Profile: Bill Bradley

— -- Bill Bradley pledged to usher in a “different kind of politics” with his high-minded presidential bid, but in the end, the former New Jersey senator was thrashed by Al Gore, and failed to win a single state in his primary contest.

A former pro basketball player and veteran legislator, Bradley was urged by supporters to seek the Democratic nomination in 1988 and 1992, and briefly pondered a run for the White House as an independent in 1996. With no other candidates emerging to challenge a sitting vice president for the party’s nod in this year’s election cycle, Bradley decided his time had come.

Tonight a different kind of time will come for Bradley, as he will ask for party unity at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, while saluting the colors of his once-rival’s forthcoming presidential campaign.

‘It Can Happen’

At the outset, many political experts believed Bradley had a much better chance of wresting the Democratic nomination from Gore than Arizona Sen. John McCain had of defeating his party’s favorite for the nomination, Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

Many experts speculated that Democrats, fearing a contest between a charismatic Bush and a less-than-lively Gore, would begin to turn to Bradley as the more “electable” of the two candidates. Retiring New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan endorsed Bradley, saying that Gore “cannot win in November.”

Early in the campaign season, the senator’s hopes for victory ran high as he began to out-raise Gore in campaign contributions — something his advisers claimed was indicative of the senator’s strong grass-roots support.

Bradley even appeared poised for victory in the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary, as he maintained a slight lead over the vice president in a number of statewide polls in the run-up to the critical contest. The campaign’s newly christened slogan, “It Can Happen,” was more accurate, it appeared, than the Gore camp wanted to admit.