The race between Hart and Mondale heads toward more showdowns

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

Bracing for a Marathon

Gary Hart can still claim momentum. Walter Mondale can still claim the lead in delegates. Neither can claim the Democratic presidential nomination just yet. Indeed, there is a chance that neither will be able to do so until the last primary ballots are counted in June--or even until the last delegate votes are tallied at the San Francisco convention in July.

That in essence was the message sent to the contenders last week by some 3.5 million voters who trooped to polling places from the Arctic Circle to the Florida Keys, from the snow-sodden beaches of Cape Cod to the sun-drenched sands of Hawaii. From Super Tuesday, with contests in nine states, through Saturday, with caucuses in five more, Super Week covered 16 states that will be sending almost 1,000 delegates to San Francisco, out of a total of 3,933. It once loomed as the decisive showdown of the campaign. Mondale initially figured to deliver knockout blows to all those rivals who survived the opening primaries and caucuses. Later, after Hart followed up his victory in New Hampshire with a string of quick triumphs in other early contests, it seemed just possible that the Colorado Senator might win enough votes during the week to leave the Mondale campaign hanging paralyzed on the ropes.

In the event, Super Week was not quite a draw but a split decision. Hart won seven states, Mondale six; "uncommitted" swept Hawaii, South Carolina and three Kentucky counties that caucused in advance of the rest of the state. An impartial political referee would probably award the match to Hart on points. He won states large (Florida, Massachusetts) and small (Rhode Island), and some where his campaign barely existed at the beginning of March (Washington, Nevada). He proved that his candidacy is not a flashy fad but a national movement.

Some of the results, however, were ambiguous. Standout example: the Michigan caucuses, Saturday's main event. The state was stacked in Mondale's favor; he had the backing of the United Auto Workers and almost every Michigan Democratic politician with a recognizable name. Some caucuses were held in unpublicized locations, others in union halls under the eyes of U.A.W. officials.

Despite all that, the fervor of the campaign drew an unexpectedly heavy turnout of 135,000 that prolonged some caucuses two hours past the scheduled closing time of 4 p.m. Mondale won, with 49% of the vote, but Hart took a more than respectable 31%. On Saturday, Mondale also won the greatest number of delegates in Arkansas and Mississippi. Earlier in the week, he scored victories where he had to (Georgia, Alabama) in order to survive and slow Hart's surge a bit--from 150 m.p.h. to 100 m.p.h., in Hart's offhand metaphor.

Indeed, thanks partly to his triumph in Michigan and partly to the fact that delegate strength is only loosely tied to the popular vote in most primary states,* Mondale appears to have won some 300 delegates last week to Hart's 245. Overall, the rough unofficial count as of Saturday night was Mondale, 458 of the 1,967 delegates needed to nominate; Hart, 289; uncommitted or pledged to other candidates, 314. But delegates this year are free to switch their votes up to or even at the convention.

So the week's results point to a continuation of a close, hot and exciting battle, with the next face-off in Illinois, where 116 delegates will be chosen this week. A heavy defeat there could deal Mondale a serious blow, since the state once seemed ideally suited to display his strengths: backing by unions and the party establishment, in this case the Chicago machine. But the machine is unpopular with down-staters and suburbanites, reinforcing Hart's popularity among those groups, and with blacks, who may vote for the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a Chicago resident. At week's end Hart was running neck and neck with Mondale in statewide polls.

Assuming the Illinois primary is not a rout either way, Elliot Cutler, a top Mondale adviser, offers a plausible scenario for the remainder of the campaign: "A week from now, you [reporters] all will be saying, 'It's coming down to New York', after that you'll be saying, 'It's coming down to Pennsylvania.' Then I guarantee you everyone will be calling June 5 Super Tuesday II." New York chooses 172 delegates in a primary on April 3, and Pennsylvania selects 117 on April 24; on June 5, 333 delegates will be elected in primaries in California, New Jersey and three other states.

The struggle between Hart and Mondale, of course, is vastly more than a sporting event. It matches against each other two visions of what the Democratic Party should be and where it should try to lead the nation: Hart pledging a "new generation of leadership" dedicated to nonideological, pragmatic and untested "new ideas," Mondale plugging tried and somewhat tattered traditional liberalism. Says Mondale: "This marathon will be good for our country. Americans will learn a lot about us, about our character, our records, our plans and values."

