Mondale's Machine in High Gear

By Evan Thomas

With Glenn stumbling, half a dozen others hope for a chance

This was supposed to be the fall when John Glenn showed he had the right stuff to be the Democratic presidential nominee. He would "define" himself both as a person and as a candidate. His organization would coalesce and transform Glenn's astronaut charisma into grass-roots support. Walter Mondale, meanwhile, was supposed to fold under pressure. His string of endorsements would prove worthless as uninspired voters looked for a candidate with more fire. As 1984 began, according to Glenn scenarists, the two men would be running neck and neck.

It has not worked out that way. The front runner did not stumble; the challenger did not soar. Far from slipping, Mondale appears to be farther ahead than ever. He has deftly sidestepped Glenn's broadsides, while Glenn has been less dexterous dodging Mondale's jabs. Glenn is still fuzzy as a candidate--"there is no meat on his bones," says a Democratic politician in Georgia--and his campaign organization has started slowly. Even The Right Stuff, a movie glorifying Glenn's role in the space program, is less than a sensation at the box office.

In Iowa, whose Feb. 20 caucuses will pose the first test, the question is apparently not whether Mondale will win but by how much. With 22 paid staffers, Mondale's machine is capitalizing on his regional popularity (he was born just seven miles across the state line in Ceylon, Minn.). By contrast, says an Iowa party leader, "the Glenn campaign has been a disaster. If his organization doesn't pick up the slack, he's going to be sucking eggs out here." Mondale's organization in New Hampshire, which holds the first primary on Feb. 28, is the best seen there since John F. Kennedy's in 1960, while Glenn's campaign is not even second best. (Gary Hart's is.) In the South, where three key primaries (Alabama, Florida, Georgia) are scheduled for Super Tuesday on March 13, Glenn should be favored by the generally conservative electorate. Yet somehow he has lost a 39% to 33% lead over Mondale. Says Pollster Claibourne Darden: "Not only are the figures reversed from three months ago, they're stretching out in the other direction--in Mondale's favor [43% to 29%]."

Overall, Mondale's organization may be the best in party history. He will display it Saturday night with an extravaganza called "America for Mondale." At as many as 10,000 fund raisers, 200,000 couples are supposed to donate $25 apiece to watch Mondale speak for five minutes on national television. The expected net: at least $1 million.

Glenn strategists believe that Mondale is too liberal for most Democrats. They cite exit polls from the 1980 Democratic primaries showing that two-thirds of the voters called themselves "moderate to conservative." With this in mind, Glenn has attacked the front runner as a big spender who is soft on defense.

So far, at least, Glenn's strategy has not paid off. "People don't vote on ideology and issues for President," says Political Analyst Alan Baron. "They vote on character." Moreover, voters in primaries and especially caucuses tend to be party activists who are receptive to Mondale's wooing of traditional Democratic constituencies. Mondale has cleverly defused Glenn's criticisms by asking who is "the real Democrat," and by pointing out that Glenn voted for Reagan's tax cut in 1981.

Mondale dismisses Glenn's attacks as the "frenzy" of a "desperate" man. But it is, of course, far too early for Glenn to feel desperate. As Baron points out, "For most people, the campaign hasn't started yet." Glenn will not be heavily outspent by Mondale (by year's end he expects to raise $6 million to Monsdale's $9 million). He is capable of presenting himself as a pragmatic, moderate alternative to both Mondale and Reagan. He won over a crowd of 500 at East Central Oklahoma State University last week in Ada by contrasting the "do-nothing policies of the 1920s that the current Administration is so fond of" and the "do-everything policies of the 1960s that some in our own party seem to want to return to." Yet earlier that day, he bored 200 people at a Lawton, Okla., fund raiser with a rambling discourse on lifetime tenure for judges.

