Closing In on the Prize

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

After ayes from Texas and Tennessee, Mondale will be hard to catch

Davy Crockett once snarled at Tennessee voters who refused to re-elect him to Congress: "You can go to hell, but I'm going to Texas." Gary Hart was more polite last week, merely expressing disappointment over a bruising loss in the Tennessee Democratic primary before he, like Crockett, huffed off to Texas to try to rebuild his fortunes. But he wound up in the same place as ol' Davy: the Alamo.

Only metaphorically, of course, and not quite so conclusively. Still, results from the Texas caucuses left Hart's hopes for the presidential nomination, as of early Sunday morning, barely flickering. In a contest limited to Democrats who had first voted in a primary for congressional and state offices on Saturday and then gave up their evening to attend the caucuses, Walter Mondale was leading Hart by 2-1, with the Rev. Jesse Jackson a distant third. Mondale claimed "a very strong victory" and said "it appears we have won 50% of the delegates, perhaps a few more." Texas eventually will send 200 delegates to the Democratic convention, the third largest bloc from any state, and even before it voted the former Vice President's lead was a daunting 1,212 delegates to Hart's 644. Hart is running out of time and states in which to pare it down. Hart did run slightly ahead of Mondale in Louisiana, which apportioned 57 of its total of 68 delegates in a primary Saturday, but it did him no good--because both ran far behind Jackson. The fiery preacher put on a stunning performance, inspiring blacks to vote at a rate about double that of whites. Final figures showed Jackson winning a thumping 42% of the vote, Hart 25%, Mondale 22%.

It was Jackson's second victory of the campaign--and the week-- and by far the more significant. On Tuesday he took 67% of the vote in the Washington primary, but blacks constitute two-thirds of the capital's electorate, vs. only about a quarter of Louisiana's. Jackson evidently benefited from apathy and confusion among white Louisiana Democrats. Governor Edwin Edwards, miffed because a federal court ordered Louisiana to hold a primary rather than a caucus, urged a boycott of the polls; so many whites heeded his advice that the total turnout was only about 14% of those eligible.

Even so, the results demonstrated that Jackson's black supporters had not been discouraged by rising attacks on his association with demogogic supporter Louis Farrakhan, nor by a financial scandal involving a key figure in his national campaign. He looked more than ever like a force to be reckoned with at the San Francisco convention. Said Jackson: "The success of my campaign means that those who are poor must be focused on because they are making a difference in these elections."

But the real race is still between Mondale and Hart. Mondale's supporters were openly hoping that the weekend contests had set up the Colorado Senator for a knockout blow this week, when 411 delegates will be selected in five states. The biggest is Ohio, where 154 delegates are at stake in a primary on Tuesday, and it is exactly the kind of heavily unionized, high-unemployment state where Mondale has won his biggest victories. Even if Hart should score an upset, the odds against him would still be formidable. If Mondale wins, and runs strongly in Indiana, Maryland and North Carolina as well, his delegate count could surge close enough to the 1,967 needed to nominate that Hart's chances would be all but foreclosed.

As last week began, the mood was somewhat different. Hart aides were hoping that Tennessee would be "a second New Hampshire," rekindling his campaign just as his surprise victory in the Granite State had ignited it. The Mondale camp was slightly apprehensive that its champion might have lost momentum during the three-week interval since the Pennsylvania primary. There was concern about the effect of Hart's charge that Mondale had played fast and loose with campaign-finance laws by having supposedly independent delegate committees accept and spend on his behalf donations that mostly came from labor political-action committees (PACs). Mondale has ordered the delegate committees to disband and pledged to give back about $300,000 in PAC money, but Hart continued to hammer away at the subject all last week.

Tennessee Democrats seemed to pay little heed to the attacks when they went to the polls. Mondale won Tennessee by a comfortable 42% to 30%, and took 30 delegates to Hart's 20. It was a case of Mondale's superior organization turning out the vote in a state where only diehard Democrats, and not all of them, bothered to enter the voting booths. The 399,383 who cast ballots constituted just 16.5% of Tennessee's voters (who are not registered by party). Lamented Hart's state campaign chairman, Will Cheek: "We gave a primary and nobody came." Well, not exactly. Jackson did inspire a heavy turnout in black districts and took 23% of the statewide vote.

Hart began the week by stepping out of character. Flying into Houston on Sunday, the candidate, usually reserved and aloof, stretched out on the ground near a runway and chewed on a blade of grass. Hours later he led his entourage to Gilley's, the watering hole made famous by the movie Urban Cowboy. There he knocked back a long-necked bottle of beer while having his boots shined, danced enthusiastically with four women and had to be dissuaded by his staff from trying a John Travolta-style ride on the mechanical bull. Apparently, Hart simply decided to give himself a night off from his usual self-contained behavior.

From then on, Hart was all business, but his campaign's attacks on Mondale looked increasingly desperate. A radio spot, allegedly paid for by an organization calling itself Americans with Hart and broadcast repeatedly in Spanish to South Texas, classed Mondale with "los enemigos" of John, Robert and Edward Kennedy, whom Hispanic voters revere. Mondale has never directly opposed a Kennedy for office, though he supported other candidates--Hubert Humphrey and Jimmy Carter--in presidential campaigns.

