Testing the Front-Runner Jinx

After Mandate bowls over Illinois, Hart needs a win in New York

In The Godfather, it was the severed head of a horse placed at the foot of the bed. In Treasure Island, it was a black spot pressed in the palm of the hand. In the 1984 Democratic primary campaign, the ultimate jinx has been the title front runner, bestowed by the evening news.

So when CBS Anchorman Dan Rather cheerfully said to Walter Mondale, after the former Vice President had defeated Gary Hart by 41% to 35% in the Illinois primary last week, “Congratulations. I suppose now you’re the front runner again,” Mondale recoiled in horror. “No, no,” he spluttered. “The debate has just begun … We’ve got a long fight to go ahead of us here.”

Whether he likes it or not, Mondale is once again the candidate to beat. Unlike previous favorites who fell apart after New Hampshire upsets, Mondale has struggled back on top. Illinois was a solid win for him. Labor rallied, the blue-collar workers and old folks turned out, the regular Democrats followed the endorsements of party leaders. Mondale even reached into the Chicago suburbs to win a large share of Hart’s Yumpie (young upwardly mobile professional) vote. It went pretty much according to the pundits’ script—at least as it was written before New Hampshire, when the Mondale campaign was still a “juggernaut” and Hart a “dark horse.”

But Mondale’s caution is justified. He cannot really hope to re-emerge as the clear favorite to take the nomination unless he wins the New York primary next week. In many ways New York poses the purest test to date. Mondale is no longer burdened by his aura of inevitability, and Hart is no longer a novelty item. Voters should be less swayed by ephemera.

With a total of 285 delegates (172 to be chosen next week), the Empire State is the biggest prize yet, and the second biggest (after California) in the race for the nomination. Although Hart and Mondale have split the primaries, Mondale has fared far better in the caucuses, winning almost twice as many delegates. A victory in New York would not only widen that gap, but would show that Mondale can pull in the popular vote. Says a top official of the Democratic National Committee: “If Hart loses New York, he has to win virtually everything else the rest of the way. Mondale is trying for the K.O., and he may score one.” Concedes a Hart aide: “You can explain away Illinois and Michigan, but if the message can’t be sold in New York, it probably won’t sell overall.”

As a hunting ground for Mondale, New York is like Illinois, only more so. “It is more Democratic—with a big D—more ethnic, more elderly, more unionized than Illinois,” says Tim Russert, counselor to New York Governor Mario Cuomo. Says a Mondale campaign official: “New Yorkers are tougher, more cynical and not as taken by the idea of newness. Plus Hart’s newness has been out there a while.” New York City Mayor Ed Koch backs Mondale, as do Cuomo and 55 of 62 county chairmen. Unlike Illinois, New York does not allow independents and Republicans to vote in the Democratic primary, thus stripping Hart of his ability to reach outside the party. Says Hart’s national cochairman, Theodore Sorensen: “It’s tough. The entire Establishment is against us.”

The swing vote may be New York’s Jewish community, which makes up almost a third of the Democratic voters. Both candidates are bidding furiously for its support. Hart’s first stop in the state last week was the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. The man who has been accusing Mondale of catering to interest groups promised Jewish leaders that he would never sell arms to Arabs, never criticize Israel in public, and never disturb existing West Bank settlements, which are “as legal as any others in the world.”

Hart claimed that his pro-Israel record is even purer than Mondale’s, a contrast in shades of white. He accused Mondale of having lobbied for the Carter Administration’s sale of F-15s to the Saudis in 1978 (Mondale insists that he was privately opposed until the planes were modified to be “defensive” weapons). Hart also blamed Mondale for trying, as Vice President, to “intimidate and coerce Israel into taking unacceptable risks that could jeopardize its very existence,” by which he meant signing the Camp David accords in 1978. “Unlike others,” Hart declared, “I have no apologies to make and no explanations to offer.”

Within a matter of minutes, however, Hart was apologizing and explaining. In his speech to the Jewish leaders, Hart gave his unqualified support to moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the disputed capital of Israel. (Legislation mandating the relocation of the embassy as an expression of U.S. faith in Israel has 37 co-sponsors in the Senate and 208 in the House.) But after the speech, Hart was asked why he had earlier stated in a letter to a Jewish group that such a move should only occur after negotiations involving all sides, presumably meaning Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Mondale eagerly pounced on this letter, scoffing that the chance of Arab nations going along “is the same as the sun coming up in the west,” and calling Hart’s new position a “blatant political flip-flop.”

Hart squirmed, explaining that the letter had been sent out by a junior Senate staffer, without his authorization. But when reporters pointed out that Hart had echoed the letter in a campaign speech only two weeks before, he was forced to describe his new position on Jerusalem as an “evolution” of his views.

The glitch was more revealing of Hart’s campaign woes than of any lack of fealty to Israel. It was another in the series of flip-flops that have plagued his candidacy. In Illinois, Hart claimed that Mondale was attacking him with television ads that in fact were never aired. Then Hart put on television ads picturing Mondale as a tool of Chicago Boss Edward Vrdolyak, only to try to yank them when it appeared that they would enmesh Hart in local politics. Hart’s staff was unable to pull some of the ads for almost two days. Crowed Mondale: “Here’s a person who wants to be President of the United States and he can’t get an ad off television he’s paying for in 48 hours. There’s a question about who’s in charge here.”

