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How Jesse Jackson puts family first; exciting book digs behind the scenes to reveal how the Rev. Jesse Jackson turned the screws to put his sons in positions of influence and to launch a family dynasty
Insight on the News, April 1, 2002 by Kenneth R. Timmerman
Jesse Jackson's ambition to found a political dynasty got a tremendous boost in late 1995, when an unsuspected opportunity presented itself. The popular two-term congressman from the South Side of Chicago, Rep. Mel Reynolds, was indicted on tawdry charges of having sex with a minor, a 16-year-old named Beverly Heard. In a Chicago courtroom in August 1995, Heard testified that Reynolds drove his black Cadillac in front of her high school during his initial election campaign in 1992 and picked her up. "He was saying he needed someone to be a receptionist and asked if I modeled" she said. "I was hoping maybe he would have a job offer or some kind of great modeling opportunity."
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Within a week, Reynolds initiated a torrid affair with the 16-year-old Heard. "Mel and I had a really sick relationship" she told the court three years later. "I would just do whatever he would tell me. I felt more or less like a slave."
Once Reynolds went to Washington, the two conducted a long-distance love affair by phone. And that's where the feds jumped in, placing a court-ordered wiretap on Heard's phone. The wiretaps were crucial to Reynolds' ultimate conviction in August 1995, juror James Limper said, "though a little hairy to listen to." In one exchange, Reynolds asked Heard if he could join her in bed with her lesbian lover, an allegedly fictitious 15-year-old Catholic schoolgirl Heard called Theresa. Reynolds begged her for lewd photographs of the girl. "Jesus," he said on one tape, "a Catholic.... Did I win the Lotto?"
A 12-member jury, composed of six blacks and six whites, convicted the sitting congressman on Aug. 24, 1995, of two counts of solicitation of child pornography, three counts of criminal sexual assaults, three counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and four counts of obstruction of justice. Reynolds' days in Congress were over, only halfway into his second two-year term.
The prosecution of Reynolds raised serious questions which remain unanswered to this day. According to court testimony, Reynolds broke off the affair shortly after going to Washington in January 1993. Heard took a lesbian lover, jointed the Air Force and was stationed briefly in Puerto Rico. When she left the Air Force and returned to Chicago, Reynolds sought to resume the affair. Heard got angry and went to the police, and agreed to FBI requests in 1995 to wiretap fresh conversations with Reynolds, which she steered to explicitly sexual topics.
Once Reynolds had been convicted, Jackson openly criticized him for working too closely with the new Republican majority in Congress. "One of our arguments with him was his support of the crime bill," Jackson told reporters. "While we look at his situation, we pray for that family."
Soon after he was sentenced, Reynolds announced he was resigning from Congress. Within hours, Jesse Jackson Jr. announced that he would run in the Democratic primary to be held in November 1995 to fill the vacant congressional seat for the 2nd District of Illinois. Jesse [Sr.'s] dreams of creating the pre-eminent black family dynasty in America were about to get a great lift.
In the meantime, black newspapers in Chicago ran a vilification campaign against Reynolds. They suddenly discovered that he had been a "big check bouncer" while in Washington and had waged a vicious personal campaign against his black predecessor, Gus Savage, when he chased him from the seat in 1992. ("Gus Savage? He's crazy; he hates Jews," was the refrain.) To round off Reynolds' bad deeds, the Chicago Citizen noted that he had voted for the "three-strikes-and-you're-out crime bill" that required mandatory life sentences for three-time felons, legislation that was vigorously opposed by Jackson and Operation PUSH. To make his point, just days after Reynolds' conviction in court, Jackson and the Rev. James Meeks, pastor of the popular Salem Baptist Church, marched to the Cook County Jail through a summer heat wave to demand prison reform and the release of black convicts. "Invest in schools, not jails," Jackson led protesters in chanting. "What do we want? The Brothers! When do we want them? Now!" Jackson claimed that Reynolds, in voting for the three-strikes bill, was sending an entire generation of black youngsters to jail, while allowing white youths to go free.
On Sept. 9, 1995, Jesse Jackson Jr. officially announced his candidacy for the 2nd District. His father wasted no time in putting resources at his disposal, raising money, promoting his candidacy at the Saturday-morning meetings and radio broadcasts, and bringing high-powered backers to Chicago to support him. With strong support from the Clinton White House (and $3,000 in campaign donations from Clinton's friends in the Lippo Group in Indonesia), Jesse Jr. won the Democratic primary in November and the special election in December 1995. At age 30, Jesse Jr. became a power broker in his own right. The election also marked the beginning of Bill Clinton's reconciliation with Jackson. Clinton wanted Jackson's support for the 1996 presidential campaign.
