Now It's Really a Race

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

What a difference a day makes:

Before last Tuesday, Elizabeth Foley had little hope of drumming up many votes for Colorado Senator Gary Hart in Nevada's Democratic caucuses March 13; she headed a totally in adequate band of 30 volunteers.

On Wednesday, she snatched a moment away from answering phones to report: "I've had 50 offers of assistance just today."

Before last Tuesday, only 42 Democrats were running as Hart-pledged candidates in the March 20 primary in Illinois, a state that will send 194 delegates to the July convention in San Francisco. But then nine would-be delegates who will appear on the ballot as pledged to California Senator Alan Cranston announced that if elected they would actually vote for Hart; three turned up at a news conference at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport to vow fealty to their new leader in person. By week's end the count of would-be Illinois delegates defect ing to Hart had passed two dozen.

Before last Tuesday, Hart supporters at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology considered canceling a campus rally, fearing that few would show up. But when Hart strode on the stage on Friday, his right hand thrust into his suit coat pocket in a J.F.K. stance, 1,200 students jammed the hall chanting: "Gary! Gary!"

The difference, of course, was New Hampshire. Quirkily independent and cantankerous as always, its voters last week destroyed the idea that the Democratic contest would turn into a brief, glittering coronation parade for former Vice President Walter Mondale. In the nation's first primary, it was the lanky, cerebral Hart, incessantly touting his "new ideas," who not only won but won big.

The 101,129 Granite State residents who mushed through wind-driven snow, freezing rain and slush to cast Democratic ballots on Tuesday gave Hart more than 37% of their votes vs. not quite 28% for Mondale. Moreover, Hart swept nearly every category of voter; one exit poll found that only those aged 60 or over delivered the expected margins for Mondale. In the judgment of House Speaker Tip O'Neill, a Mondale backer, Hart has pulled off "probably the biggest upset in Democratic politics since [Eugene] McCarthy went up against Lyndon Johnson in New Hampshire in 1968." Says puzzled Pollster Claibourne Darden, whose soundings failed to gauge the extent of the Hart surge in New Hampshire: "It's just the damnedest thing I ever saw."

Overnight, in short, and quite unexpectedly, the Democratic race has become precisely that--a race. A hard one to figure too.

Adding up the numbers, it is still difficult to find a state in which Hart can be said to have taken the lead, and hard to count any impressive number of delegates he might win even from those states where he has a newborn chance. But in just the first few days after New Hampshire, the change in the tempo of the campaign, and the atmosphere around the two candidates, was almost palpable.

In the Hart camp, there was the unmistakable air of a campaign taking off--literally. The candidate who two weeks --ago had been trudging the back J-- roads of Iowa and New Hampshire accompanied by about five reporters is now flying aboard a chartered 727 packed with a press contingent of more than 60. Says Hart: "The race we're in now is much more like a general election We're doing three states a day We're campaigning nationally."

Crowds are swelling and looking at Hart with new interest.

The change in atmosphere in the Mondale entourage was equally dramatic. For the former Vice President, the New Hampshire results were, in his words, a "cold shower." He still boasts advantages that neither Hart nor any of the other three candidates remaining after New Hampshire can come anywhere near matching widely known name, piles of money, nationwide organization, high standing in national polls, voluminous endorsements from party leaders and interest groups. But he has lost his all-important aura of invincibility; if he could be beaten in New Hampshire, he can be beaten elsewhere. That prospect is already forcing Democrats all over the country to think seriously about a choice many had assumed would be foreclosed by the time their states got around to voting. Those who fear that Mondale may be too bland and unexciting, too much of an old-fashioned liberal or too beholden to special-interest groups to give Ronald Reagan a hard battle for the White House now have an alternative--or two.

Mondale's assessment of the turnaround was both remarkably candid and, for him, rather somber. After some quick campaigning in Boston the morning after his New Hampshire defeat, he flew to Washington for a day of thinking over what had hit him. On Thursday, he met with the reporters who cover his campaign and gave them a lesson in what a difference a day can make. The candidate who on the eve of New Hampshire had been hoping to knock all his rivals out of the battle by late March now was claiming, rather speciously, that he should no longer even be considered the front runner.

