A Big Bicoastal Finale

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

California and New Jersey Democrats gird for Super Tuesday III

Multiple-choice test for political strategists: Name a delegate-rich coastal state that boasts low unemployment and a concentration of high-tech industry, and is filled with well-educated suburban voters who enthusiastically favor a nuclear freeze and worry deeply about pollution from toxic-waste dumps? Oh yes, one other characteristic: its primary next week will be the key to capturing the Democratic nomination. Is it a) California; b) New Jersey; c) both?

For Gary Hart, the correct answer is c): he badly needs victories in both states to keep Walter Mondale from lining up enough delegates to walk off with a first-ballot nomination at the July convention in San Francisco. Mondale might get by choosing b): winning most of the 107 delegates that New Jersey will select next Tuesday could provide the triumph he needs to hold off Hart's closing surge. Even if he loses most of the 306 delegates to be chosen in California, a New Jersey victory would just about lock up the prize. In any case, the two states, wildly dissimilar in geography but surprisingly akin in demographics, together constitute the ultimate arena for the grueling campaign.

There are other arenas too: three more states will hold primaries on June 5, the third and last Super Tuesday of the campaign. Thus both candidates stumped last week through New Mexico (23 delegates at stake). Mondale also visited West Virginia (35 delegates). Hart, meanwhile, turned up in South Dakota (15 delegates). In Idaho caucuses last week, Hart won eleven delegates to six for Mondale. But that gain was offset in New York, where state Democratic powers selected 16 "superdelegates," party leaders chosen outside the primary-caucus process. Though all are technically uncommitted, 14 have announced publicly for Mondale. Ohio's Democratic Party also chose ten superdelegates last week, nine of whom support Mondale.

Both candidates are exuding confidence. For Mondale, that is at least in part a calculated act. His strategists met last week and concluded that they had to put a stop to stories about depression and worry in the former Vice President's camp. Thus, as reporters asked him just when he might amass the 1,967 delegates needed to nominate, Mondale answered with atypical jaunty precision: "At 11:59 [a.m.] on June 6, I'll go over the top."

Mondale on the stump has reassumed his Fighting Fritz pose of March and April, slamming away lustily at both Reagan and Hart. At a toxic-waste dump in New Jersey, Mondale sneered that the Reagan Administration "would rather take a polluter to lunch than to court," and assailed Hart for "playing hooky" from Senate deliberations about creation of a so-called Superfund to clean up such wastes. In San Luis Obispo, Calif, he for once made a clear choice between two groups in his own constituency, coming down on the side of antinuclear activists and urging closing of the nearby Diablo Canyon atomic-power plant, over the lusty booing of construction workers. Said Mondale to the hecklers: "Money doesn't justify risking the lives of thousands or millions of people. Neither does a job."

Hart's campaign last week was a string of photo opportunities. He tooled around San Diego harbor in an experimental boat and climbed into the gondola of a bright yellow-and-blue hot-air balloon at a balloon fiesta in Albuquerque (gusty winds kept the craft from getting off the ground). In speeches Hart presents himself as the thoughtful leader discussing issues of the future, delivering detailed proposals on voting procedures in Grand Junction, Colo., on women's rights in Albuquerque, on nuclear-arms control in Santa Barbara.

Hart is throwing out tantalizing hints of a Stop-Mondale alliance with Jesse Jackson "between June 6 and the convention." He is even starting to speak in Jacksonian cadence and rhyme. Said Hart in Albuquerque last week: "Ronald Reagan wants women only behind ironing boards; I think they should be members of the board . . . they should have more say and they should have more pay."

Such an alliance, however, could be effective only if Mondale were first stopped in California and New Jersey. While the conventional wisdom once rated Hart the likely winner in California and Mondale a breeze in New Jersey, veteran pols now consider each state close. The picture in detail:

CALIFORNIA. The Golden State's trendy, anti-Establishment voters would seem made to order for New Celebrity Hart. Says Hart Chairman John Emerson: "California is a place that has grown on the idea of opportunity and the future, and that's what Hart is all about." But that is not what the polls show. Mervin Field's California Poll in early May had Mondale ahead 41% to 39%; a later poll by Steven Teichner for television station KABC in Los Angeles showed Hart leading 29% to 27%, with a stunning 34% undecided. The conclusion many observers are drawing is that California Democrats, used to casting meaningless votes after a nomination has long since been locked up, are waiting to make up their minds now that their ballots will really count.

