Even ‘Guerrilla’ Candidate Hart Must Have Staff

Gary Hart is back where he likes to be, thumbing his nose at the Establishment and running a guerrilla campaign for the presidency.

“If people are fed up with campaigns run by professional politicians . . . they can sign up here,” Hart said to cheers in Sioux Falls, S. D., last Thursday, two days after he dramatically re-entered the race for the Democratic nomination.

But even an insurgent campaign needs a core of experienced political operatives, fund-raisers and supporters. Without them, Hart faces an insurmountable task in trying to get on ballots, line up potential delegates and develop an organization that can capitalize on any sympathy that comes his way.

Interviews with former Hart supporters indicate that there is a small but growing number of Hart activists, fund-raisers and campaign volunteers willing to work for him again if he demonstrates strength and “grace under pressure,” as one of them put it, in the weeks ahead.

Time Running Out

But Hart’s task is formidable. Even as national polls showed him apparently leading the six other Democratic candidates after he rejoined the race on Tuesday, election officials in three states with large blocs of delegates--Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania--said time was fast running out for any candidate to get on their primary ballots and line up delegate slates.

“It takes organization in this state to line up delegates, and Gary Hart has none,” said Mark Schreiber, executive director of the Illinois Democratic Party.

After noting similar problems in New York, Pennsylvania and the Southern states, Kevin Sweeney, Hart’s former press secretary, said: “This is a long shot, a real long shot.”

Hart got some bad news in Ohio, when his most experienced operative there, attorney John Kulewicz, wrote him a letter wishing him well but saying that his law practice and private life would prevent him from working again in the campaign.

It is people like Kulewicz who have the know-how to line up potential delegates and get candidates on the primary ballots. He acknowledged that it would be “very hard” for Hart to get going in Ohio, a state he won late in the 1984 primary season, reviving his candidacy.

Pollster Dismisses Chances

And, in the South, which holds 14 primaries on Super Tuesday, March 8, Atlanta pollster Claibourne Darden virtually dismissed Hart’s attempted comeback.

“He has about enough support down here to fill half a restroom at a football stadium,” Darden said. “Most of the people I have talked to expressed utter contempt for Hart for getting back into the race.”

Many former Hart supporters around the country are staying put with their new candidates. And many remain bitter about Hart’s dalliance with part-time model Donna Rice. News reports of the affair, and Hart’s subsequent conflicting statements, created such negative publicity last May that Hart bitterly quit the race and later acknowledged on national television that he had committed adultery.

“Sure, he’s leading the news polls,” said Dori Corrado, a former Hart activist in the South who is now working for Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr. “But his negatives (unfavorable rating by voters) are 40%. I don’t see how he can be a successful candidate.”

David Dreyer, Hart’s national policy director last year, says Hart is “running outside a system that he helped create . . . . I don’t know if you can both change the system and beat the system in the same year.”

Some Positive Signs

Still, there are some positive signs for Hart.

Two former Hart operatives in New Hampshire who had switched to Gore--including Gore’s New England political director, Greg Lebel--have jumped back to Hart. And two of Hart’s assistant campaign managers, Sue Casey and Michael Stratton, have signed on again.

Bill Shore, Hart’s closest aide for several years, said in an interview Friday: “I’m back in Denver and trying to figure out how I can help. Like a lot of other people, I’ve gotten involved in other things in the last six months.”

Shore said he picked up 600 telegrams Friday at Hart’s Denver law office, many of them from people offering support. He read one over the phone sent from Iowa, where the Feb. 8 caucuses are the first big test for Democrats, and where Hart’s plans are uncertain.

“Your Scott County troops are overjoyed to see you re-enter the 1988 race,” said the telegram from James Kirkpatrick, a stockbroker in Bettendorf, Iowa. When reached by telephone, Kirkpatrick said he had sent the telegram because he believed that eastern Iowa was “still up for grabs for the Democrats.”

In California, a substantial portion of Hart’s formidable network of activists, fund-raisers and volunteers--some of whom have worked for him in other states--is still intact and may be willing to help him again.

This includes his former national deputy campaign manager, Los Angeles Chief Deputy City Atty. John Emerson, who said: “There is no doubt in my mind that, if things go OK in the next month, there are enough people out there to help him.”