Said Mondale: "There seeped into my campaign, and maybe even into my own mind, a kind of a front-runner inevitability psychology that maybe people smelled, and that's gone now... We're in for a long, tough fight, and it could well go right to the convention. It is clearly a two-man race, and it's very close."

Officially it is not quite a two-man race. The Democratic field did narrow, quickly and drastically, after New Hampshire. Cranston, South Carolina Senator Ernest Rollings and former Florida Governor Reubin Askew folded their campaigns within 48 hours of the tally there, which showed them with fewer votes than Reagan received as a write-in candidate in the Democratic primary.

At least through the next round, Mondale and Hart face continuing competition from one potentially formidable candidate: John Glenn. Last fall's poll favorite to give Mondale a close race, Glenn recovered a bit from his disastrous showing in the Iowa precinct caucuses Feb. 20. He went from fifth place, with less than 4% of the vote, in Iowa to third, with 11.9%, in New Hampshire. The former astronaut and his aides claim some credit for derailing Mondale's bandwagon. Their incessant attacks on the former Vice President as a candidate of special interests and party bosses, they say, finally got through to the voters, though in New Hampshire the beneficiary was Hart's campaign rather than theirs. Glenn has organized and filed full delegate slates in all primary states to retain a chance of capitalizing himself, notably in the South, where many voters may find both Mondale and Hart too liberal. But his resources are coming under strain. In order to switch money and effort into the Super Tuesday primaries in Florida, Georgia and Alabama on March 13 and the March 17 caucuses in Mississippi, where he must run strongly to survive, Glenn last week had to put his campaigns in Texas and Michigan on hold, temporarily closing offices and stopping pay for staffers in those states.

Glenn nonetheless spiritedly called Mondale's talk of a two-man race between himself and Hart "folly." Said Glenn: "I think he's in for a big surprise across the South. On Super Tuesday there are going to be some messages sent that this thing has opened up and it's sure more than any two-man race." Colonel Floyd Man, Glenn's campaign chairman in Alabama, said of Hart's win in New Hampshire: "Anything that takes votes away from Mondale has got to help us." But Pollster Darden doubted that Glenn could exploit the opportunity. Darden's view: "He has been so inept up to now. He punts on the first down quite often."

The other two remaining candidates merely complicate the state-by-state problems of the top three.

Jesse Jackson could become the first candidate to run out of money. He finished fourth in New Hampshire, with 5.3% of the vote; if he falls below 10% again in Vermont's nonbinding "beauty contest" primary on Tuesday, his federal matching funds by law would be cut off 30 days later. That date is distant enough to permit Jackson to continue campaigning full-tilt through the important March primaries and caucuses in Southern states where blacks constitute a large proportion of the Democratic turnout. He might win enough delegates to hurt Mondale, Glenn, or both, and possibly even bag the 20% of the vote he would need to get in at least one primary to requalify for federal cash. Nonetheless, the threat of a money cutoff puts his campaign under a cloud.

George McGovern cherishes the hope of once again carrying Massachusetts, the only state he took from Richard Nixon when he was the Democratic nominee in 1972. So, after a fifth-place, 5.2% finish in New Hampshire, he decided to stay in the race through the Bay State primary on Super Tuesday. If he does not finish at least second there, he says, he will quit; even a victory would not make him a serious threat to win the nomination. His presence could be a problem for Hart and Mondale in what has become a vital state for both, less because of its 116 delegates than because of Hart's need to build, and Mondale's to reestablish, momentum.

In and beyond Massachusetts, Hart's difficulties in exploiting his big New Hampshire win will be severe. "The immediate problem is money," said the Senator on victory night. The day after his triumph he flew to Denver to raise cash from home-state supporters. His campaign since Feb. 15 has received just enough contributions to pay current bills and stabilize its debt at an average of $300,000 to $400,000. The Mondale campaign, by contrast, had $2.5 million in the bank on Feb. 1.

