Desperate Mondale attacks rival

Press, 7 March 1984, Page 6

Desperate Mondale attacks rival

NZPA-‘N.Y. Times’

Washington

Gary Hart’s victory in the Maine caucuses on Monday has propelled the Democratic Presidential campaign into an angry new phase. Walter Mondale acknowledged yesterday that he was fighting for his political survival and denounced Mr Hart with the harshest personal attacks of the campaign year. Admitting that, “I got hurt bad” by defeats in Maine and New Hampshire, Mr Mondale for the first time centred his criticism on Mr Hart’s character and personality. In speeches in Boston he depicted Mr Hart as a coldly intellectual man who would bring an “unfair, regressive approach” to the problems of common people.

Mr Hart’s strategists, convinced that the Mondale campaign was reeling, studied their private polls to see if the senator from Colorado had a chance to deliver a decisive blow against the former VicePresident in the Southern primaries next week, already dubbed as “Super Tuesday” and which has now virtually become “make-or-break” for Mr Mondale.

Yesterday in Massachusetts, another state that will vote next week, Mr Hart, campaigned among union members, seeking to feed discontent in the rank-and-file against the endorsement of Mr Mondale by the American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organisations. Robert Squier, a Democratic political consultant

who has been neutral in the Presidential primaries, and other specialists, including Barry Bobbins, the Maine party chairman, said yesterday that the accelerated schedule of primaries, which was written into the party rules at Mr Mondale’s urging, was now working against him by allowing Mr Hart to ignite a quick series of upsets. “The problem with the Mondale campaign,” said Mr- Squier, “is that whoever set up this schedule had never seen a forest fire.”

Mr Mondale began campaigning yesterday with an admission that his campaign was in difficulty. “I’m in trouble, I need help,” he said with a laugh on the A.B.C. News programme, “Good Morning, America." He blamed his failure to “debate Hart,” and later he moved vigorously “I mean,

who is Gary Hart? People don’t know him.” He singled out Mr Hart’s proposal to impose a fee of SUSIO a barrel on imported oil as the “worst new idea” of Mr Hart’s “New Ideas” campaign. “Voters of Massachusetts, watch out,” Mr Mondale said. “That’s a dagger in your heart.” He also emphasised what he called Mr Hart’s lack of compassion. “Listen to his speeches. You don’t hear him talking about restoring the sense of social justice, reaching out and helping the vulnerable, the emphasis as I do on Social Security and Medicare,” Mr Mondale said. “He wrote a book about his vision of America. You need an F. 8.1. investigator to find one word in there expressing concern about people who are in trouble.”