Emerson said he was willing to be one of those people but not on a full-time basis--”I just got this job, and I’m enjoying it too much.”

Los Angeles businessman Rick Allen, Hart’s former California chairman, said his phone had not stopped ringing since Hart jumped back into the Democratic race.

“I have 150 phone messages on my desk from people who want to help.” Allen said. “These aren’t just well-meaning people, many of them have worked in campaigns.”

Los Angeles Democratic activist Donna Bojarsky, who was California women’s coordinator for Hart in 1984, said the same thing had happened to her: “Surprisingly, a lot of grass-roots people have been calling me up since he got back in.”

Allen said he would definitely help Hart later “if he is able to get his message through the clutter in the next couple of months.”

Bojarsky said she was thinking about it.

Four of Hart’s major fund-raisers, Bill Batoff of Philadelphia and David Stein, Larry Lawrence and Al Gersten of California, have said they would raise money again for Hart. And Boston businessman Eli Segal, who had nominally switched to the presidential campaign of Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, will meet with Hart in Denver this weekend.

Segal is an expert at raising money by direct mail appeals.

“Any time you have a candidate like this where a lot of people are for him and a lot are against him, direct mail fund-raising can be very effective,” said Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica). “There are a lot of people out there ready to write a check for 50 bucks.” Hayden, who applauded Hart’s re-entry into the race, is considering renewing active support for him.

Emerson said many of Hart’s former supporters had decided that “for the next month he has to be out there by himself. That’s the whole point.”

Friends say they expect Hart to spend much of that time in New Hampshire, the state that helped his campaign erupt in 1984 when he trounced Walter F. Mondale by running a low-budget, underdog campaign. The state’s primary, next Feb. 16, is the first in the political season.

“He said New Hampshire is the most important state to him right now,” said Will Kanteres, a Manchester businessman who ate dinner with Hart after his announcement. Kanteres said that, although he considers Hart a “close personal friend,” he will not break his commitment to Dukakis.

“I think we’ll see a new group of people helping him out,” said Sue Calegari, who headed Hart’s campaign in New Hampshire last spring but now is committed to former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt. “The veterans of 1984 have mostly gone to other campaigns.”

Lebel, who had worked for Hart in 1984, said that he intends to open a Hart for President office in Concord next week but that other supporters in the state probably would work out of their homes. “There have been no decisions yet as to who’s going to do what,” Lebel said.

J. Joseph Grandmaison, head of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, said his office received about 75 calls last week from people around the country interested in helping Hart. “I don’t intend to continue taking his calls,” he said.

Lebel said Hart will return to the state in the first week in January to start his campaign in earnest.

“We’ll do a bare-bones version of a presidential campaign,” Lebel said. “We’ll do everything everyone else does, just do it more cheaply and with less fanfare.”

Whether that will work, of course, is the question. If Hart loses New Hampshire, his insurgent campaign may fade away. If he wins, all bets are off.

“It’s perfectly legitimate to say Gary Hart has to win New Hampshire to stay in the race,” said Ralph Whitehead, a Democratic activist and professor of public service at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

A poll of 356 New Hampshire Democrats taken by the University of New Hampshire for WMUR-TV in Manchester showed Dukakis beating Hart, 37% to 18%, followed by Illinois Sen. Paul Simon with 13%, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson with 6%, Gore and Babbitt with 2% each and Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt with 1%. The margin of error was 5.25%.

“The amount of support Hart has now is about half of what he had before he dropped out” last May, pollster David Moore said. He added: “My sense is, Gary Hart is at his peak now. He has no money to capitalize on the media attention, and for now the attention is all negative. That can only hurt him.”

Not everyone agrees. Others say Hart has cut an appealing image to some, defying the odds yet again, taking on the Washington Establishment and national media.

“Gary must love this,” Grandmaison said. “This is what he wanted to do in 1984. He always wanted to run his own campaign. He didn’t want to observe the rules and procedures. He sees himself as the Marlboro man, and now he’s that personified. He and his wife going from town to town, riding in the sunset. It’s terribly romantic, however impractical.”

Robert Gillette contributed to this story from Sioux Falls, S.D.