The man in charge of the Hart campaign is Hart himself, and therein lies a weakness. As he proved in the 1972 McGovern campaign and in his stunning upset this year in New Hampshire, Hart is a shrewd political tactician. But it is exceedingly difficult to be a winning candidate and an artful campaign manager at the same time. As Hart correctly points out, the campaign has had to go from a “mom and pop operation to a national chain” overnight. Yet the business is still largely owner run: when Hart delegates, he often finds himself trying to clean up the mistakes of his young and inexperienced staff.

His aides are so eager for advice that they solicit it from political reporters. When a TV correspondent suggested that Hart counter Mondale’s “Where’s the beef?” line by displaying his book A New Democracy between buns, Hart produced a “bookburger” at the very next stop. When another correspondent complained that Hart’s neckties were too pale for TV and suggested he “wear red,” the candidate began sprouting red ties.

Unlike Mondale, who always travels with a trusted aide, Hart often sits alone on the campaign plane, reading magazines or staring out the window. This week Hart aides tried to find their man a “sage” on the order of Mondale’s Jim Johnson or John Reilly. But the two would-be wise men—Mark Hogan, a former Lieutenant Governor of Colorado, and Ronald Dozoretz, a Portsmouth, Va., psychiatrist who is active in state politics—are neither national political heavyweights nor particularly close to Hart. Hart’s staff fears that the candidate is burning out. “I keep asking him to take a night off and go to a movie,” says Press Secretary Kathy Bushkin. Yet Hart presses on, exhausted.

Mondale also admits to being “pooped.” Even so, his campaign has been fairly error free since it made the almost fatal mistake of ignoring Hart before New Hampshire. After that shock, Mondale seemed strangely liberated, giving his strongest speeches of the campaign on his best issue, compassion and fairness to the poor. He attacked Hart with a toughness many thought Mondale lacked. As Illinois approached, Mondale began to lose some steam, but he remained well insulated by his able handlers. All of a sudden his stolid candidacy, which had contrasted so poorly with Hart’s campaign of new ideas, began to look safer to voters unsettled by Hart’s change of name (from Hartpence) and age (younger by a year). Said Housewife Marge Lannon, 37, who voted for Mondale in Illinois: “I was taken in by Hart, but then I remembered the peanut farmer who came in and was President before anyone realized it. Mondale has a lot more experience.”

Adding to his drumbeat of nervous-making adjectives (“unsteady,” “inexperienced,” “naive”), Mondale last week called Hart “uncertain, delayed and confused” on arms control, the “central issue of our time.” Hart had only embraced a freeze on most nuclear weapons, Mondale charged, after first supporting a build-down proposal that would allow both sides to build new weapons if they destroyed more old ones. The build-down, insisted Mondale, was “totally at odds” with the freeze. Actually, Hart had carefully conceived positions on arms control until he began doing precisely what he accuses Mondale of doing, posturing for political purpose. Hart claims that he embraced the simplistic freeze only when his more sophisticated approaches failed to attract support.

Mondale has struck fear in the Hart camp by hiring Media Consultant David Garth. Mondale’s regular media man, Roy Spence, came up with the worst slogan of the campaign, declaring before New Hampshire that Mondale “dares to be cautious.” Garth is known as a tough New York street fighter. “We expect a vicious, negative series of attacks,” says Hart Deputy Campaign Chairman David Landau.

The Hart camp is planning some low blows of its own. Two ads have been pre pared attacking Mondale: one focuses on the Carter Administration’s failure to honor the 1976 Democratic platform’s call to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem; the other pictures a burning fuse and accuses Mondale of failing to learn “the lessons of Viet Nam” in Central America.

Hart expects to have twice as much money as Mondale to spend on advertising in New York. Hoping to clinch the nomination early, Mondale spent more than $10 million in 1983; he risks bumping up against the $20 million federal spending ceiling by the time the campaign rolls into its last showdown, the California primary on June 5. Hart, who only raised $1.5 million before New Hampshire, raked in twice as much in the past month. Mondale must also worry about Jesse Jackson siphoning off black votes that would otherwise go in his column. Jackson drew 79% of the black vote and 21% of the overall tally in Illinois.

The Hart camp hopes to regain some momentum this week by winning the Connecticut primary and adding 60 dele gates to his total. Mondale is not putting up much of a fight there, apparently conceding a sweep of New England to Hart. But the race could still be close: Connecticut has a large ethnic, blue-collar labor vote, and the Yumpies tend to be Republicans, who cannot cross over and vote in the Democratic primary. Hart’s aides expect an upswing after New York, when the primaries become less bunched up. Says Adviser Pat Caddell: “We’ll have more time to develop our message and get Gary better known.”

So far, however, exposure has not been kind to Hart. The doubts Mondale has ” planted about him have been heightened by the self-inflicted wounds of his own campaign. Hart’s best hope remains the perception that he has a better chance than Mondale to win in November, since he has a potentially broader base of supporters. As one top Democratic official does the arithmetic,”If it’s Hart against Reagan, the Mondale vote in the primaries would go to Hart. If it’s Mondale against Reagan, a lot of the Hart vote would go to Reagan.” The growing concern among many Democrats is that both will be too drained and scarred by their internecine battle to put up much of a fight in the fall.

—By Evan Thomas. Reported by David Beckwlth with Hart Chicago and John F. Stacks/New York, with other bureaus