Hart barely has the rudiments of a national organization, as evidenced by his ability to file full slates of delegate candidates in only the District of Columbia, Ohio and Puerto Rico. In Iowa and New Hampshire, Hart practiced "retail politics," tirelessly addressing small audiences. The strategy paid off by winning enough votes in those states to rocket the Senator to national attention, but it will be of no use in the big, delegate-rich states to which the contest is now shifting. "There are more people who vote in my congressional district than vote in the whole of New Hampshire," says Edward Vrdolyak, chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party. "Illinois is an election--New Hampshire is a media event."

All these difficulties, however, could prove surmountable. The money began to flow while the New Hampshire votes were still being counted. In an Atlanta suburb, Hart workers who had assembled to watch the results on TV Tuesday night were so enthused by the Senator's sweep that they chipped in $1,000 on the spot and another $8,000 in pledges. "Not bad for a campaign that had been taking in $17,000 a day nationally," observed one.

Organization, while always valuable, is less decisive in big primary states--New York on April 3, California on June 5 if the race lasts that long--where mass electorates can be quickly swayed by newspaper and TV publicity. Says Hart:

"People will know about me through what they read or what they see. They don't have to have somebody knock on the door and hand them a leaflet." And people almost certainly will be reading about and seeing a great deal of Hart, thanks to his surprise victory in New Hampshire.

With press and public interest in Hart intensifying, his policies and leadership style will come under closer examination. He portrays himself as the candidate unencumbered by dogma, with pragmatic ideas not easily pigeonholed. Claiming to speak for "a new generation of leadership," Hart says the contest between himself and Mondale is a choice "between our party's past and its future."

These contentions exasperate Mondale. Says he: "Look, Hart isn't 26, he's 47. I'm not 86, I'm 56." But Hart does seem to be tapping a deep vein of longing for a new accent in leadership, particularly among a group known as Yuppies, for young urban professionals. These are well-educated people in their 20s and 30s who turn out to vote in large numbers and make dedicated, articulate campaign workers.

To many non-Yuppie Democrats, Hart appeals simply by keeping open the prospect of a genuine choice in contests that before New Hampshire had seemed likely to be meaningless because they would occur long after Mondale had locked up the nomination. California, for instance, will choose more delegates than any other state (345), but its Democrats had assumed there would be no race left by the time they voted in the June 5 primary. Hart's New Hampshire victory changes that. Exults Executive Director of the State Democratic Party Michael Gordon, who is neutral: "Now California has been thrust into prominence."

Translating this appeal into delegate strength is something else again. Hart will have to fight through a confusing swamp of delegate-selection rules that vary sharply from state to state.

Among the 25 primary states, some, such as Georgia and Alabama, apportion most delegate seats on the basis of the various candidates' shares of the popular vote. In theory, Hart could win more delegates than have agreed to run under his banner, filling the empty seats after the primary. In other states, prominently including Florida and Illinois, most delegates are elected directly by congressional district, in a vote separate from the presidential-preference balloting. Once listed on the ballot as being pledged to one candidate, they cannot shift and appear under the name of another. Thus in Illinois Hart will have to persuade voters in some districts to check his name on the presidential-preference section of the ballot, then go down to the delegate section and look under the names of Cranston or Askew for candidates who now say they prefer Hart.

Above all, Hart must contend with a system that was deliberately designed, by packing all primaries and caucuses into a short period between Feb. 20 and June 5, to prevent a dark-horse candidate from gradually building strength and parlaying a surprise showing into the nomination.

That is pretty much what McGovern did in 1972 (in a campaign that Hart managed) and Jimmy Carter in 1976. Despite the way the system is now stacked, says Hart, "I don't have to win the nomination in March." It will suffice, he thinks, to pick off the majority of a delegation here and there--his first target was the Maine caucuses held on Sunday, with 27 delegates at stake--and win a fair share of delegates in states that Mondale might carry, such as Florida and Illinois. That way he could keep Mondale from building an insuperable lead, and make his real drive in big states such as New York and Pennsylvania in April and California in June.

