Feature

The Anti-Sharpton

Butts began his life on the Lower East Side in the Lillian Wald Projects. When he was 8, his family moved to Queens. His father was a cook at the Black Angus steakhouse and his mother was an administrator in a city welfare office. Butts spent many summers visiting relatives in the South, particularly his grandmothers, who were devoted Christians. They lived near one another in rural Georgia, where Butts was often taken to church. He was bused to junior high in Forest Hills at a time when anti-busing protests were widespread and vehement. And he attended mostly white Flushing High School, where he was elected senior-class president.

At Morehouse College, he studied black history, and he got caught up in the radical spirit of the times. He majored in philosophy and minored in religion, and his intention was to teach. “But one summer day I was walking across the Morehouse campus,” Butts says, “when a friend of mine who’d graduated the year before said, ‘Hey, Butts, I’m here recruiting for the seminary. What are you doing with your life?’ I felt led by God because doors just kept opening in that direction.”

Butts attended Union Theological Seminary in New York, and it was there that another serendipitous incident changed his life. He was in his first year when Adam Clayton Powell Jr. died and the dean happened to mention to him one day that Abyssinian had a new pastor who was looking for bright young assistants. Butts and Proctor seemed a perfect match. Proctor was wise, reserved, and low-key, while Butts was inexperienced but outspoken, energetic, and charismatic.

When I ask Butts about role models, he mentions Proctor, longtime Morehouse College president Benjamin Elijah Mays, and well-known ministers Gardner Taylor and William Augustus Jones. The only surprise is Jesse Jackson. “The reason I mention Jesse,” Butts says, “even though I’m sometimes very critical of him and there’s not that great a difference in our ages, is that when you’re 15 and Jesse’s 21 and you see him out there in this big Afro and overalls and he’s shouting, ‘I am somebody,’ and he’s out there with Dr. King in the front of the struggle, this tall, good-looking, articulate young black man -- that’s impressive to a teenager. He was an example as a young minister of what could be done. Of course, as you grow and learn more about the struggle, you are better able to sift through these things,” Butts says, letting his voice trail off.

His disappointment with Jackson offers insight into his own view of the responsibilities of leadership: “I wanted Jesse to spend more time organizing the Rainbow Coalition so it could be a true political force. That didn’t happen. I wanted him to finally run for something that he could win -- a Senate seat in South Carolina, a congressional seat. So he’d have someplace where he could settle and still have the ability to move around the country and speak and inspire people and articulate the issues. But where he could also have some profound impact on the laws, where he could be a powerful and positive force in Democratic politics. Getting voters registered and bringing them to the table was important but it wasn’t enough. It hasn’t translated itself into the kind of political influence we as a people need.”

Though Butts believes he has been able to develop the right kind of influence, he continues to get hammered for working closely with both Governor Pataki and Senator D’Amato. “He’s entitled to those relationships,” Sharpton says, “but people are gonna say he’s not been with us; he’s been with them. He’s gonna have to explain where he is politically.”

“I felt that Mario Cuomo had taken the black community for granted, and I don’t think George Pataki is doing that,” Butts says. “I don’t agree with him on everything, but he’s been very good on economic development. And I’m certainly willing to defend my relationship with a politician who as far as I’m concerned has credibility, keeps his word, and to whom I have access. It doesn’t mean I’ve sold out.”

If Butts runs, it will undoubtedly be on the Democratic line, and it remains to be seen whether his work with the Republicans will hurt him. “He’s engaging in the kind of conduct,” says State Senator David Paterson, whose baby was christened by Butts, “that twelve or thirteen years ago he would have condemned. If Charlie Rangel and powerful Democratic state assemblyman Denny Farrell had been doing what he’s doing right now, he would have been screaming about it. So there’s certainly been a metamorphosis of his philosophy.”

The likeliest and most logical political scenario for Butts is a run against Congressman Rangel. It’s his home district, it’s where he’d presumably have the strongest grass-roots support, and it has an ironic historical precedent: Rangel was the young upstart who defeated Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

Rangel says he is gearing up for a challenge from Butts and has already begun -- though the race is ten months away -- doing polls, having strategy sessions, and for the first time hiring a fund-raiser. Rangel echoes what is probably the most common criticism of Butts: he’s inconsistent.

“In one interview, Calvin supported Ruth Messinger, then said if Giuliani would come around, he could support him, and then he said he might be a candidate himself,” Rangel says. “I told him I’m a poker player and the way we play poker is unless you sit down at the table and ante up, you don’t win.”

And that, in the final analysis, is clearly what Butts needs to do. If he believes the path he has chosen is the one, 30 years after Martin Luther King’s death, that black leaders ought to follow, he needs to sit down at the table and ante up.