence extends well past Sunday. Flake's church operates a thriving private school; Flake is a key supporter of the charter-school movement and - unusual for Democrats here and anathema to Gore - school vouchers. The Rev. Calvin Butts, head of the Abyssinian Baptist Church - the former church, and political rallying point, of former US Representative Adam Clayton Powell - controls dozens of housing and economic-development projects in Harlem.
Though Sharpton has no church of his own, he speaks at several churches with a preacher's passion and cadence, a talent that helped create and still bolsters his legitimacy in the community.
For several years, Democratic politicians here did not actively pursue the black vote, partly because they figured they had it wrapped up, partly because doing so might alienate white conservatives, whose vote they also needed.
Two things have changed recently. First, Republicans are nearly a majority statewide, which means, to win, a Democrat must get as many of his constituents as possible to go to the polls - especially blacks, who tend to vote in smaller numbers but who, when they do turn out, vote almost uniformly Democratic.
Second, in this year's primary, there are no conservative Democratic candidates. On racial and urban issues, Gore and Bradley hold similar views.
The two factors, together, compel both to make a big push for black voters, including the direct appeal at the Apollo tonight.
