At Play in a World Without Hart

By Laurence I. Barrett/Washington

The disintegration of Gary Hart's candidacy left a void where the structure of the nomination contest should be. Though Hart had been a weak leader of the pack -- short of deeply committed supporters and ready campaign cash -- his place at the top dictated the shape of the race. Each of the seven other Democrats had to strive to become Hart's chief rival in the winter carnival of early caucuses and primaries.

Now the battlefield will be a mass of political Silly Putty. Of the seven, only Jesse Jackson has an established national reputation -- yet he has virtually no chance of winning. Current party practice bars informal tests of strength. "There is no mountain to climb, no way for one of them to show off," says Bob Strauss, the former Democratic chairman who reigns as party sage. Says John White, another chairman emeritus: "The campaign goes back to ground zero." Polls taken last week, just after Hart's final agony became public, demonstrated why some skeptics call the active contenders the Seven Dwarfs. In Iowa the Des Moines Register survey of Democrats showed that the only real beneficiary was "undecided," which went up twelve points while Hart lost nine. The other seven who have been campaigning there -- Jackson, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt, Illinois Senator Paul Simon, former Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt, Delaware Senator Joseph Biden and Tennessee Senator Albert Gore -- made negligible gains or none at all. Among Democrats and independents questioned in a national TIME survey, New York Governor Mario Cuomo, a non-candidate, ran second to Hart and well ahead of anyone else. When Hart supporters were asked whom they would favor for a second choice, 54% expressed uncertainty.

The situation cries out for at least one of the party's heavyweights to join the festivities. "That's the most likely next big event," says Pollster Stanley Greenberg. "An established national figure who comes in reluctantly, someone who stands apart from the rush of present candidates, would change the game." Cuomo or New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley would attract instant attention, as would Georgia Senator Sam Nunn.

Bradley combines star quality from his basketball career with a reputation as a sober policy maven able to score points on complex issues like tax reform and international debt. Like Hart, he could occupy the "big think" niche while appealing to baby boomers. Cuomo, the old baseball player, hits oratorical home runs as he mixes traditional Democratic themes with odes to pragmatic governance. He has a following among Democratic ethnics in the North. Nunn, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is an acknowledged master of national security policy. His conservatism could win him bales of white votes in the Southern contests now packed into Mega Tuesday, March 8. Among liberals, however, Nunn could meet resistance.

All three sideliners have made an art form of reluctance. Bradley allowed that a few supporters again nagged him last week about 1988. "I'm not running," he said. "I like what I'm doing in the Senate." Cuomo, whose withdrawal in February left Hart alone in the lead, appeared to be enjoying the fresh speculation about his plans. At a New York dinner where he was introduced as a "future President," he quoted his mother as phoning to ask, " 'If there's nobody left, why don't you run?' I said, 'Ma, I've told the people I will be Governor, not President.' And she said, 'What's the difference? They won't believe you anyway.' " Cuomo concluded, "When I say something, I mean it. I said I'm going to stay Governor, and that's the way it is." At a meeting of editorial cartoonists in Washington the next day, Cuomo was asked what he would do if there were a genuine draft. He smiled ambiguously and said, "I would do the right thing."

Nunn has been having it both ways since saying in February the Iran-contra investigation and arms-control issues would occupy him for months but not necessarily always. On Friday he emphasized that his door is very much ajar: "No doubt a lot of people in Congress and around the country are looking for a candidate. I've been getting a lot of calls." In July, he said, he will begin to reconsider. "The question will be," Nunn said in his best owlish manner, "whether we will have a chance to get the nomination with a general set of principles that will allow us to be successful in November." Translation: he will run if none of the other Democrats plants both feet in the center of the ideological spectrum.

Nunn's advisers all along have mused about the feasibility of having him avoid the inhospitable terrain of Iowa and New Hampshire. Before Donna Rice got her 15 minutes of fame, that risky strategy could have worked only under a special set of conditions: Hart coming out of those initial contests with no strong challenger, white Southerners gagging at the choice of Hart vs. Jackson, Nunn knocking Hart out in the South. The new Nunn scenario rests on no other Democrat growing very tall in the next few months. The active contenders will be searching for growth hormones so as to scare off any latecomer. A few of Hart's moneymen were receiving genteel feelers late Thursday. "They won't go as a group," predicted a rival's finance chairman. "They'll scatter to three or four candidates at least."

This competition will be part of what might be called the "underground primary," an obscure combat waged when no nationally known contenders dominate public attention. While the candidates will continue to campaign vigorously in Iowa and New Hampshire, each camp will also be vying for the support of insiders and for favorable coverage. The interim prize: anointment by the national press as one of the three or four "top tier" candidates. This, along with favorable poll ratings, is critical in developing the kind of perceived momentum that attracts dollars and volunteers.

Through this amorphous process, tentative tiers are likely to be established well before Labor Day. Jackson, by virtue of his name recognition and core support among blacks, will do well temporarily in the polls. But he will continue to be handicapped by strongly negative reactions in surveys, a weak organization and considerable vulnerabilities in the "character" , department. For the next election at least, the top tier in the Democratic Party will be all white as well as all male.

When the next round of underground primary ratings emerges through rough consensus, three of the competitors will probably do well for different reasons. Gephardt has plowed Iowa more vigorously than a platoon of farmers and managed to identify himself with an issue -- protectionist measures to cut the trade deficit -- that appeals to labor activists. Even those who disagree with Gephardt's approach concede that he has exploited it shrewdly. Given the fractured nature of the Hart-less field, the support of labor could boost Gephardt to top-tier status, though it may hamper the recent headway he has been making in the South.

Biden, though slow to rev his engines, rivals Hart in playing generational politics among baby boomers. He competes with Cuomo in the passionate-oratory department. Biden's field organization is still fledgling, but his ability to raise funds awes the competition. Dukakis, with his reputation as a successful Governor and his popularity in New Hampshire, comes across as a take-charge sort with potential. One Hart strategist argues that Dukakis, once he is better known, will attract many of Hart's former supporters.

If Biden, Gephardt and Dukakis do emerge as the summer favorites, the honor may be risky. "The lights go up a little earlier on all these guys," warns a Biden adviser. "Some might not be ready for the scrutiny." Joseph Grandmaison, Democratic chairman in New Hampshire, quips, "If I were a candidate, you'd find me lighting a candle in the local church, praying that no one puts 'front runner' before my name."

One who is ready, at least in terms of well-honed views and organization, is Babbitt. Like Hart, Babbitt has a position -- and a policy paper to prove it -- on everything. Desperate to score in Iowa, Babbitt in late April became the first to run television ads there. Because he is still a stranger in Washington, Babbitt has fared poorly in the underground primary.

Babbitt's status as an obscure ex-Governor and outsider reminds the galleries of Jimmy Carter's standing in the spring of 1975. Carter -- like Babbitt, Gephardt and most of the others today -- bet everything on Iowa and rode that success through New Hampshire. The 1988 race resembles the one in 1976 in a number of ways. But this time the field is so splintered that Iowa and New Hampshire may produce a clutch of losers without a clear pair of one- two winners.

Since the 1950s political junkies, like old horse soldiers reminiscing about Indian wars, have talked sentimentally of a convention that nominates instead of ratifying a decision made in the primaries. Says Political Consultant David Garth: "We might go to the convention without a known outcome for the first time in many years." For all the Democrats, that is only one of the tantalizing uncertainties to mull over as the campaign starts anew.