Hart Planning to End Presidential Bid Today : To Quit Race in Furor Over His Conduct

Gary Hart plans to announce today that he will withdraw from the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, according to senior campaign officials, as a result of the uproar over his encounters with a young Florida actress.

“He is going to announce that he is not going forward,” said Buie Sewell, chairman of the Colorado Democratic Party and an old friend of Hart.

Hart’s anticipated withdrawal from the contest, which he formally entered little more than three weeks ago as a front-runner, threw prospects for the party’s 1988 nomination into turmoil. “The biggest bloc of voters now is going to be undecided,” said the campaign manager for one of the seven contenders remaining in the race.

Suspended Quest

Hart had abruptly suspended his quest for the nomination early Thursday. The only official word from the Hart campaign on Thursday came in a statement from the candidate read to reporters by his press secretary, Kevin Sweeney, near the gates of a Groveton, N.H., paper mill where Hart had been scheduled to make his first campaign stop of the day.

“While running for President is important right now, my family is more important,” said Hart, who, at the time the statement was read, had already boarded a chartered plane with his wife, Lee, and headed back to his home in Denver.

“Lee and I are returning to Denver, to our home and our family. We are going to take a few days, or a few weeks, to be together,” he said.

Liaison With Woman Told

Hart’s decision to announce his withdrawal this morning was accelerated, a senior aide said, when Hart learned that the Washington Post would print a story today about a recent liaison between the former Colorado senator and a Washington woman with whom he has had a long-term relationship.

The Post reported today that information involving a liaison between Hart and the woman last Dec. 20 was provided by an anonymous source and “effectively confirmed” by the newspaper. The paper did not name the woman involved.

The apparent end of Hart’s bid for the presidency in a furor over unseemly personal conduct left behind a legacy not only of chaos but of something akin to grief. “It’s a tragedy for him and for his family,” said Mike Novelli, Hart’s former chief fund-raiser.

And, added Novelli, who left the campaign six weeks ago after differing with other campaign officials about fund-raising priorities, “it’s also a tragedy for thousands of people who’ve invested in his candidacy, not only financially, but who saw his candidacy as a way to effectuate change in the government of this country.”

At first, Hart aides in New Hampshire stressed that his candidacy was still alive, noting that his statement said: “This campaign, and the ideals and ideas it represents, will continue and our cause will succeed.”

But Hart’s headquarters in Denver later announced that Hart would make a personal statement at his home in Denver at 9 a.m. PDT today, and campaign officials left no doubt that the 50-year-old former senator planned to quit the race.

May Join Other Campaigns

One well-placed source said that several of Hart’s key aides have already begun talking about the possibility of joining other Democratic campaigns.

The statement issued in New Hampshire and the reports from Denver came only four days after the Miami Herald published a story linking Hart to 29-year-old actress-model Donna Rice, whom Herald reporters had observed visiting Hart in his town house in Washington’s Capitol Hill section.

The Herald reporters staked out the Hart residence here after receiving a tip that a Florida woman was planning to meet the candidate at the town house.

Hart denied spending the night with Rice, as the Herald had alleged, or doing anything immoral during the weekend. He also challenged the newspaper’s methods and fairness.

Mistake in Judgment

But he appeared to have made what he himself conceded was a serious mistake in judgment by putting himself in a position where he aroused suspicions of behaving improperly.

Moreover, Hart--while insisting he knew Rice only casually and had no personal involvement with her--acknowledged having made a series of telephone calls to her over a period of weeks while campaigning.

The furor increased when it was disclosed that the front-runner had invited Rice on what became an overnight cruise to the Bahamian island of Bimini last March in the company of a Washington lawyer, William Broadhurst, and a woman friend of Rice.

For Hart, the Rice episode was particularly serious because even before he formally launched his candidacy last month, aides worried that questions about his character and recurrent suggestions that he was a “womanizer” would damage his prospects.

The character issue had grown into a substantial problem for Hart three years earlier, during his first bid for the Democratic nomination. At that time, Hart was questioned sharply when it developed that he had not disclosed having changed his name earlier from Hartpence, his parents’ name, to Hart. There also were questions about why he had misstated his age by one year.

Wanted to Fill in Blanks

Conscious of that problem, Hart and his aides had started out this campaign determined to fill in the blanks in the public perception of him.

But there was trouble almost from the beginning.

On the day after Hart formally announced his candidacy, April 13, he became embroiled in controversy over rumors of womanizing. Hart at first appeared to suggest that such stories about him were being spread by rival campaigns. Then he denied that he had made such an accusation.

A few days later, federal marshals showed up at a Hart fund-raiser in Los Angeles and seized thousands of dollars in 1988 contributions to satisfy a 1984 campaign debt, part of the $1.3 million Hart still owes from that campaign. Then came the latest and ultimately decisive furor over his relationship with Rice.

Arrival of Wife, Lee

The arrival of his wife, Lee, to join him in New Hampshire Wednesday, after she had remained conspicuously silent and in seclusion since Sunday, at first seemed to represent a badly needed boost for the beleaguered candidacy.

