HOW HE SEES IT Sharpton spins after flop

By ZEV CHAFETS
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- As the Rev. Al Sharpton delivered his "victory speech" at the Sheraton Hotel here, he shared the ballroom with members of the South Carolina Funeral Directors Association.
It was a good fit. Undertakers are used to insincere speeches.
"Nobody would have predicted that I would finish ahead of [Howard] Dean, [Wesley] Clark, [Joseph] Lieberman and [Dennis] Kucinich," Sharpton said after tallying 9.6 percent of the state's vote. "I'm a first-tier candidate."
Sharpton spent a month crisscrossing the state, hoping to win the hearts and minds of black primary voters and bag at least 15 percent of the vote -- enough to win delegates. But he fell short, winning just a fifth of the black vote.
Southerner John Edwards and the patrician John Kerry did twice as well with Sharpton's targeted voters, based on exit polls.
The reverend's defeat is a victory for his erstwhile mentor and archrival, the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Publicly, Sharpton says he still admires Jackson. Privately, his camp bitterly accuses Jackson of sabotaging Sharpton's South Carolina run and spreading rumors about his probity.
A natural
Despite his loss, Sharpton plans to go on. He's a natural trouper, a performer who has been on the road since he was a boy preacher in the early '60s.
Lately, there have been questions about the financial strength of his camp. But he showed at Columbia's Reid Chapel on Monday night he knows how to tap a congregation for donations. As long as there are friendly churches, Sharpton can live off the land.
You learn a lot about a candidate by the people around him. Sharpton's coterie consists mostly of young black men and women. They're polite and calm, despite 18-hour days.
The reverend is not an easy boss. He can be distant and suspicious, but he is admired by his staff. He also seems popular with reporters who travel with him. Acutely self-aware, Sharpton admits he has cultivated a new, warmer image. Still, you can't fake what you don't have. Sharpton, for all his fierce reputation, is an approachable man.
But his makeover hasn't totally changed his image. The other day in Charleston, a white bellhop gulped when he learned Sharpton was in town. "There's going to be trouble here today," he said. He was wrong. Al Sharpton isn't going to be any trouble this year, at least not for the Democratic Party. In South Carolina, he got a brand-new bag. And it was empty.
XZev Chafets is a columnist for the New York Daily News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.