In the last days of the summer of 1998, Rev. Jesse L. Jackson was contemplating another run for the White House. His previous attempts in 1984 and 1988 had been spirited failures that nevertheless rattled the political establishment.
Now, he was seriously considering a third presidential run to highlight the issues closest to his heart: social justice and economic fairness. He also thought he had a chance. One of the top aides in his Washington, D.C., office, a 36-year-old author and professor of political science named Karin L. Stanford, agreed.
That’s why she didn’t tell him she was pregnant with his baby.
“I guess I was afraid,” Stanford said in a series of recent interviews. “I didn’t want to do anything to hurt him or the movement. I was trying to protect him.”
So she patched together a flimsy charade. She bought “a fake engagement ring” and enlisted the help of an old friend, a criminal defense lawyer in her native Los Angeles. The man flew to Washington a few times and, against his better judgment, played the role of her fiance.
“Despite the fact I told the world the baby wasn’t Rev. Jackson’s,” Stanford said, sighing deeply, “a lot of people didn’t believe it. They knew about our relationship.”
Jackson decided not to run and Stanford told him the truth: At nearly 60 years old the married minister was going to be a father again and the mother was not his wife. “It was a shock to him,” Stanford said. “It took him a while to get used to the idea.”
Lou Colasuonno, a Jackson spokesman, said late last week that Jackson would not comment on personal issues beyond what he has already said. “We hold Ms. Stanford in the highest regard,” Colasuonno said.
Daughter turns 2
On Friday, Jackson’s out-of-wedlock daughter turned 2 years old and apparently the globetrotting civil rights crusader is still trying to get used to the idea. He and Stanford are now locked in a painful impasse over his child-support obligations. While he has been paying $3,000 a month to support the child he has not seen since last December, there is no formal agreement and Stanford has taken Jackson to court.
“I just want to make sure [she] is taken care of if something happens to me or to him,” she said.
This is a story as old as the 10 Commandments, a story of love and lies, of hypocrisy and false hope, of powerful men and smart women who make foolish choices.
If not for the baby, who Stanford said “looks just like her father,” Stanford and Jackson’s affair would no doubt still be just “an open secret,” whispered at Washington cocktail parties by those in-the-know, including some high-profile types who also have been caught in affairs.
There have been hints and suspicions that Jackson lavished a high and undeserved salary on his aide and paramour: in the beginning to keep her happy; in the end to get her out of town and keep her quiet once the baby was born. Jackson and Stanford deny it and so far no one has produced any evidence.
A smart professional
Indeed, by most accounts, as the head of the Washington, D.C., office of Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, Stanford brought a PhD and a sense of professionalism to the organization rarely seen before.
“She’s very smart,” said Rick Blake, a former media consultant and speechwriter for the organization. “She had to sort of do battle to bring a level of professionalism to the office.”
She could be demanding. Perhaps, she said, that is why she has been described by unnamed colleagues in some published accounts as manipulative and bossy. Napoleon in a skirt.
Stanford’s salary was cobbled together from several different sources, including a labor union and the Yucaipa Cos., an investment firm owned by one of Jackson’s close friends, billionaire Ron W. Burkle of Los Angeles.
One of Stanford’s duties at Rainbow/PUSH was coordinating the coalition’s Wall Street Project, partnering minority businesses with major corporations in the name of racial diversity and fairness. Jackson has been criticized for favoring his friends and donors and using “strong arm tactics” and the threat of boycotts to get his way. Stanford said that was nonsense. “That’s not his style,” she said. “We tried to open doors for people who had been locked out for years. We put forth qualified people. There was no coercion and there was no payment for services.”
Although she has severed her ties with Rainbow/PUSH, Stanford continues to work for Yucaipa, researching investing in the inner city. Her contract expires next year. She declined to say how much she earns, but said she hopes to return to college teaching someday.
One thing is certain; she is spending a lot of money on legal bills. “Right now, I’m just trying to get through this child support mess,” she said. “It’s just burning up money and hurting everyone involved.”
Stanford took her case to court last month after negotiations aimed at forging a written agreement dragged on for a year. Still, Stanford had to be prodded into action, according to Raenelle Humbles Zapata, who was Stanford’s attorney in Washington.
“Karin was hoping they could work it out,” Zapata said. “She did not want to get into a public battle with him. She did not want to do anything to jeopardize his career. … I had to explain to her that her child had to be at the forefront.”
Even now, Stanford said she is baffled that the negotiations have been so difficult.
“We used to communicate so well,” she said. “That’s why this situation is so hard for me to understand.”
Colasuonno said Jackson has never denied the child is his and is taking care of his responsibilities. The agreement has not yet been reached, he said, because “it takes time to work things out.4”
“I don’t think there are any major differences,” he said. “It’s our understanding it’s close to being done.”
