Small-town beginning informs Bradley's quest for presidency

By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff, May 10, 1999

CRYSTAL CITY, Mo. -- This is the one-stoplight town by the Mississippi River that Bill Bradley left for greater glory, for stardom on the New York Knicks, for 18 years as a US senator, and for his greatest dream of all, to become president of the United States.

But now that Bradley is the lone Democratic opponent of Vice President Al Gore, with his fortunes rapidly rising or falling depending on which poll is read, the former New Jersey senator finds the rationale for his race in this humble place. Look no farther than the former site of the nation's largest flat-glass factory, which once employed most of the townspeople, a few blocks from his childhood home. Today, nothing is left of the 240-acre complex except some concrete slabs and the glass workers' union hall.

"It is like pictures removed from a family album," Bradley says, offering the factory shutdown as a metaphor for how even the smallest town is affected by economic change, a central theme of his campaign. Similarly, he says his views on racial justice were formed by the town's diverse work force -- not only by his years as a professional basketball player.

It is common, of course, for politicians to emphasize small-town roots, and clearly there is a calculation to Bradley's focus on Crystal City. After all, stories of his upbringing in a small Midwestern town resonate far better in rural Iowa -- the crucial first-caucus state -- than tales of his later years in New York and New Jersey.

But Bradley, set to begin a three-day campaign swing through New Hampshire tomorrow, says voters cannot understand why he is running for president until they grasp how his vision is shaped by the demise of the factory and by the dreams he nourished as a boy in this town of 4,000.

"This is not a small town that impeded his growth," said Dick Cook, one of Bradley's best friends here. "It was his growth."

Yet even though Bradley, as celebrity athlete and politician, has lived so much of his life in the public eye, the Crystal City story remains a little-known chapter of his life, even though it might be the most important.

"What do you think I am, a peeled onion?" a bemused Bradley said, as he reminisced about Crystal City during a recent interview in his New Jersey campaign headquarters. "I got a few layers left."

The layers begin to unfold 36 miles south of St. Louis, in what appears to be an idyllic setting on the banks of the Mississippi. In a square-block area sits the old Bradley home, where a sign still bears his father's name, W.W. Bradley, and a basketball court takes up most of the backyard. Around the corner is the bank that for years was run by his father, a cautious man who was famous for never foreclosing on a house during the Depression. Across the street is the elegant stone Grace Presbyterian Church, where Sunday school was taught by Bradley's mother, Susan, who counseled young Bill to take worthwhile risks.

Bradley's run for the presidency can be viewed as being fueled by a blend of his parents' philosophies. He decided not to run for the White House in 1992, when many thought he had his best chance. Now that he is running, he is doing so in a nothing-to-lose manner, eschewing advice from political experts who want him to cobble together support from enough special-interest groups to win. Bradley mocks such ideas, especially the widely discussed theory that support from blacks and labor unions might be the key to victory.

Instead, the 6-foot-5 Bradley is reaching for what he calls the "idealism" vote. He brims with confidence that people will view him as the best candidate when they hear him speak.

Such talk would sound naive from most candidates. Running for president, after all, tends to put a premium on hardball tactics. But Bradley, who took to the Senate floor in 1995 to declare that the political system was "broken," says he has no interest in a traditional campaign. He insists he can "see my way to 270" -- the number of electoral votes needed to become president -- without pandering to traditional constituencies.

But his idealism does not ignore reality. He wrote a paper while attending Crystal City High on "Money is Power," focusing on Mark Hanna, the financial wizard of William McKinley's presidential victory in 1896. Bradley, in his autobiography, "Time Present, Time Past," describes how Hanna "could meld money and organization into an unbeatable political machine," and directed McKinley to remain above the fray and "occasionally issue a carefully worded public speech."

The "Hanna doctrine" permeates the Bradley campaign today. Bradley rebuffs most requests for television interviews, preferring to focus on his fund-raising and delivering broadly worded speeches that are notably short on specifics. He surprised many by raising $4.3 million in the first quarter of this year. Although that is less than half of Gore's total, it demonstrated that Bradley could make good on his pledge to collect $25 million this year, more than enough to keep him financially competitive through the early primaries.

Still, his stands on many issues are difficult to distinguish from Gore's. He often comes across as even more wooden and prone to intellectualism than the vice president. When pressed on a variety of issues in an interview, Bradley demurs.

On Kosovo, for example, Bradley has been highly critical of the administration, saying President Clinton and Gore should have foreseen what was developing in Yugoslavia and tried to prevent it. Asked whether he is for the NATO bombing, Bradley does not answer directly. "There could have been more fruitful negotiations, quite frankly," he says. Pressed again, he answers, "I'm not going to get into the micromanagement of the day-to-day actions."

Bradley says the most important issue facing the country is race relations. He says he backed the Clinton administration's effort to "mend, not end" affirmative action. Still, Bradley says he can do better by "not being afraid to talk about the subject, willing to make yourself vulnerable on the subject, willing to make yourself misunderstood by all sides."

This view is consistent with Bradley's upbringing in Crystal City. The town was filled with diverse groups of people, and the rich and poor rarely lived more than a block apart.

For years Crystal City was the ultimate factory town. It was built by Pittsburgh Plate Glass, which was attracted by the area's silica sand, vital to the glass-making process. At its height, the massive factory employed 4,500. The company paid for the lights, the sewers, the streets. This benefited Bradley's father, William Warren Bradley, the banker who overcame a disability that made it difficult for him to walk or do other physical activities. Bill Bradley, an only child, lived comfortably but not ostentatiously in a neat, brick-faced bungalow.

By the time Bradley was in high school in the late 1950s, attracting national attention for his basketball skills, the town was in crisis. The factory workers went on strike, and the shutdown of machinery sent an eerie quiet through town. "The town always had a hum to it," said Bradley's aunt, Hardeman Bond, who still lives here. "I never noticed it till there was a strike."

After many ups and downs, the plant was shut in 1992 and demolished. Today, about 350 acres adjacent to the factory site are owned by a familiar figure: Bill Bradley. While Bradley uses the property for farmland -- a fact he frequently mentions in Iowa -- the land is often flooded and the real value seems sentimental. He says it shows he will always be part of Crystal City, although some townspeople say his visits are infrequent.

Now, as Bradley runs for president, the imagery of his Crystal City years permeates his campaign. When Bradley talks about helping those in poverty, he refers to his father's actions during the Depression. When he talks about how he can beat Gore, he recalls working harder here at basketball than anyone else, making jump shots in his backyard until he dropped.

Bradley's main criticism of Gore is that the vice president's proposals are too small. Bradley says, for instance, that Gore wants to allow a tax credit of up to $260 for those who help a relative with disabilities. But a Gore aide said Bradley's charge is unfair because the the tax credit is $1,000 and is part of a larger health-care initiative.

For many Americans just tuning into the presidential campaign, Bradley's run might seem quixotic. A number of leading Democrats, including Senator John F. Kerry, Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, and House minority leader Richard Gephardt, bowed out partly because they viewed Gore as unbeatable.

But if Gore stumbles, Bradley is the only current alternative for the Democratic nomination. If the war in Kosovo drags on, and the NATO intervention grows unpopular, Bradley would be relatively untainted. The scenarios might seem far-fetched, but they are far more probable than they seemed a few months ago, when a number of Democratic challengers seemed likely and could dilute the anti-Gore vote.

"I don't see how he could miss," said Bond. As if confiding a family secret, she said Bradley's goal always has been the presidency. "The idea germinated when he was quite young, and he has pursued opportunities to do it," she said. "This has been a part of his psyche from a long time ago."