EW YORK - In an apparent effort to win more of the black vote here, Vice President Al Gore met secretly yesterday with the Rev. Al Sharpton, the controversial preacher. Emerging from the building where Gore's daughter, Karenna Gore Schiff, lives, Sharpton refused to discuss the meeting, saying only, ''It was a good meeting, I'm not going to say anything more.''
The late-afternoon meeting seemed to come as a surprise to several senior members of the Gore campaign staff. Reporters caught Sharpton leaving the Upper East Side building.
Sharpton arrived at about 4 p.m. and stayed for just under an hour. Donna Brazile, Gore's campaign manager, Erik Eve, the state director for the Gore campaign, and Bronx borough president Roberto Ramierez also attended the meeting.
''They talked about issues important to the community, including the Community Reinvestment Act, minority opportunity and the media, and economic development,'' said Gore spokesman Chris Lehane. Sharpton also expressed interest in a debate on minority issues.
In the past, Sharpton has threatened to picket Gore events if such a debate was not held in New York. Gore's staff pointed out that such a debate is already scheduled for Feb. 21 at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.
Lehane said that the vice president did not ask for an endorsement, nor was one discussed. When asked why Gore and Sharpton met after Gore had repeatedly declined to do so, Lehane said that the Gore campaign wants ''the support of every single Democrat in New York State.''
The vice president spent the day wooing voters at two African-American churches, picking up the unofficial endorsement of one of the city's most influential preachers.
To those who believe America is now color-blind and discrimination-free, ''what country are they looking at, when they make that judgment?'' Gore asked the congregation at Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church yesterday in Queens.
The Rev. Floyd Flake, a former Democratic congressman from Queens, told his congregation that he could not officially endorse a candidate for president from the pulpit, since it might violate the separation of church and state. But he surprised Gore by proclaiming, ''I will say it now, and you read it well: This should be the next president of the United States,'' drawing a loud roar from the enthusiastic crowd.
At the Allen A.M.E. and the Calvary Baptist Church in Queens, Gore quoted from Scripture and hymns and recited rapidly all the top Clinton-Gore administration appointments that went to blacks.
Former senator Bill Bradley visited the Allen A.M.E. on Feb. 6, but at the time Flake said, '' There won't be any endorsements today. I just want [Bradley] to see what we do here. This is an open pulpit.''