In one respect, Super Week made the choice a bit more clear: it left just one candidate still competing for votes with Hart and Mondale. Six rivals had hit the hustings against them in February; by the end of last week the sole survivor was Jesse Jackson. He needed to win 20% of the ballots in at least one primary to hold on to his federal matching funds, and just made it, taking 21% in Georgia. In Alabama, he took 19%. Jackson has no chance to win the nomination, but he could take important black votes away from Mondale.

Senator John Glenn, who could never convert his once formidable standing in public opinion polls into a commensurate number of primary and caucus votes, gave up his campaign on Friday. In debt $2 million and unable to win anywhere, even in the South, where he had staked his last hopes on appealing to a "sensible center," the former astronaut had no choice. He declined to endorse anyone, and said, "I don't aspire to be Vice President"--but added, "If I thought it was really important to the party and the country, I'd have to consider it." His withdrawal creates new opportunities for both Hart and Mondale in Glenn's home state of Ohio, which will choose 105 delegates in a primary on May 8. George McGovern, the Democrats' 1972 nominee, kept his promise to fold his campaign if he did not finish at least second in Massachusetts.

Super Week clarified the campaign in another way: it brought into sharper focus the contrasting appeal of the two main contenders. Though Hart's early victories were concentrated in New England, he won last week at every point of the geographic compass, adding an unexpected triumph in the Alaska caucuses Thursday to his Super Tuesday scores from Massachusetts to Florida to Washington.

Hart proved that a media blitz could overcome both his own late start and Mondale's once vaunted edge in organization. In Oklahoma, Mondale had put together what some pols called the most professional organization ever seen in the state, while Hart did not even have an office there twelve days before the vote. Nonetheless, a last-minute surge of Hart newspaper and TV ads helped draw a record crowd of about 42,000 to the state's caucuses last Tuesday, and Hart scored a 42%-to-40% upset. In Florida, an early-February poll turned up only 2% support for Hart. But last Tuesday, again after a newspaper and TV blitz, Hart won 39% of the popular vote, to Mondale's 33%.

Hart appealed to groups other than the young, upwardly mobile voters who form the core of his support (see following story). He does run best among upper-income and better-educated voters. But exit polls in the South showed the Senator winning support in nearly every income and occupational group. In Florida, he even made some inroads into the state's large community of retired people, despite the pro-Mondale efforts of 83-year-old Congressman Claude Pepper. Said Stephen Purdy, 75, of Pensacola, explaining his vote for Hart: "I suppose that I would like to see a change, and wouldn't like to see a change in the Johnson, Mondale or Carter mold."

Mondale's strength, in contrast, appears from exit polls to be heavily concentrated among traditional Democrats: union members, lower-income voters, those blacks who have not joined the Jackson camp (Hart's voters, so far, have been almost exclusively white). But even some fervent Democrats, noting Hart's appeal to independents, are finding a new reason to choose the Coloradan. Says Reno Electrician Gary Willis: "If you're a Democrat, the key question is, Who can beat Reagan? Who can turn the voters out? People don't think that Mondale can."

Willis, however, is somewhat unusual among Hart supporters in giving a cogent reason to explain his stand. Hart voters interviewed by TIME correspondents last week hardly ever mentioned issues, and many could give little reason at all for choosing him beyond a vague yearning for a fresh face. "I can't tell you why I voted for Hart," said Renee Goldenburg, a Coral Gables, Fla., housewife. "I just wanted someone completely new." Mondale's followers, on the other hand, often cited their man's stand on specific issues. Said Dewey Blair, a Georgia machine operator: "I think Mondale would be more inclined to listen to ideas for making the tax structure more fair for working people."

The fuzziness of Hart's appeal so far has enabled him to draw votes from liberals and conservatives, independents and even some Republicans. But Hart could have trouble holding that support as voters take a harder look at him.

Hart blundered badly last week in a speech at Springfield, Ill., by obliquely questioning Mondale's "personal integrity" and muttering about "an inordinate need for power . . . blind ambition . . . destructive assault." He was responding to information from his staff that the Mondale campaign was running TV ads in New York emphasizing the changes Hart had made in his family name, reported date of birth and even the way he signs his name. In fact, no such ads had run. At his next campaign stop, in Galesburg little more than an hour later, Hart admitted, "We were incorrectly informed" and added, "I apologize." At best, the incident indicated that even the rigidly self-controlled Hart can lose his cool in the heat of a campaign.

