Charles Barkley says polls are useless, announces plan to run for governor of Alabama

In a wide ranging interview on Monday, former NBA star Charles Barkley told CNN's Campbell Brown that the presidential campaign polls are "useless," predicted a close race to the finish and announced his own plans to run for governor of Alabama.

Barkley said the campaign polls are "absolutely useless" because of the unknown factor of how people will respond to a black candidate. "Most people who are racist, they are not going to answer that question correctly either on the phone call or on camera, so I 100 percent believe the polls are flat out useless," said Barkley, echoing the potential impact of the so-called "Bradley effect."

The 45-year-old retired basketball player described racism as "the greatest cancer of my lifetime" but also predicted a reverse Bradley effect might take place in this year's election. He said some whites will not admit they plan to vote for a black guy but "quietly" they will, he said.

Despite polls showing Obama with a healthy lead in recent weeks, Barkley predicted a closer race than the media have anticipated. "I think this race is going to be neck and neck down to the wire," he told Brown.

A strong Obama supporter, Barkley described the Illinois senator as a "great role model" and admitted, "I never thought in my lifetime I would see a black president."

Born in Alabama in February 1963, Barkley plans to leave his adopted state of Arizona to return to his home state and run for governor in 2014. "I can't screw up Alabama," he said. "We are number 48 in everything and Arkansas and Mississippi aren't going anywhere."

Barkley said education would be his top priority for his state. "You know if you don't give people education and hope, they become criminals," he said. "They get involved in drugs. So we have got to fix the public school system. I think we need to make these neighborhoods safer," he added.

Barkley also said he wanted to help "give people economic opportunity" instead of helping out the wealthy few. "America for far too long has a small group of people who have got all the money and then we got a bunch of poor people who have no money. And because we have killed the public school system they can't get the education to make money and that is just not right," he said.

Barkley is one of only four players in NBA history to have compiled 20,000 points, 10,000 rebounds and 4,000 assists in his career. The others are Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain and Karl Malone.