PHILADELPHIA - Don King, the wild-haired boxing promoter, is touring the country with Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie to tout President Bush's re-election.
"Only in America," as King often says ? and he did at a stop in Philadelphia Wednesday.
"People understand that George Walker Bush is the man with the plan to make America better," King, sporting an American flag tie and plenty of diamond-encrusted jewelry, told a group of black business leaders at a downtown jazz club. "Sometimes, just sometimes, it ain't too bad to be in the Bushes."
The latter line is the flip side of Jesse Jackson's warning at past Democratic conventions for Americans to "stay out of the Bushes."
King's rap sheet makes him an odd choice for Bush front man. He was convicted in the 1967 beating death of a man who owed him money and spent nearly four years in prison. In 1954, he killed a man who was robbing a numbers house he operated in Cleveland, but it was ruled self-defense.
King also has beaten tax evasion and fraud charges, faced numerous lawsuits from boxers and their handlers and endured three grand jury investigations and an FBI sting operation ? all while cementing his status as one of the world's top boxing promoters.
Republicans see King as a way to reach the ever-elusive black vote. Bush managed just 9 percent of the black vote in 2000, matching Ronald Reagan's percentage in 1984 and faring just slightly better than Republican Barry Goldwater's 6 percent in 1964.
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