Early legal work Hart became an attorney for the
United States Department of Justice from 1964 to 1965 and was admitted to the
Colorado and
District of Columbia bars in 1965. He was special assistant to the solicitor of the
United States Department of the Interior from 1965 to 1967. He then entered private law practice in
Denver, Colorado,
George McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign Following the
1968 Democratic National Convention in
Chicago, U.S. Senator
George McGovern of
South Dakota co-chaired a commission that revised the Democratic presidential nomination structure. The new structure weakened the influence of such old-style party bosses as Chicago Mayor
Richard J. Daley, who were once able to hand-pick national convention delegates and dictate the way they voted. The new rules made caucuses a process in which relative newcomers could participate without paying dues to established party organizations. In the
1972 primary elections, McGovern named Hart his national campaign director. Along with
Rick Stearns, an expert on the new system, they decided on a strategy to focus on the 28 states holding caucuses instead of primary elections. They felt the nature of the caucuses made them easier and less costly to win if they targeted their efforts. While their primary election strategy proved successful in winning the nomination, McGovern went on to lose the
1972 presidential election in one of the most lopsided elections in U.S. history.
United States Senator In
1974, Hart ran for the United States Senate, challenging two-term incumbent Republican
Peter Dominick. Hart was aided by Colorado's trend toward Democrats during the early 1970s, as well as Dominick's continued support for the unpopular President
Richard Nixon and concerns about the senator's health. In the general election, Hart won by a wide margin (57.2% to Dominick's 39.5%) and was immediately labeled a rising star. He got a seat on the Armed Services Committee and was an early supporter of reforming the bidding for military contracts, as well as an advocate for the military using smaller, more mobile weapons and equipment, as opposed to the traditional large-scale items. He also served on the Environment and Public Work Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee. From 1975 to 1976, Hart was a member of the post-
Watergate Church Committee that investigated abuses by the
Central Intelligence Agency,
National Security Agency,
Federal Bureau of Investigation and the
Internal Revenue Service. Hart served as the chairman of Senate Subcommittee on Nuclear Regulation. He flew over the
Three Mile Island nuclear reactor near
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in an Army helicopter several times with fellow Senator
Alan Simpson during the nuclear accident and led the subsequent Senate investigation into the incident. In
1980, Hart sought a second term. In something of a surprise, his Republican opponent was Colorado Secretary of State
Mary Estill Buchanan, a moderate candidate who narrowly defeated the more
conservative choice,
Howard "Bo" Callaway, in the party primary, by fewer than 2,000 primary votes.
Fourteen years earlier, Callaway was the Republican gubernatorial nominee in his native
Georgia. Callaway in the early 1970s had bought and run an elegant resort in Crested Butte. Buchanan hit Hart hard for supporting the
Panama Canal Treaties and for backing then-President
Jimmy Carter in 80% of his Senate votes. Buchanan charged in a campaign ad about Hart: "He votes one way and talks another when he is back here. He is a liberal, McGovernite carpetbagger." Hart responded that Buchanan's charges reflected her narrow viewpoint and insisted that his campaign would rise above partisanship. Said Hart in a campaign ad: "I will not ignore her. We will interact and debate, but I am going to run a campaign for the 1980s. What is her plan for the environment? For national defense? For the economy? It took me a year or so to formulate my ideas." In the end, Hart won narrowly, with 50.2% of the vote to his opponent's 48.7%. On December 2, 1981, Hart was one of only four senators to vote against an amendment to President Reagan's
MX missiles proposal that would divert the silo system by $334 million as well as earmark further research for other methods that would allow giant missiles to be based. The vote was seen as a rebuff of the Reagan administration. Hart cosponsored the
Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984 with Senator
Charles Mathias, which was signed into law. The act created a new category of intellectual property rights that makes the
layouts of
integrated circuits legally protected upon registration, and hence illegal to copy without permission. This protected Silicon Valley chips from cheap foreign imitations. Similar legislation had been proposed in every Congress since 1979.
