Going for a Knockout

By KURT ANDERSEN

After Iowa, Mondale is slugging, Glenn is sagging, and Hart is hanging in First Des Moines and Cedar Rapids in Iowa, then Manchester and Concord in New Hampshire: plain-folks places nearly as thick with TV equipment and visiting reporters as Sarajevo had been the week before. But unlike the Olympics, which had enough surprises to keep things interesting, the quadrennial race for the Democratic presidential nomination was beginning to look like a predictable rout. "We got the gold and silver medals," declared Walter Mondale's polltaker, Peter Hart, after the Iowa caucuses. "Everybody else fought over the bronze." The candidate to beat put it less colorfully. "I have won overwhelmingly," he said, even before lowans in 2,495 precincts had left their caucuses.

Mondale partisans could hardly help gloating as voters at last began the process of choosing delegates to next summer's Democratic National Convention. The former Vice President was happy before he arrived in Iowa, humming along with a Linda Ronstadt tune on his Walkman and smoking a big Partagas cigar; he left for New Hampshire still happier, with 49% of Iowa's Democratic caucus vote, more than his seven competitors combined (an eighth rival, Uncommitted, captured 9%). Among the other Democrats who would be President, Colorado Senator Gary Hart was the most cheered; he took 16% of the Iowa vote, finishing second. That mildly surprised everyone but Hart himself. His supporters were buoyed to the point of giddiness, but most disinterested political analysts figured his success would be short-lived. "Somebody had to finish second," said a Mondale strategist. "Hart," said a Republican analyst, "has simply managed to be the last man shot."

Nevertheless, Hart was counting on a strong second-place showing in New Hampshire. With a swollen pack of journalists trailing him to a shopping mall in West Lebanon and a toxic-waste dump in Londonderry (the crowd at the dump: half a dozen area residents, two police officers and 70 journalists), Hart encouraged the impression that he is in a two-man race for the nomination. Ohio Senator John Glenn, of course, believed and said the same thing for almost a year then, in Iowa, where he counted on finishing second, he staggered in fifth with less than 4% of the vote, well behind former Senator George McGovern (10%) and California Senator Alan Cranston (7%). He did little better than former Florida Governor Reubin Askew (2.5%) and the Rev. Jesse Jackson (1.5%). "We took a licking," Glenn conceded, but added, "It's not the end of the world." There was no ignoring the implications of his Iowa debacle. "Glenn is gone," suggested Iowa's Democratic Committee chairman, David Nagle. If Mondale wins decisively in New Hampshire, reckoned South Carolina Senator Fritz Rollings, who finished last in Iowa, "the rest of us are gone."

In Iowa, every contender but Jackson and Rollings gave his all. Jackson chose to write off a state with a minuscule (1.5%) black population; Rollings concentrated his improbable efforts entirely in New Hampshire. Askew's strategists went after what they called "the fraternity and sorority vote" at Iowa State, as well as voters opposed to legalized abortion. "I was reaching out to a forgotten majority," Askew said with a smile, "but a lot of them forgot to vote."

McGovern, the party's disastrously unsuccessful 1972 nominee, called his third-place finish last week a "minor miracle." The old left-winger, as guileless as ever, visited the state 40 times in the past four months and became a kind of party monitor, sweetly reminding fellow candidates to attack President Reagan instead of one another.

Cranston's well-funded Iowa organization was outclassed only by Mondale's, he had volunteer organizers in 80% of the state's precincts and a bank of 100 phones for canvassing. He lashed himself to the proposal for a nuclear weapons freeze, a widely popular notion in Iowa. Yet Cranston unfortunately has the grim, pinched look of a Dickensian miser. As a stump speaker he seemed a bit bored. Aides had to talk him out of quitting last week.

Glenn, on the 22nd annniversary of his space flight, watched the news of his political devastation on TV in a Boston hotel suite. Outwardly he remained serene. "If the right stuff ever came out," said an aide, "it was then. I saw a beauty, a calmness, a strength, an exquisiteness I've never seen before."

If an intimate had never glimpsed the right stuff, how could the voters? Glenn spent about $684,000 in Iowa, the legal limit, but in the end fewer than 3,000 caucusgoers--an average of one per precinct at a pro rata cost of $230--stood up to be counted for him. "Most of the supporters we identified had never been to a caucus before," said one mordant Glenn strategist, "and most of them still have not." For all his gallows humor, the aide was addressing a central flaw of the campaign. Glenn has run as if he were in a general election, pitching himself to politically inactive middle-of-the-roaders, while primaries and particularly caucuses tend to be dominated by activists and ideologues. Then, too, there is the problem of Glenn himself: his homely style and technocratic ideas have, not roused many voters.

Hart, articulate, good-looking and determinedly fresh, practiced what Campaign Manager Oliver Henkel calls "retail politics" in Iowa: labor-intensive trips down back roads, speaking to a few farmers here, a women's group there. Hart's organizational thinness made the result more impressive; his staff had catalogued all-out supporters in only half of the his state's relative precincts. Hart, 47, made much of his relative youth.