In a speech on the eve of the Tennessee primary, Hart took the huge risk of reminding voters about something most of his fellow Democrats devoutly wish they would forget: the impression of weakness and ineptitude left by what Hart called "the Carter-Mondale Administration." In particular, he said, "Carter-Mondale actually gave us an America held hostage to the ayatullahs of the world." Mondale replied that Iran had eventually returned all the hostages alive and that during the crisis Hart had failed to suggest any way that their release could have been secured earlier; by midweek Hart rather lamely asserted that he meant only to criticize the failure of the April 1980 rescue mission.

Hart did get in some better-aimed blows, but their effect was diluted by poor tuning. In Dallas he lambasted Mondale for portraying himself in the North as a champion of regulating the oil and gas industries but in Texas as a fighter for deregulation. The charge was accurate, but it could not compete for attention with the publicity generated only hours later by a debate among Hart, Mondale and Jackson on TV.

The debate focused on the issues of runoff primaries and immigration policy, and the candidates found little to disagree about. The liveliest moments came when Mondale and Hart rebuked Jackson for not repudiating Farrakhan, the black Muslim leader who made what sounded like a death threat against a black reporter. Mondale asserted that "what Farrakhan said was poison," and Hart wondered why the Muslim had not been subjected to criminal prosecution.* Jackson replied that he had "disassociated myself from the message but not from the messenger" and spoke in a preacher's tones of "forgiveness."

If Jackson had any doubts about how lame his reply sounded, they were speedily dispelled. Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Robert Strauss met with Jackson right after the debate and, with Mondale listening, told him sternly that a continued refusal to disavow Farrakhan would hinder party efforts to work out a convention compromise on Jackson's platform demands. Said one Jackson aide: "It was the first time I've ever seen Jesse take guff from anybody." Jackson tried unsuccessfully to phone Farrakhan; it seemed Likely that the candidate wanted to put more distance between himself and his raucous supporter.

Jackson also hinted at a softening of his demand that the party pledge itself to abolish the runoff primary system, which in nine Southern states and Oklahoma requires a second primary if no candidate wins a majority in the first. Campaigning in Texas last week, he spoke of creating a "blue-ribbon commission" to study possible reforms in all electoral practices that pose barriers to black candidates and added, "I'm far more concerned about the principle of equity and parity than the strategy to achieve it." On Friday, Democratic National Committee Chairman Charles Manatt said he planned to form a "party unity task force" to settle disputes among the three candidates.

The Jackson entourage was rocked last week by a newspaper's charges that his national campaign coordinator, Arnold Pinkney, violated Ohio's conflict-of-interest laws. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that Pinkney, who is secretary of the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, helped to negotiate a lease of warehouse space by the Authority to one of Pinkney's business partners; Pinkney's insurance agency then wrote $21 million of insurance on the property, collecting commissions of $40,000 to $50,000.

A sign of Mondale's growing confidence was his decision to concentrate most of his fire last week on President Reagan. Speaking to an audience largely composed of wives of Government workers in Rockville, Md., Mondale asserted that "anybody who ran a business by running down the people working for him would be considered an idiot"; orating at a wilderness-style park in Dallas, he attacked Reagan for cutting back on federal funds to help states and localities acquire park land. In North Carolina, Mondale, who enjoys an occasional cigar, managed to defend federal warnings about the health dangers of cigarette smoking and, simultaneously, subsidies to tobacco farmers. People who puff despite the warnings, he declared, ought to have their cigarettes made from U.S. grown rather than imported tobacco.

While Mondale had solid grounds for optimism, he will not necessarily be home free even if Tuesday's primaries in Ohio, Indiana, Maryland and North Carolina further pad his delegate lead. Hart strategists do have a last-resort scenario, one that hinges on a continued assault on Mondale's delegate committees and their PAC money. Hart is steadily accusing Mondale of treating the cash as an "interest-free loan" to be paid back only after all primaries and caucuses are over. Hart has filed a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission that Mondale violated election-finance laws.

In the Hart scenario, the FEC issues a quick ruling against Mondale and on its strength Hart wins so big in the last contests--above all, California on June 5--that delegates now pledged to Mondale switch to the Coloradan. If that does not work, Hart aides hint that at the convention they might challenge the credentials of Mondale delegates elected with the help of the committees and PAC funds. Last week they were telling reporters that no fewer than 510 Mondale delegates are "tainted." Such "legal manipulation," charged Mondale, would "make a mockery of the primary system." It also would risk a party-splitting brawl on national TV that would get the campaign against Reagan off to a limping start, whoever won.

To make a plausible delegate challenge, Hart needed a win in Texas and one in either Tennessee or Louisiana, not only to get within hailing distance of a convention majority but also to back up his boast that he has a better chance than Mondale of beating Reagan. But after last week's rebuffs, Hart may have little chance of winning over the party faithful in San Francisco. On Thursday, when he left Texas to campaign in Ohio and Louisiana, it seemed more like a retreat than a strategy. Gibed Mondale: "He ought to stick around and get his delegates the old-fashioned way like I do--I earn them." As he closed in on the prize, Walter Mondale, once dismissed as lacking the fire and stamina for a presidential campaign, could make that claim with special pride. --By George J. Church. Reported by Sam Allis with Hart and David Beckwith with Mondale

* Dan Webb, U.S. Attorney in Chicago, said Friday that he had carefully reviewed Farrakhan's alleged threat and found "insufficient evidence of the requisite criminal intent" to sustain a prosecution.

With reporting by Sam Allis, David Beckwith