Fritz Hits One Out of the Park

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In New York, he scores with the old coalition

Despite his broken nose, Walter Mondale does not seem like much of a brawler. He wears gray business suits, his father was a Methodist minister, and his favorite sport is fishing. As a politician, he has displayed caution, even a certain softness.

But in the six weeks since Mondale lost the New Hampshire primary, he has jabbed and taunted Gary Hart. Last week he gave Hart a lesson in oldfashioned, gut-cutting New York politics. Mondale won the biggest primary so far, by a whopping 45% to 27%, and set himself up once again as the clear front runner in the Democratic race. Hart's appeal to a "new generation," his high-flown "new ideas" so seductive to the Yumpies of New England, fell flat among skeptical New Yorkers. Mondale, meanwhile, was able to piece together the old New Deal coalition of the poor and elderly, labor and Jews, party chiefs and "real Democrats."

His victory was not patchwork. Mondale swept nearly every age and income group. "We won everyone but the rich Wasps," crowed an aide. The landslide left Mondale ebullient. "If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere," he told a roaring victory celebration, paraphrasing a line from the Theme from New York, New York. The victory brought his delegate total to 900, compared with Hart's 520, and emphatically proved that Mondale can win the support of voters as well as party bosses.

Still, Mondale owed much to the backing of the state's Democratic leaders—New York City Mayor Ed Koch, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and particularly Governor Mario Cuomo. In exit polling, 20% of New York voters said they were influenced by the endorsements, and 90% of that group voted for Mondale. Virtually taking control of Mondale's campaign, serving as both surrogate and spokesman for the former Vice President, Cuomo established himself as a national figure in his own right.

The other big winner was Jesse Jackson. By turning out the black vote en masse, he came within one percentage point of overtaking Hart's stalled campaign. Yet Hart outspent Jackson on political advertising $800,000 to zero. It was an extraordinary showing by the charismatic civil rights leader. He won well over 80% of the black vote, as well as the respect he demands from white Democratic leaders. They will have to listen very carefully when Jackson asks a price for the several hundred delegates he expects to bring to the Democratic Convention in San Francisco this July (see following story).

Hart's crash left aides sifting through the wreckage, trying to figure out how they erred in order to rebuild the campaign for this week's Pennsylvania primary. They did not have to look hard.