HICAGO - Bill Bradley took aim yesterday at the Clinton-Gore administration, telling black activists generally loyal to the current White House that poor children have suffered its inattention.
''After the first two-term Democratic president since Franklin Roosevelt the number of children in poverty in America has barely blipped down,'' said Bradley.
The former New Jersey senator, Vice President Al Gore's only competition for the Democratic presidential nomination, spoke to the annual convention of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition where President Clinton is popular.
Bradley will formally announce his candidacy on Sept. 8 in his hometown of Crystal City, Mo., the Bradley campaign said yesterday.
Even as Bradley sought to draw sharp distinctions between his vision and the Clinton-Gore administration's record, he saluted Clinton for a commitment to race issues.
Bradley said he is basing his presidential campaign on a theme of racial unity and, as president, would like to build a multiracial coalition, similar to the force that first established civil rights, to tackle economic disparities, poverty, and health care overhaul.
''I'm staking my presidential campaign on the belief that over 50 to 60 percent of Americans, including white Americans, want to have racial unity,'' Bradley said.
Bradley said he did not expect an immediate endorsement from Jackson, who called this stage of the presidential campaign ''the exhibition season.'' Gore is scheduled to address the convention today.
Both candidates are tailoring appeals to Jackson and his army of grass-roots Democratic mobilizers.
Last month, the vice president said he would make the end of racial profiling ''the first civil rights act of the new century.'' Yesterday, Bradley countered: ''Why wait? Why doesn't he walk down the hall, put the executive order in front of the president and ask him to sign it?''
Minority advocates say racial profiling, the police practice of singling out minorities for questioning at airports, on highways, and on streets, is racial harassment that can be fatal, such as in the killings of young blacks by police in New York, Pittsburgh, and Riverside, Calif.
Last month, Clinton ordered federal officers to collect data on the race and gender of those they arrest and then develop a plan to stop racial profiling.
