Outsider Hart Tells Small Crowds That Catastrophe Looms

The crowds are small and the prospects are modest as Gary Hart pushes on from town to town, seeking votes in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.

In some respects, it looks like a traditional presidential campaign.

Two brash young aides run ahead to make sure the events come off. Secret Service agents add an air of importance as they flick their eyes over the audiences and whisper into microphones attached to their wrists.

A Rogue Elephant

But, with polls showing him near the bottom of the Democratic pack here and many party regulars still shunning him, Hart has become a rogue elephant plowing through the snows of the state that gave him an electrifying victory in 1984.

Economy ‘Going Off Cliff’

He talks of pending “catastrophe,” warns that the economy is “going off a cliff” and speaks ominously of nuclear weapons “falling into the hands of computers.”

And he revels more than ever in being the outsider, telling audiences that the three leading Democratic candidates here are part of the “old politics” and thus cannot hope to provide bold solutions to America’s problems.

His reported dalliance with Miami model Donna Rice, which drove him from the race last May, never comes up. These days, in “Hart ’88 Part 2,” the talk is of serious subjects.

Discourses on Economics

At colleges and town meetings, Hart discourses impressively on foreign policy and economic reform, displaying an ability to explain complicated subjects.

“If you want reform at home and abroad, if you want things to change in this country to avoid catastrophe, I need your help,” Hart said Thursday night in Keene to about 50 people.

The large crowds that greeted Hart after he reentered the race last December have dwindled, according to aides, but the candidate and his wife, Lee, still seem upbeat.

“I want to introduce my first lady, Lee Hart,” a smiling Hart says at each stop.

In Keene Thursday night, Mrs. Hart prompted her husband from the front row after he said that the only way to reduce the deficit is to raise taxes.

“Oh, Lee wants me to make sure you understand that in my budget there are no increases in income taxes on middle- and lower-income Americans . . . only on the top 2% of Americans.”

Scaring Audiences

Sometimes, Hart told the group, his wife thinks he scares audiences with his predictions of problems.

“I talked to a very wealthy person tonight,” Hart said in Keene, “and I said: ‘What do you think is going to happen to this economy?’ and he said: ‘We’re going off a cliff. We are going into a recession in ’88 and a depression in ’89.’

“Now, I gave a talk about these serious problems we face, these deficits, the arms race, the instability in the Third World . . . and Lee told me later she thought I scared them--the audience--too much.

“Well, I don’t think there is a problem this country faces that we cannot solve, but why I feel so passionately about this race and why I got back in the teeth of a lot of adverse press criticism is that I think we are going to have to change things.”

Scared of Nuclear Arms

At another point Hart said: “I am scared to death of nuclear weapons. Not because they are just sitting there but because of the decreasing warning times and increasing sophistication of those weapons and the increasing way they are falling into the hands of computers.”

Hart’s listeners warm to him, and some seem as angry at the “system” as he is.

One questioner wanted to know what he was going to do about “the money being paid to the privately owned Rockefeller Chase Manhattan Bank Federal Reserve System.”

Hart said the question confused him but gamely explained his contention that the Reagan Administration has made economic decisions that benefit large financial institutions.

Issue of Drug Abuse

A woman wanted to know what Hart would do about the “international drug cartel?”

Hart used that opening to blast the Reagan Administration for not doing enough to deal with drug abuse.

When asked if he plans to quit the race if he does poorly in the New Hampshire primary, Hart insists that, if he can raise money, “I’m in this thing until the convention.”

At times, there are poignant reminders of what Hart--once the Democratic front-runner--gave up when the Rice incident broke.

He reminds his listeners that he is the only Democratic candidate who has met for four hours with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gobachev and says it was arranged in 1986, “because the Soviets thought I was going to be President.”