A tight Democratic race turns into a blowout when black voters side overwhelmingly with Bill Clinton, whose only black opponent drops out before a single vote is cast.

Jesse Jackson was an obvious contender, but faced a dilemma.

If he ran for president a third straight time and didn't win the nomination, would his stature be diminished — a perennial candidate who could unite the black vote but make no further inroads?

He had time to deliberate. The Gulf War in early 1991 sent President George H.W. Bush's approval ratings into the stratosphere and paralyzed Democratic presidential politics. Only in late summer, with the economy dragging and gravity starting to assert itself on Bush's numbers, did a Democratic field begin assembling.

Publicly, Jackson agonized over the decision, even as Democratic leaders sent discouraging signals. "They've admitted they would like to use me to register voters, inspire voters and argue the case and pick the cotton," he told an interviewer. "But when it's time to bale it and have legitimate interest in the industry, that's where they want to draw lines.” (“When Not Running, Jesse’s Jilted," Susan Page, Newsday, Oct. 10, 1991.)

He had another option: CNN, then the only cable news channel around, was offering Jackson his own show — a potentially valuable platform to expand his profile and bide his time until 1996. In early November, Jackson said yes to the television lights and no to the campaign trail. His supporters, he said, were now "free agents in a political market.” (“Jackson Says He Won’t Run for President,” Douglas Frantz, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 3, 1991.)

That was a particularly significant declaration because there was already another black candidate in the race: Virginia's Doug Wilder, who two years earlier had become the first African American to be elected governor in American history. Wilder and Jackson were not close — Wilder hadn't supported Jackson's presidential campaigns — and embodied different political approaches. In contrast to Jackson's fervent liberalism, Wilder backed capital punishment and right-to-work laws, earned plaudits from conservative commentators, and boasted of his refusal to close his state's budget shortfall by raising taxes.

He called himself "the longest of long shots" but sketched out a roadmap to the nomination that involved cornering the market on the black vote as Jackson had but also competing seriously in heavily white states like New Hampshire. "Could it be," columnist Carl Rowan wrote, "a black candidate who erases white paranoia and re-establishes a coalition of blacks, white working people, and others who once formed a powerful party?” (“Wilder’s candidacy will help Democrats,” Carl Rowan, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Sept. 20, 1991.)