Mondale will be trying to keep the pressure high. His aides are under no illusions that he did much more than survive last week's contests. Asked what would have happened if Mondale had lost Georgia to Hart, as he came close to doing, Campaign Manager Robert Beckel squeezed an imaginary golf club, sighted down an imaginary fairway and intoned: "Boca Raton, about 290 yards, par four." But the Mondale camp could point to exit polls showing that in several of last week's primaries, voters who made their choice in the final few days mostly went to the former Vice President. The swing was enough to produce must wins in Georgia and Alabama.

Mondale's interpretation is that he is finally scoring with his attacks on Hart as being naive, inexperienced and vague on the issues, epitomized by his question about Hart's new ideas: "Where's the beef?" That line drew a big laugh when Mondale first used it in a TV debate in Atlanta Sunday night and immediately became the war cry of the former Vice President's campaign (see box). Addressing his campaign workers in Washington two nights later, Mondale asserted, "I've come back into the race because people asked the one question that counts most . . ." The question he intended to, and finally did, pose was "Who will be the best President?" But to voice it, he had to interrupt a spontaneous chant from the crowd of "Where's the beef?"

Though not entirely fair, the question is difficult for Hart to answer. He keeps repeating that his positions are described in full in his book A New Democracy, published last year, as indeed most of them are. But he has little chance of persuading many voters to read the book or the position papers in which he has spelled out complex policy ideas that are not easily reduced to simple campaign slogans.

More specifically, Mondale is increasingly hammering Hart on foreign policy. In Chicago last week, he accused Hart of advocating a strategy that "threatens to weaken our crucial alliances" because it would involve reducing the number of American troops in Europe "in an undefined and perhaps substantial way" in order to build a stronger U.S. Navy. Hart wrote in his book that the U.S. should make naval superiority over the Soviet Union its "first priority" and added, "We could not afford to do that while maintaining our Army in Europe at its present size." He called for a new "division of labor within NATO," under which the Europeans would assume more of the burden of land defense against the Soviets.

Hart has not taken Mondale's assaults quietly. In his Springfield speech, he renewed his attack on Mondale as the candidate of "the old arrangements and special-interest agenda that have locked up our party and this nation for too long." During the same speech in which he apologized to Mondale for his remarks about the ads that never ran, Hart implied that the former Vice President nonetheless is a liar. Accusing Mondale of falsely questioning his commitment to arms control and civil rights, Hart declared, "The fundamental issue still remains, and that is whether a candidate can purposely and consciously continue to say things that he knows not to be true."

In this welter of charge and countercharge, Hart can no longer portray himself as financial underdog to the lavishly funded Mondale. Quite the contrary; it is Mondale who is now being forced into some unaccustomed penny-pinching. Hoping to lock up the nomination early, Mondale spent heavily on the early contests; by the end of March his outlays will total about $12.5 million, and federal law permits him to use only $7.7 million more before the convention. Finance Chairman Timothy Finchem insists that will be enough to stage an effective drive through the late primaries and caucuses, but in Mondale's words, his campaign is "no longer the Cadillac operation." The paid staff operating out of Mondale's Washington headquarters was slashed from a peak of 175 before last week to about 100, and is supposed to be reduced further to 75.

There are signs that the economizing may hurt. In New York, Mondale's campaign chairman, William Hennessy admits he is under orders from national headquarters to hold down expenses for the crucial primary, now two weeks off. Since Hart has spent only $3.2 million so far, he is effectively free to shell out all the money he can collect. The cash is rolling in in the wake of his triumphs since New Hampshire. Advisers claim his finance committee took in nearly $1 million in pledges last Tuesday alone. Says Ronald Shelp, a Hart supporter who runs a New York consulting firm: "Three months ago, I invited 500 people to a fund raiser and 40 showed up. In the past two weeks I've heard from the other 460. It's amazing how many incompetent secretaries mislaid my original invitation."

That is a reminder of how swiftly the race has turned around. After Super Week, the only safe prediction seems to be that it could turn again--and again. --By George J. Church. Reported by Sam Allis with Mondale, Jack E. White with Hart, and other bureaus

* In some states, the preference and delegate votes are completely separate. In others, delegates are apportioned according to each candidate's share of the vote, not statewide but within each congressional district. "Threshold" and "bonus" rules may further complicate the apportionment.

With reporting by Sam Allis, Mondale, Jack E. White, Hart, other bureaus