Bradley Ponders Next Shot Senator Hasn’t Ruled Out Independent Run For Presidency

One day after saying he is leaving Congress and politics as usual, Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J., Thursday adopted a page from politics as usual and hedged about his interest in running for president as an independent.

“I have not ruled out an independent route,” Bradley told reporters in Newark, N.J. “If it would help get this country back on the right direction, I would consider it.”

Bradley acknowledged that he has talked with Gen. Colin Powell - the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who also is weighing a presidential run - although he declined to elaborate on the conversation.

He also said he has been unsuccessful in efforts to talk to 1992 independent candidate Ross Perot and former Connecticut Gov. Lowell Weicker, a Republican-turned-independent who is considering his own presidential bid.

On Wednesday, the 52-year-old Bradley declared that he would not pursue a fourth Senate term. But the former Rhodes scholar and basketball Hall of Famer promised to remain in the public arena.

“It’s possible to lead from the Senate and to make a difference in people’s lives,” he said then. “But I’ve concluded that the U.S. Senate is not the only place to do either of those two things.”

Thursday, Bradley reiterated that he would not challenge President Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

“I don’t know in 1996 what will be the best way to participate in the presidential election process,” he said. “My objective is to get the political process to focus on the lives of people who are now disconnected from it.”

Opinion polls show that roughly 60 percent of all Americans - and a similar ratio of Democrats and Republicans - want a third major political party.

“The electorate is awfully angry these days. The possibility of a third-party candidate winning is better than it’s been in the past,” said Clyde Wilcox, professor of government at Georgetown University.

But Bradley’s announcement also highlighted the difficulty of such a bid: An independent candidate would get no federal funds to run a general-election campaign, while the Democrat and Republican nominee each gets $60 million.

“One of the few issues on which Democrats and Republicans have conspired upon is protecting the security of the two-party system,” said Terry Holt, a political organizer and press secretary for the presidential campaign of Sen. Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana. “The independent candidacy is a rich man’s game.”

Most political analysts view a Bradley candidacy as harming Clinton more than the Republican nominee.

Recently, however, Bradley has moved into the vast political center by hurling barbs at both parties.

Republicans, he said Wednesday, “are infatuated with the magic of the market and reflexively criticize government,” while Democrats “preach government as the answer to our problems, and prefer the bureaucrats they know to the consumer they can’t control.”