Leftover Issues Face ’84 New Hampshire Dark Horse : Hart Now Front-Runner With a Burden

Former Sen. Gary Hart was standing half way between Brenda Elias’ dining room table, where guests hovered over huge pots of Irish stew, and her living room stove, where a glowing fire chased the spring chill.

He had been holding forth for 20 minutes on subjects as diverse as nuclear safety, Latin America’s debt problems and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Several dozen New Hampshire Democrats listened politely.

Then, from the vicinity of the stew pots, rose the familiar voice of former Franklin Mayor Eugene Daniell: “Gary, may I say you were a guest in my home four years ago, and I think you have improved a helluva lot.”

The former mayor, a powerful political force in his conservative community though personally a Socialist, said later: “He knows more about what he wants to do. Four years ago, he was a young fella who just wanted to do the right thing.”

Shocked Mondale

Four years ago, Hart was also a dark-horse candidate who shocked former Vice President Walter F. Mondale by winning the New Hampshire primary, then contested the Democratic presidential nomination all the way to the Democratic National Convention.

Now, back where it all started, he is the early front-runner--with a burden of vastly enlarged expectations, a debt lingering from the earlier race and, perhaps, the “personality” issue that troubled him after he burst into prominence in 1984.

At the end of that race, Hart--thrown by his New Hampshire victory from a low-budget endeavor into an expensive nationwide campaign--owed $4.7 million. The obligation has gradually been whittled down to about $1.6 million, according to aides, but the battle to close out the debt before it becomes a political drag has riled some creditors who have settled for a fraction of what they had coming.

‘Spectacular’ Success

Aides insist that the remaining debt has not impeded Hart’s current efforts to fill his campaign war chest. “Fund-raising for 1988 has been spectacular,” said Richard Murphy, a 1984 Mondale operative who joined Hart’s staff last summer.

Thus far, as an undeclared candidate for the Democratic nomination, Hart has dealt with the old issues of his age and the change of his name from Hartpence to Hart--and sometimes even his debt--with jokes.

He opened his remarks to one group by remarking that he realized he was in trouble when he sought employment after leaving the Senate: The first item on the questionnaire was name, the second age, the third financial liabilities.

Avowed Candidate

Next month Hart, who joined a Denver law firm after giving up his Colorado Senate seat last November, will become an avowed candidate for the Democratic nomination once again. He will join already-declared former Arizona Gov. Bruce E. Babbitt, Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri and Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis.

Preparations for a full-time race are already well advanced. Paul Tully, a longtime strategist and field organizer for Mondale and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), joined the campaign as national political director earlier this year.

In an effort to control spending, take advantage of huge numbers of home-state volunteers and give the campaign a Western flavor, Hart will make Denver, rather than Washington, his national headquarters. A small Washington office a few blocks from Hart’s old Senate suite is expected to take much of the responsibility for the New Hampshire campaign.

Simultaneous Primaries

Aside from several forays into New Hampshire and Iowa, the candidate has sent a full-time organizer into Texas and has traveled into Louisiana and Mississippi. Those three will be among a host of Southern states that will stage simultaneous primaries next March on the heels of the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.

Hart has also taken a lectureship at the University of Florida Law School, which takes him into the crucial Southern state for two weeks each semester.

When Hart arrived in Nashua, N.H., several days ago for his fourth visit to this state, he found the calculus of the campaign changed by the appearance of Dukakis as an active candidate. But, he said, the entry of the governor of the neighboring state would not change his own campaign approach--a campaign of “new ideas.”

Lost Four of Five

“Our party lost four of the five national elections because people saw us as only a collection of special interests,” he told a questioner in Brenda Elias’ living room. “I made that point--and not against any particular person--in 1984.

“What I was trying to get at was that the party had gotten so ‘caucusized’ that every constituent group in the Democratic Party demanded that candidates come before those groups and answer their agenda and their list of demands. They would only support the candidate who made the greatest promises according to their agenda.

“What I am trying to get back to is the sense that this party and this country have an identifiable set of interests that are common to all of us as Americans.”

Education Issue

He has set out to make education his issue, after outlining a $12-billion program of federal assistance in a speech early this year at Duke University. On his last two-day swing into the state, two events were arranged to bring teachers together with him.

Generally, however, his positions closely parallel those of the other Democrats. And like the others, he is lining up campaign workers one by one and reserving his rhetorical ammunition for the Reagan Administration.

“Whether we nominate Joe Biden, Dick Gephardt, Mike Dukakis or Bruce Babbitt or any of the other candidates who may become active,” he said, “any one of them is preferable to Dole and Bush and Kemp.”

No Real Issues

As long as New Hampshire remains a campaign without real issues among the Democrats, observers of New Hampshire politics see Hart benefiting from his front-runner status. For that matter, said one longtime political activist, declining to be identified, Dukakis’ entry into the race might even work to the former senator’s benefit. With the non-Hart vote further divided, it would be more difficult for any of the others to overtake him.

“It becomes Hart against everybody else who is not Hart,” said the source. “It makes it very difficult for any of the others to break through. Ironically, Hart is now very much in the position that Mondale was in four years ago.”

But Mondale lost New Hampshire then. And as Hart prepared to leave Brenda Elias’ Irish stew luncheon and drive to Laconia for a Sunday afternoon discussion of his education proposals with teachers, he left behind a house party divided.

“I’m still looking,” said Charles Tracy, a machinist standing by the stove in the living room. “He was the best candidate four years ago, no question about it. But my problem with Gary is that he steers away from defense too much.”