A Big Bicoastal Finale

California and New Jersey Democrats gird for Super Tuesday III

Multiple-choice test for political strategists: Name a delegate-rich coastal state that boasts low unemployment and a concentration of high-tech industry, and is filled with well-educated suburban voters who enthusiastically favor a nuclear freeze and worry deeply about pollution from toxic-waste dumps? Oh yes, one other characteristic: its primary next week will be the key to capturing the Democratic nomination. Is it a) California; b) New Jersey; c) both?

For Gary Hart, the correct answer is c): he badly needs victories in both states to keep Walter Mondale from lining up enough delegates to walk off with a first-ballot nomination at the July convention in San Francisco. Mondale might get by choosing b): winning most of the 107 delegates that New Jersey will select next Tuesday could provide the triumph he needs to hold off Hart's closing surge. Even if he loses most of the 306 delegates to be chosen in California, a New Jersey victory would just about lock up the prize. In any case, the two states, wildly dissimilar in geography but surprisingly akin in demographics, together constitute the ultimate arena for the grueling campaign.

There are other arenas too: three more states will hold primaries on June 5, the third and last Super Tuesday of the campaign. Thus both candidates stumped last week through New Mexico (23 delegates at stake). Mondale also visited West Virginia (35 delegates). Hart, meanwhile, turned up in South Dakota (15 delegates). In Idaho caucuses last week, Hart won eleven delegates to six for Mondale. But that gain was offset in New York, where state Democratic powers selected 16 "superdelegates," party leaders chosen outside the primary-caucus process. Though all are technically uncommitted, 14 have announced publicly for Mondale. Ohio's Democratic Party also chose ten superdelegates last week, nine of whom support Mondale.

Both candidates are exuding confidence. For Mondale, that is at least in part a calculated act. His strategists met last week and concluded that they had to put a stop to stories about depression and worry in the former Vice President's camp. Thus, as reporters asked him just when he might amass the 1,967 delegates needed to nominate, Mondale answered with atypical jaunty precision: "At 11:59 [a.m.] on June 6, I'll go over the top."

Mondale on the stump has reassumed his Fighting Fritz pose of March and April, slamming away lustily at both Reagan and Hart. At a toxic-waste dump in New Jersey, Mondale sneered that the Reagan Administration "would rather take a polluter to lunch than to court," and assailed Hart for "playing hooky" from Senate deliberations about creation of a so-called Superfund to clean up such wastes. In San Luis Obispo, Calif, he for once made a clear choice between two groups in his own constituency, coming down on the side of antinuclear activists and urging closing of the nearby Diablo Canyon atomic-power plant, over the lusty booing of construction workers. Said Mondale to the hecklers: "Money doesn't justify risking the lives of thousands or millions of people. Neither does a job."