Her 4 1/2-year romance with Jackson began in the summer of 1996 when she became a part-time consultant for Jackson’s Citizenship Education Fund. The affair continued, she said, “until the story broke” in January in the National Enquirer. Portrayed in some reports as a gold digger who somehow trapped the worldlier and much older Jackson, the 39-year-old Stanford has remained silent about many details of their relationship until now. Heeding the advice of family and friends, she is telling her side of the story.
“It’s about time,” said Vanessa Hirsi, one of Stanford’s oldest friends. “It’s been hard to watch it unfold and see the toll it’s taken on her. She’s painted as the bad person, as a woman with no values. What about him?”
Stanford said she and Jackson had hoped to wait a few years until the baby was older and then talk to their daughter as well as their families.
“We thought we had more time,” she said. “Call me naive.”
Reporters kept calling
Stanford began receiving calls from reporters while she was still pregnant: “Are you carrying Jesse Jackson’s baby?” they inquired.
“No. No. No,” she lied. It was nobody’s business, she said to herself. But she knew that didn’t matter, not if Rev. Jesse Jackson was involved, the so-called “president of black America,” who was spending a lot of time in those days at the White House providing spiritual counseling to the president, who was enveloped in his own sex scandal. As the rumors got louder, she begged her fake fiance to fly to Washington more frequently to play the role of father-to-be. She asked that his name not be published to save him from public embarrassment.
Jackson even introduced the man to his staff as the lucky guy who won Dr. K, Stanford’s nickname within the organization.
Stanford could almost hear people rolling their eyes.
She said she is not sure when she told Jackson that she was pregnant. It was at least three or four months. It took even longer for her to tell him the baby was his. “But I think he always knew,” she said.
He must have known the fiance was phony. Jackson and Stanford were still carrying on their affair. “He knew of some of my strategy,” she said. “I was just trying to buy time. But he didn’t sit down and plot and plan with me. I didn’t want him that involved.”
Apparently, the press bought her story–or lost interest–when Jackson announced he was not going to run.
“I’m sure the pregnancy played a role,” she said. “We were getting press inquiries. I think he felt if he threw his hat in the race, that would always be a question.”
Jackson could not be reached for comment. Colasuonno said he did not know if the pregnancy influenced Jackson’s decision.
By that point, the calls from the media had stopped. Then when he began demanding a recount in the presidential election in Florida, Stanford’s telephone started ringing again.
“I don’t think that’s a coincidence,” she said.
Protecting Jackson was not the only thing on Stanford’s mind. In 1997, at age 35, she learned she had breast cancer.
Jackson stayed by her side, visiting her in the hospital, calling her several times a day, she said. She lost her hair during chemotherapy and radiation treatment.
Her doctors told her that under no circumstances should she get pregnant for at least five years. She did not think she could. “But we definitely used protection anyway,” she said. “It just failed.”
Pregnant less than a year after her cancer diagnosis, Stanford was thrilled and terrified. Worried that the pregnancy could trigger a recurrence, two doctors recommended an abortion. “My doctors,” she said, “were absolutely alarmed.”
She researched the subject and she prayed.
Only opportunity for baby
“I knew it was probably going to be my only opportunity to have a baby,” given her age and health problems, Stanford said. “So, I said, despite all the issues; despite Rev. Jackson is the baby’s father; despite the fact I might be endangering my health, I’m going to keep the baby and I just wasn’t going to tell Rev. Jackson about it for a while.
“I know it sounds awful,” she continued. “But I didn’t give him the opportunity to really help me make decisions, because I didn’t think anybody could make the decisions for me. They were my own. They were between me and my God.”
Stanford refused to say how her relationship with Jackson went from professional to personal. “It just did.”
They went to movies and out to dinner. They browsed through bookstores and listened to music. “The Reverend loves Bobby Blue Bland,” she said. They also began traveling around the country as Stanford rose from part-time consultant to full-time administrator. Most of the trips were for work, she said. “You know, Rev. Jackson lives on a plane.”
Stanford remains loyal and protective of Jackson. After all, she said, “He is my baby’s father.” Sounding as if she still works for him, she expressed deep concern that his political enemies will try to use his personal life to diminish his public life–one spent, she said, standing up for the poor and the powerless. “I never wanted our relationship to get in the way of the work,” she said. “Now it will go down in history as one of the sex scandals of the decade.”
Stanford wants dearly for Jackson to someday be a part of their daughter’s life again. He had been visiting the child once, sometimes twice a month, in Los Angeles before the world found out who her father is.
Now, he’s just a voice on the telephone, a fleeting image on the television, a postcard poppa.
When the baby was born in Washington, Stanford left blank the box on her birth certificate that names the father. The child’s last name is Stanford. In the future, Stanford hopes the baby can be called Jackson without any more turmoil.
“I’m so proud to be [her] mother,” Stanford said. “Despite all the problems, I’d do it again.”