In any case, statewide figures are almost irrelevant because under the arcane system there will be no statewide election. Instead, there will be, in effect, 45 simultaneous elections in California's congressional districts. Rather than simply selecting their preferred candidate, voters will have to mark their ballots for up to eight delegates (who will have in parentheses next to their names the candidate to whom they are pledged). This system was deliberately designed to boost the chances of Senator Alan Cranston, on the theory that nearly all the state's well-known Democratic politicians would run as delegates pledged to him. After Cranston dropped out of the race, most of the pols with recognizable names switched to Mondale. The system offers a chance for a big sweep: the most popular candidate in each district could have all of his delegates there elected. Both camps concede three predominantly black districts in Los Angeles and one in Oakland to Jackson, who also hopes to give Mondale a fight in three heavily Hispanic districts.

Mondale campaigners hope to win through careful organization, particularly by the AFL-CIO, which has set up phone banks throughout the state. But California is one state in which Hart will not be organizationally outgunned. He has fielded a force of 4,000 mostly unpaid volunteers, to Mondale's 2,000 (not counting union workers)--and if Mondale has the prominent politicians working for him, Hart has the enthusiastic backing of such movie stars as Debra Winger, Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty. The outcome may be decided by the relative effectiveness of the radio-TV blitzes both sides will start this week in California.

NEW JERSEY. If the state stiII matched its popular image--grubby, urban, blue-collar, machine-dominated--it would be ideal for Mondale. But that image is far out of date. Research and service operations are overtaking smokestack industries; Bell Labs alone employs 12,000 people in New Jersey, and they include 2,000 Ph.D.s, one of the highest concentrations in the country. The state is one of the most suburban in the nation. Though New Jersey has the highest population density of any state, only 9% of its citizens live in its six largest cities. The urban machines have little hold on the well-educated suburbanites, who share many of the concerns of their fellow yumpies (young, upwardly mobile professionals) in California. Still, Hart is running uphill. Says Barry Brendel, an adviser to the Colorado Senator: "The thing we have to overcome is the six years of work Mondale has put in here." As in California, many of the state's big-name Democratic politicians are working for Mondale, and their influence might be decisive in a state with a history of very light primary votes. Jackson, however, may cut into the potential Mondale vote; he is expected easily to match and probably exceed the 15% of the ballots that Kenneth Gibson, the black mayor of Newark, took in a 1981 primary for Governor. Polls initially showed Mondale running ten points or more ahead of Hart, but they were taken before Hart's big May victories, and no one claims to know how those may have affected the trend. As in California, the delegate slates will be elected by district, but at least in New Jersey there will also be a preference poll to determine the popular favorite.

If the June 5 primaries leave Mondale still scrambling to reach the magic number of 1,967 delegates, there may yet be another round to the nomination battle. Jesse Jackson, in a meeting in Washington last week with Democratic National Chairman Charles Manatt, failed to persuade Manatt to consider changing the rules under which delegates will be seated. So Jackson pledged to lodge a complaint with "the standing committees" of the convention. He claims that the rules written by Mondale supporters and other members of the party Establishment two years ago have allowed him to win only 9% of the delegates chosen in primaries so far, even though he has won approximately 21% of the popular vote. Jackson also echoes Hart's vehement charge that some Mondale delegates are "tainted" because they were elected with the help of unethically collected contributions.

That raises the possibility of a joint Hart-Jackson challenge before the convention's rules committee, which meets in Washington the last week of June. The great majority of the committee's 184 members will be chosen in proportion to each candidate's strength in the convention, which means they will be pro-Mondale. By pooling their forces, though, Hart and Jackson could win the 25% committee vote necessary to produce a minority report, which could open the way to a floor fight on delegate credentials. The idea that enough Mondale delegates could actually be unseated to produce a wide-open convention seems the longest of long shots, but this has been a good year for the unexpected. --By George J. Church. Reported by Benjamin W. Cate/Los Angeles and Barry Kalb/Newark, with other bureaus

With reporting by Benjamin W. Cate, Barry Kalb