Waiting, hoping for the front runner or his chief challenger to fall are four Democrats who are desperate for funds and press attention. The most dogged is Alan Cranston. His organization in Iowa is good enough to worry the Mondale forces and quite possibly to upstage Glenn. "Cranston is the iron man," says a party official. "They give him 50 political calls to make a day, and he makes every one of them." Unafraid to run ads beseeching voters to vote for a "69-year-old, bald" candidate, Cranston hammers away at his best issue, the proliferation of nuclear arms. Despite his energy, Cranston is also trailing Mondale even in his home state of California.

Gary Hart is one of the puzzlements of the campaign. He is a telegenic two-term Senator with a thoughtful if occasionally abstruse "campaign of ideas." But his candidacy has not caught on, partly because voters sense his aloofness. Slow to gear up an organization, he has finally fielded an effective one in New Hampshire. Says Hart, "If I can put together 30 days of seconds and thirds, I can get financing and I can get the nomination." Now enthusiastically courting the women's vote, Hart may be aiming for 1988.

Ernest ("Fritz") Rollings has a cult following among many Washington journalists as the most humorous and most candid candidate, but he seems to have little following elsewhere. At a recent meeting with New Bedford, Mass., fishermen, only one showed up. Reubin Askew's campaign remains obscure; a former Governor of Florida, he trails Mondale even there.

None of these "second tier" candidates have more than 3% in the polls. They trail two candidates, George McGovern and Jesse Jackson, who are not running to win but rather to make a point.

When McGovern declared last September, even his wife was afraid he would be humiliated. But the landslide loser to Richard Nixon in 1972 has become a sentimental favorite to some. He flies around the country alone, tourist class, outlining in his flat, prairie voice an unabashedly liberal agenda: troops out of the Middle East and Grenada, a 25% cut in the defense budget, a huge jobs program, a unilateral nuclear freeze. "If people think I'm talking sense, that's all I'm after," he shrugs. Audiences applaud affectionately, sometimes emotionally. Last month McGovern's wife finally endorsed him as well.

Jesse Jackson's campaign began as a protest movement against the party, a "rainbow coalition" of minorities and women joining to extract concessions from the eventual nominee. Yet his aides worry that Jackson's considerable ego has been even further enlarged by the Secret Service protection, the motorcades, and a new chant, "Win, Jesse, Win." Frets one aide: "I think he's beginning to think he can win this thing. That scares me." Last week Jackson signaled his high ambitions by entering the New Hampshire primary. But so far Jackson's campaign organization guarantees against success. Phones ring unanswered at headquarters and no one seems to know how much money has been raised.

The Mondale campaign is taking Jackson quite seriously nonetheless. "The greatest campaign organization ever built has an Achilles heel: the black community," says a Mondale aide, who fears that Jackson could siphon off enough votes in the three Southern primaries of Super Tuesday to deny Mondale victory.

Some Democratic leaders devoutly hope he will, though no one is talking about an "Anyone But Mondale" movement yet. Indeed, this week the candidates are supposed to bury their differences on a two-day, cross-country "Presidential Sweep" to raise money for the party. But there is real concern in some Democratic quarters that Mondale is the wrong candidate to face Ronald Reagan. "The Democrats need a vertebrae transplant, the ability to say no," says Political Columnist Mark Shields. Mondale became the front runner by saying yes to almost every interest group that asked. Now party pros are wondering whether Mondale's impressive organizational strength will translate into votes in a general election. "He's not strong when it gets to the voters," says Pollster Pat Caddell. "And, unfortunately, this thing eventually gets to the voters."

Still, in the race for the nomination, Mondale may be too far ahead to catch. Hart puts the party's dilemma in stark terms: "Mondale is giving away the general election to win the nomination; Glenn is giving away the nomination so that he can win the election." If Hart is right, the Democrats lose either way. --By Evan Thomas. Reported by Sam Allis and Jack E. White/ Washington, with other bureaus

With reporting by Sam Allis, Jack E. White/ Washington This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.