Paradoxically, the front-loaded schedule could aid Hart in the short term. There will be little time for voters in the March contests to scrutinize his positions; they may jump on his bandwagon just because he is an exciting candidate who seems to stand for something new. Political Strategist Pat Caddell, who is advising Hart, anticipated such a situation early this year: "[If you] come in a surprise second in Iowa and on that momentum win New Hampshire . . . there's probably not enough time for the party establishment to regroup and counterattack effectively [before Super Tuesday]."

Indeed, Hart hopes eventually to persuade many delegates to vote for him after they are elected as being pledged to Mondale, Glenn or other candidates. He could do it too. Of the delegates going to San Francisco, 15% will not be pledged to any candidate. Moreover, the party has scrapped the rule that in 1980 legally bound delegates to vote on the first ballot for the candidate to whom they were pledged. Hart can legitimately hope that if he wins enough late contests to be the choice of a clear majority of Democrats by the time the last caucus and primary votes are counted, he can wind up with the convention votes of many delegates who were elected early under Mondale, Glenn or other banners. He scoffs at any idea that "the rules will nominate Mondale if the voters nominate me."

Mondale's strategy still is to run flat out everywhere, hoping to build an insurmountable lead before Hart can collect the money, throw together the organization and capitalize sufficiently on his sudden publicity to mount a serious challenge. Aides still think that Mondale can win as many as 900 of the 1,331 delegates who will be chosen in the three weeks between New Hampshire and Illinois, giving him more than 45% of the 1,967 needed for the nomination before Hart has picked up more than a few hundred.

Mondale will make some adaptations, though. He will seek more meetings with young people, and conduct more neighborhood walking tours and make more appearances at factory gates. Campaign Chairman James Johnson says there will be a corresponding drop in "institutional" appearances, presumably including speeches at labor rallies, though no one will say so. Mondale is proud of his endorsement by the AFL-CIO, but his identification with Big Labor has been a prime target of attacks by Hart and Glenn, and in New Hampshire at least it seems to have lost more votes than it gained.

Mondale concedes that he erred in televised campaign debates by not responding directly to criticism from other Democrats and concentrating instead on denouncing Ronald Reagan. Says he:

"The impression was left I was trying to avoid that debate, being too cautious." He was anything but cautious Friday afternoon, repeatedly assailing Hart by name in a press conference and then in a speech in the rotunda of the Maine capitol building in Augusta. Voice booming, face flushed, fists pounding the lectern, Mondale accused Hart of siding with Big Oil (by voting against the windfall-profits tax and proposing a $10 per bbl. fee on imported oil that would "add at least a full percentage point" to the inflation rate) and of pleasing "the hospital lobby" (by helping to kill a 1979 hospital cost-containment bill). Hart, on a Southern swing, blasted back that his oil-tax ideas were intended to reduce U.S. dependence on imports and "avoid the unnecessary loss of American lives in the Persian Gulf " since fighting might be required to keep the imports flowing. Said Hart: "Apparently, Mr. Mondale's position is that he wants to continue to rely on foreign supplies, and that must mean that if he cares about the country or its security he's prepared to go to war for that oil."

The prospect of a closely contested and possibly bloody Democratic nomination battle cheered Reagan's campaign strategists. Said one: "The longer the Democratic race goes on, the more it serves our purposes.

They'll have to spend their time and money fighting each other rather than uniting their side to beat up on the President."

Also, the fiercer the fight gets, the more difficulty the eventual winner may have unifying the party for the fall campaign.

But, Reagan's aides admit, there is a catch. They still assume the nominee will be Mondale, and are well prepared for a campaign against him. They will assail him as an oldfashioned, free-spending, solve-every-problem-with-a-new-Government-program liberal, and as the Vice President in the highly unpopular Carter Administration to boot. But just suppose Hart wins? The Republicans have not even begun to figure out what his vulnerabilities might be and how they might attack him. One top White House aide was asking reporters last week, in tones of genuine curiosity: "What does this guy really stand for? Is he more or less liberal than Mondale?" If nothing else, Hart's win in New Hampshire guarantees that Democrats will be asking one another similar questions in living rooms all over the country for the next few weeks. --By George J. Church. Reported by Sam Allis with Mondale and Jack E. White with Hart, and other bureaus

With reporting by Sam Allis, Jack E. White