Hart Partisans Fight Doubts, Joining Hands With Bradley

Just two years ago, Keith R. Glaser, a young Harvard Law School graduate determined to throw out the Democratic Party’s old-timers, and Tom Bradley, the very traditional 66-year-old mayor of Los Angeles, were on opposite sides in the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Bradley supported Walter F. Mondale, the choice of big labor and other powerful party interests. Glaser was on the staff of Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado, backing his promise of leadership change and new ideas. Mondale won the nomination although Hart cut him up badly in the pre-convention contest, including a defeat in the California Democratic primary.

But now Glaser, deep in Orange County politics and learning the land development business there, and Bradley, about to announce his candidacy for governor, are allies.

“We need the mayor to do well and have a strong message to help other candidates,” Glaser said.

Part of New Political Marriage

Ever the party enthusiast, he is an important part of a new political marriage between Bradley and leaders of the 1984 Hart campaign. Hart workers are on the Bradley staff and, like Glaser, working as volunteers. Major Hart donors are being recruited. And Hart is expected to appear with Bradley several times this year and to raise money for him.

It is not a perfect relationship.

For example, even if the Hart activists work feverishly for Bradley, there is little assurance that they can bring along the rank-and-file Californians who voted for Hart in the 1984 primary.

That year, the Hart voters were an independent bunch, not bound by party loyalty and clearly resistant to Mondale’s intense effort to attract them. A Los Angeles Times Poll survey of those leaving the voting booths in November, 1984, showed that 67% of Hart primary supporters voted for President Reagan in the fall and only 32% for Mondale.

Differences in generations and attitudes also cloud a perfect marriage. Bradley, the veteran pol, changes positions to meet new political circumstances. The Hart people have little patience with inconsistency.

That was evident one Sunday evening at a home in Los Angeles’ affluent Hancock Park, where Bradley was speaking to the Lexington Group, one of the Hart clubs that sprang up around the state after the 1984 election. A table full of cheese, white wine and Perrier--five bottles of Perrier and just two of wine--fueled good feelings among the young urban professionals and the older mayor.

Explanation for Switches

But some of the weekend warmth disappeared when Bradley labored to explain two big position switches--from anti- to pro-Pacific Palisades oil drilling and from once supporting to now opposing a gun control ballot initiative. Believing a gun control measure in the 1982 election helped lose him the election, he said, “I don’t believe we should put it on the ballot” if the issue arises again.

“Any other surprises?” asked a Lexington Group member, his voice edged with sarcasm.

Still, Glaser said he believes the marriage will work. “The Hart campaign brought in new people to the Democratic Party, people who are willing to look at a campaign that maybe is not as sexy as the presidential campaign, but is important to the state,” Glaser said. “We need to win the governorship back. We need to win the governorship to become a strong state party.”

For Bradley, the alliance with the Hart activists means contact with a new generation of Democrats who may help in areas where he did poorly in his first race against Republican Gov. George Deukmejian in 1982. Among those key places are Orange and San Diego counties and the Central Valley.

For Hart, it means accumulating political debts from the Bradley camp to call in for his anticipated 1988 presidential race, which will include the California primary. It provides him with access to the mayor’s strong black support in that primary and offers a chance to show himself off as a progressive party leader in one of the Democrats’ high-visibility gubernatorial campaigns.

“This gubernatorial race is quite possibly the most important in the country,” said John Emerson, a Los Angeles attorney who was in charge of Hart’s 1984 California primary campaign. “One of Gary Hart’s top priorities is to get Tom Bradley elected governor. I think Hart believes in what Bradley stands for and would like to see Deukmejian out of there. Also, Gary Hart, since Ted Kennedy dropped out and Hart leads in the polls, can be viewed as the leader of the Democratic Party at this stage, and it is part of leadership to help progressive Democrats.”

Hope for Contributions

Bradley strategists said the help from the Hart leaders will provide contributions from new and wealthy Democratic sources for television advertising and other campaign expenses and workers, both paid and volunteer, to organize campaign events and to begin a new, computer-driven registration drive to counter a precipitous drop in Democratic registration.

In Orange County, Democratic registration dropped from 45.5% in 1978 to 36.5% in 1985, with Republicans rising to 52.8% and those who declined to state their registration from 7.5% to 8.5%. The Democratic decline in San Diego County was from 47.9% in 1978 to 41% last year.

Orange County shows how the Hart-Bradley alliance is trying to reverse the decline.

It is an important county for Bradley. While his aides never expected him to carry the GOP stronghold in 1982, they were dumbfounded at the margin of his loss to Deukmejian, 422,878 to 252,572.

“The goal would be to cut the losses, not to win,” said John Whitehurst, the 24-year-old executive director of the Democratic Foundation of Orange County, a fund-raising group that Hart veterans helped start in 1984.

“If they cut losses to 100,000, they win,” he said, indicating that the showing would be a big help to the Bradley statewide total. “They just can’t get swamped by 200,000.”

Foundation Organizers

Among the organizers of the foundation were Richard O’Neil, a veteran and influential Orange County Democratic contributor; David Stein, a Laguna Beach developer and major Hart fund-raiser who was the first chairman, and Mike Ray, another developer who now heads the group.