As it turned out, though, Lee Hart joined her husband in making the decision, apparently reached late Wednesday night, to break off his campaign.

Campaign aides suggested that the Harts had been influenced by the candidate’s experience Wednesday campaigning here. At an hourlong press conference, every question touched on the implications of Hart’s relationship with Rice. The questions included point-blank queries on whether Hart had ever committed adultery and whether his marriage was monogamous. He refused to answer, although he flatly denied ever having sexual relations with Rice.

Hart and his wife drove alone to the next event, a meeting with local citizens in a community center. There were no questions about the town house episode, but Hart aides said that the notoriety surrounding their candidate attracted so many reporters to the event that some townspeople could not get in.

“We were drawing more reporters than voters,” one Hart staffer complained.

Discussed at Dinner

All this was discussed by Hart, his wife and several of his aides at dinner Wednesday night at a hotel nearby in Vermont.

“There was a discussion of how we weren’t getting anything done, we weren’t getting anything out,” said one senior Hart aide who was present. “I think there was a sense that this thing just wasn’t going to go away today or tomorrow, and there wasn’t anything really being accomplished.”

The Washington Post reported that after the dinner, one of its reporters informed Hart of the pending story and sought reaction.

Benjamin C. Bradlee, executive editor of the Washington Post, said the newspaper did not negotiate with Hart over publication of the story or threaten to publish it if Hart did not withdraw from the presidential race. “There were no ultimatums, no negotiations,” Bradlee said. “We simply asked to talk to Hart about the information we had gathered.”

About 1 a.m. Thursday, Hart telephoned press secretary Sweeney and told him: “Lee and I plan to go home and here is a statement I want you to read,” saying that he was returning to Colorado.

Waved to Crowd

The Harts arrived at their rustic cabin-style home in Kittredge, Colo., 25 miles west of Denver, shortly after 11 a.m., sitting together in the back seat of a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Lee waved to the crowd of reporters gathered at their front gate but Hart sat solemnly. Their 22-year-old daughter Andrea was with them, but she left the home early in the afternoon.

Kittredge is an unincorporated community of about 1,000 residents, set in a beautiful area of rocky gorges and towering evergreens. The Harts live on Troublesome Gulch, as their dirt country road is called.

If it was privacy they sought, they were not to find it there. When they arrived, three dozen cars and a number of television trucks with satellite transmitting equipment were parked outside the closed wooden gate. Three helicopters, apparently carrying local television crews, buzzed overhead.

The house was guarded by two private security guards; a half-dozen sheriff’s deputies were stationed outside the driveway gates.

Only one senior Hart staffer, Mike Stratton--an old friend of Hart--was seen entering or leaving the home Thursday afternoon. The atmosphere was clearly that of a family meeting, not a staff meeting.

Several in Tears

Aides in Hart’s national campaign headquarters in downtown Denver apparently learned the end was near as early as Thursday morning. Several were in tears after an early-morning call from other staffers with the Democratic candidate in New Hampshire.

Hart’s withdrawal from the contest for the nomination would leave seven Democrats who have either already officially announced for the presidency or are expected to do so soon.

Of this group, the four candidates deemed by many professionals to be in the best position to take advantage of Hart’s departure are former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt, Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, and Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt.

The other three Democratic candidates are civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, the only black in the race, Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr. and Illinois Sen. Paul Simon, the two most recent entrants in the field. Both of these candidacies are still in what one party professional called “an embryonic stage.”

In addition, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton is considering entering the contest.

Californians Stunned

In California, Hart supporters were in shock, stunned not only by the sudden loss of their candidate but also by the void it left in their own positions. Typical was the plight of San Diego City Councilman Mike Gotch, who had announced that he would not seek reelection this year in order to work for Hart, a politician he strongly believed in.

M. Larry Lawrence, a longtime Democratic fund-raiser from Coronado, Calif., who had been raising thousands of dollars for Hart, said Thursday: “This is just devastating. Here is a man who devoted 20 years of his life to public service and this happens.”

Though Hart struggled through the week insisting he would surmount the crisis, polls in two key states--New Hampshire and Iowa--showed the corrosive impact of the episode on his support.

In Iowa, where Hart had been gaining ground, a poll conducted Tuesday and published Thursday in the Des Moines Register showed a loss of 9 percentage points in 72 hours. The poll found Hart the first choice of 56% of Iowa Democrats, compared with 65% in a similar poll April 25.

In New Hampshire, a poll of 400 likely Democratic primary voters conducted for the Boston Herald and WBZ-TV said Hart, who had been tied with Massachusetts Gov. Dukakis a week ago at 32% each, had fallen behind Dukakis, 27 to 17.

Concede End to Race

Conceding the race was over for Hart, one senior Hart campaign official said:

“Some of us have been talking about what we’ll do. I just want to take some time to rest and think everything over.”

And Broadhurst, the man who had accompanied Hart on the Bimini cruise and the controversial weekend, remarked Thursday afternoon as word of the withdrawal spread: “It’s sad. God, that’s sad.”

Staff writer David Lamb in Denver contributed to this story.