Hart Supporter Brian Quirk, 22, was elected caucus chairman by 86 of his Democratic neighbors gathered in the auditorium of Waterloo's red brick McKinstry Elementary School. When they arranged themselves into clusters according to candidate preference, 33 were for Mondale, 17 for Hart, eleven (five whites, six blacks) for Jackson, ten for McGovern, the rest scattered among also-rans. votes A at a caucus candidate to must have his receive 15% support of re the corded m the statewide tabulation; backers of candidates who fall below the threshold remain can formally defect to another uncommitted. contender During he arm twisting at McKinstry Elementary, the lonesome Glenn and Cranston supporters were recruited by other groups One result was a Jackson-McGovern tie lor third place that was settled, according to official party rules, by a coin flip--heads, McGovern won.

At a caucus in a Des Moines school the chairwoman initially counted "35-ish for Mondale, 30-plus for McGovern" University of Northern Iowa History Professor Charles Quirk, Brian's father, thinks the inexact, homespun democracy is terrific. People criticize the caucuses as a meaningless media show," he says "But it s a civics lesson for us all. Both the politicians and the people are better for it"

Invading journalists were everywhere. At the Quirks' caucus, two newspaper reporters wore red sashes with LOS ANGELES TIMES printed in gold; the sashes were to ensure that the Californians would not be taken for Iowa Democrats and mistakenly included in a head count. All told, some 600 members of the press showed up to cover the caucuses, including representatives of at least six Japanese news organizations and Swedish television. In 1980, by contrast, there were only 100 out-of-state journalists on hand.

Network Anchormen Peter Jennings of ABC, Tom Brokaw of NBC and Dan Rather of CBS coincidentally arrived from New York City aboard the same plane; Rather rode coach, while his fellow millionaires went first-class. The three networks sent about 400 people to Des Moines and spent perhaps $3 million on ad hoc studios. CBS took over and closed off the modernist Civic Center for its newsroom (and already has it booked for 1988). NBC set up shop in the grand ballroom of the Hotel Savery in downtown Des Moines, renting two full floors for offices. ABC crammed itself into a Holiday Inn banquet room. As usual, the networks raced ahead of the results: ABC, the last to predict Mondale's landslide, did so 15 minutes after voting began. The early projections were considered spoilsport at best, electoral meddling at worst. Colorado Democrat Timothy Wirth, chairman of the House Telecommunications Subcommittee, urged the networks to show more restraint and invited them to testify before his panel this week.

Iowa Democrats were sore about some competition from President Reagan who flew in to Iowa on caucus afternoon and made the media circus a two-ring affair. Reagan, whose job rating has dropped 12% since January, gave campaign speeches to 7,600 in Waterloo's Cattle Congress auditorium (only the Rolling StoneMn 1981, drew a bigger crowd) and to 7,000 more in Des Moines. Like most lowans, Democrat Sam Kauffman, a barber in Audubon (pop. 2,841), got a kick out of all the national attention. Said he "We don't get the chance for that kind of limelight very often."

The limelight promptly shifted to New Hampshire. The candidates' debate in Manchester Thursday was friendly and inconclusive. Glenn seemed loose; Hart tight. Jackson, who after a fast start was losing ground, let some more slip away When Moderator Barbara Walters asked him about reports that in private he often referred to Jews collectively as Hymie" and New York City as "Hymie-town," Jackson nervously dodged the question. "I am not anti-Semitic," he said. "I am not inclined to ... be insulting. The charges have intensified Jewish antagonism toward Jackson, already fierce because of his manifest sympathy for the Palestine Liberation Organization. Jackson, for his part, accuses an organization calling itself Jews Against Jackson of trying to disrupt his campaign.

The night before the debate, Glenn delivered an unusually warm five-minute TV speech, a last-ditch, do-or-die appeal to New Hampshire voters that cost $10,000. Ten reruns were scheduled. Hart, desperate not to lose momentum, dumped $100,000 into television ads and cranked up his solid organization. Mondale just sat tight. His aides fretted. "New Hampshire's not our kind of state," said one, alluding to its Yankee conservatism--and orneriness. "There's a big what-the-hell vote. A candidate like Hart could single-shot us."

Whatever the results, Hart will reman a dark horse: frisky and promising, but not getting much play from the smart money "Gary is still a long shot," says Henkel.

"But this is a long process. Mondale's strategy is front loading. Our approach is back loading." Unfortunately for Hart, this year's primary season is front loaded. During a five-day period in mid-March, 29% all Democratic delegates will be chosen in six primaries and 14 caucuses. In only a few of the states to be contested that week--Wyoming, Oklahoma, Washington--is Hart in a position seriously to challenge Mondale. In several big primaries, such as in Illinois (March 20), Hart-committed candidates are running for fewer than half the state's convention seats. His hopes depend further on Glenn's and Jackson's doing well, at Mondale's expense on Super Tuesday, March 13: if Mondale sweeps the three Southern primaries that day, in Florida, Georgia and Alabama, th race is essentially over. Mondale plans to run at full tilt in every contest. "The person who skips primaries," says his campaign chairman, James Johnson, "does so at his own peril."

Hart claims to understand the odds. "I don't expect any overnight miracles, he says. Even so, he seems almost mystically convinced that, if only because his undoctrinaire liberalism represents our party's future," the nomination will somehow, some day, be his. But it was Mondale who convinced Iowa Democrats that his future is now. --By Kurt Andersen. Reported by Hays Corey with Hart, and Christopher Ogden/Des Moines

With reporting by Hays Corey, Hart, Christopher Ogden