New Hampshire rejects Mondale

Press, 1 March 1984, Page 11

New Hampshire rejects Mondale

NZPA-AAP Concord Senator Gary Hart won the New Hampshire primary in a startling upset that dimmed the aura of invincibility with which Walter Mondale began the campaign year, “The New York Times” reports. Mr Hart, a self-described “longshot” from Colorado, made rapid gains in the last few days of the contest. Senator John Glenn of Ohio was third, well behind the former Vice-President, Mr Mondale, in a primary that maintained the reputation of New Hampshire voters for using the first primary of the campaign season to reorder the rankings in Presidential contests. Mr Mondale described his defeat as a “cold shower.”

He conceded when early returns showed that Mr Hart led him among the independent voters, who are allowed to vote in either party’s primary and who turned out in heavy numbers, and also among the regular Democrats who

were supposed to make up his main support. “I’ve now won one and lost one,” Mr Mondale told reporters at Logan Airport in Boston. “My campaign begins again tomorrow morning at 7 a.m.” Interviews with voters by “The New York Times” and C.B.S. News showed that Mr Hart ran about even with Mr Mondale among voters who identified themselves as Democrats. He defeated Mr Mondale by 2-to-l in an unusually heavy turnout of voters who said that they were independents. Trailing the three Democratic main candidates were the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a civil rights leader, George McGovern, a former senator from South Dakota; Reubin Askew, the former Governor

of Florida; Senator Alan Cranston of California, and Senator Ernest Rollings of South Carolina. Mr Glenn said that the results “pierce that balloon of inevitability” that Mr Mondale would win the nomination.

In the Republican primary, President Reagan, with no significant opposition, rolled to an overwhelming victory. An opinion poll had showed Mr Mondale holding a huge lead of 49 percentage points nation-wide, but even before the voting there were indications that New Hampshire was not following the national trend. Mr Hart’s rise in publicopinion polls in New Hampshire was fuelled by his showing in the lowa caucuses on February 20, when he came a surprising, though distant, second place to Mr Mondale. That outcome gave Mr Hart a lift in his competition with Mr Glenn to become the main challenger to Mr Mondale.

Sensing that his “new ideas” campaign was catching the public imagination, Mr Hart and his advisers stepped up the “expectations battle” in which candidates set the standards of performance that can later come back to haunt them.