Glaser moved to Orange County to go to work for Ray after meeting him in the Hart campaign.

After Glaser graduated from Harvard, he joined Hart’s Senate staff on the subcommittee that investigated the nuclear disaster at Three Mile Island and then was a top organizer of Hart’s surprise victory in the 1984 Iowa caucuses and of the California primary.

In addition to learning about land development from Ray, Glaser is working with him on politics. Last year, the Orange County Democratic leaders met at dinner with Tom Quinn, Bradley’s campaign chairman; Mary Nichols, the campaign manager, and Steve Sulkes, another Hart veteran who is assistant campaign manager for the mayor.

Glaser said the Orange County Democrats had been dissatisfied with Bradley’s 1982 campaign in the area. “There was a feeling he didn’t come down here enough,” he said, “that he didn’t have enough events here. People tended to work for other candidates or didn’t participate at all.”

The Bradley team pledged more concern for Orange County, Glaser said, “and we were all encouraged.”

Under Whitehurst’s direction, the Democratic Foundation is planning to use polls and computers to try to reverse the Orange County registration slide. Whitehurst said the Bradley campaign will provide some of the funds for the expensive project.

Public Opinion Survey Planned

First, a public opinion survey will be taken. “We don’t know where our base is, we don’t know where the swing vote is out there, we don’t know who our defectors are and why they defected,” Whitehurst said.

The poll will help shape the message mailed to potential Democratic registrants in the registration drive.

A tape containing the names of all registered voters will be fed into a computer. Another computer tape will have the addresses of all households in the county. Computers will sort the material to provide a list of households with unregistered voters.

Other computer tapes will contain information about past voting patterns and economic and ethnic background of precincts. From all this, a master computer list will be created with the names, addresses and political propensities of potential voters.

Registration efforts will be directed toward unregistered voters most likely to vote Democratic. They will be contacted by phone, mail and precinct walkers. Within a week of registering, voters will be welcomed to the Democratic Party in mailings from Bradley and local candidates. Follow-up calls and mailings will be used to try to get them to the polls on Election Day.

Other grass-roots work--some not as elaborate or expensive as the Orange County plan--are under way elsewhere in the state.

In San Joaquin County’s city of Stockton last Thursday, Rich Moreno, a Modesto stockbroker and a 1984 Hart supporter, worked with Kerman Maddox, Bradley’s deputy campaign manager, to put together two events for Bradley to meet potential voters.

“The biggest problem the mayor will have in this area is that a lot of the people just don’t know him, they don’t know how he works, they don’t have a chance to see him in action,” Moreno said.

Bradley was badly beaten in the Central Valley in 1982. He lost San Joaquin County 36.6% to 60.1% and Stanislaus County, in which Modesto is located, 41.4% to 55.9%.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, Hart supporters Paul Albritton and Joseph Hancock have been organizing events for Bradley. “I have been talking to Hart people around Northern California, and I expect the organization will be mobilized to some extent as volunteers,” said Albritton, an attorney.

‘Show Me’ Attitude

Albritton reflects some of the skepticism of Hart supporters toward Bradley, especially in the north. Interviewed late last year, he had a decided “show me” attitude toward Bradley, saying he wanted to see if Bradley’s “proposals are in keeping with my philosophy and whether he has a shot at winning.”

Last week, Albritton said Bradley’s views are now “clearer” and that recent polls, showing Bradley trailing Deukmejian by six points--”close to Deukmejian”--have “gotten people more enthusiastic than they were before.”

Some Democratic strategists are skeptical about all this early concentration on grass-roots organization, saying that in a state as big and varied as California, Bradley needs a strong message and intensive television campaign to win. “It’s of no consequence,” one said of the registration campaign and other organizational work. “The question is: What is his message?”

That has always been the view of the managers of Bradley’s 1982 campaign, which came close to winning. But the 1982 tactics have been criticized by the mayor, who said that this time he wants a grass-roots approach, with local organizations getting out the vote.

Both Bradley and Hart people said Bradley has a message for Hart supporters.

“There are two things about Tom Bradley appealing to new politics Democrats,” said Emerson, who was in charge of Hart’s 1984 California primary campaign. “ One is the way he has governed the city of Los Angeles. He has been very progressive. He has pioneered the public-private partnership concept. He strikes people as a solutions-oriented leader. . . . New politics Democrats want to get things done. . . . Secondly, he is progressive in his politics and the opportunity to be part of the election of the first black governor since Reconstruction is an exciting progressive venture to be in. It flies in the face of traditional politics.”

But many of the Hart veterans for Bradley cannot help but foresee a tough struggle. “I think his campaign against Deukmejian will not be easy,” said Bill Bradley, an aide to state Sen. John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove), who considered running against Bradley for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

In Orange County, Whitehurst, hiring pollsters and lining up computer time for his Democratic Foundation’s registration drive, concedes the fight will be hard. Surveying the scene in Orange County and lapsing into the football metaphors beloved by many political people, he said: “This is fourth and long. The Republicans are all fired up. So let the contest begin.”