United States Naval Reserve service Citing the increasing likelihood of an armed conflict in the
Persian Gulf and his reluctance to "stay in the Senate and authorize and appropriate funds to send young men like my son off to fight that war," Hart applied for a commission in the
United States Naval Reserve's
Standby Reserve Active Status List program in the late 1970s. He was over the statutory age limit of 38 and had not amassed any prior military experience; moreover, in contrast to his stated rationale, this category "would not be called up immediately in the event of a mobilization." By mutual agreement, Hart and
United States Secretary of the Navy Edward Hidalgo deferred the consideration of the request until the aftermath of the 1980 election. In a 2007 commentary for
HuffPost, Hart asserted that his desire to "understand and communicate better with our troops" was the primary motivation for his appointment. Although he "did not routinely fulfill [his] reserve duties" and "chose not to feature this experience in subsequent campaigns", he maintained that his service "helped [him] enormously in appreciating what our military does to make us more secure." Hart could not overcome Mondale's financial and organizational advantages, especially among
labor union leaders in the
Midwest and industrial
Northeast. Hart's campaign was chronically in debt, to a final count of $4.75 million. In states like
Illinois, where
delegates were elected directly by
primary voters, Hart often had incomplete delegate slates. Hart's ideas were criticized as too vague and
centrist by many Democrats. Shortly after he became the new frontrunner, it was revealed that Hart had changed his last name, had often listed 1937 instead of 1936 as his birth date and had changed his signature several times. This, along with two separations from his wife (1979 and 1981), Lee, caused some to question Hart's "flake factor." Hart himself admitted in an interview that he was going through a midlife crisis and focused too much on his career, neglecting his family. Reporters observed that the Harts appeared distant and distracted in public. Hart was also not close to his children, often leaving his wife to raise them completely alone. He and his wife briefly dated each other casually during their second separation, which occurred for a few months in 1981. Additionally, the Harts had begun divorce proceedings but had stopped them after reconciling. Hart and his wife later stated that the separations, caused by too much time spent apart due to politics, only strengthened their marriage. The Harts would remain married until Lee's death on April 10, 2021. The two men swapped victories in the primaries, with Hart getting exposure as a candidate with "new ideas" and Mondale rallying the party establishment to his side. The two men fought to a draw in the
Super Tuesday, with Hart winning states in the West,
Florida and
New England. Mondale fought back and began ridiculing Hart's campaign platform. The most famous television moment of the campaign was during a debate when he mocked Hart's "new ideas" by quoting a line from a popular
Wendy's television commercial at the time: "
Where's the beef?" Hart's campaign could not effectively counter this remark, and when he ran negative TV commercials against Mondale in the
Illinois primary, his appeal as a new kind of Democrat never entirely recovered. Hart lost the
New York and
Pennsylvania primaries, but won those of
Ohio and
Indiana. Mondale gradually pulled away from Hart in the delegate count, but the race was not decided until June, on
"Super Tuesday III". Decided that day were delegates from five states:
South Dakota,
New Mexico,
West Virginia,
California and
New Jersey. The proportional nature of delegate selection meant that Mondale was likely to obtain enough delegates on that day to secure the stated support of an overall majority of delegates, and hence the nomination, no matter who actually "won" the states contested. However, Hart maintained that unpledged
superdelegates that had previously claimed support for Mondale would shift to his side if he swept the Super Tuesday III primary. Once again, Hart committed a
faux pas, insulting New Jersey shortly before the primary day. Campaigning in California, he remarked that while the "bad news" was that he and his wife had to campaign separately, "[T]he good news for her is that she campaigns in California while I campaign in New Jersey." Compounding the problem, when his wife interjected that she "got to hold a koala bear", Hart replied that "I won't tell you what I got to hold: samples from a
toxic waste dump." This race for the nomination was the most recent occasion that a major party presidential nomination has
gone all the way to the convention. Mondale was later defeated in a landslide by the incumbent Reagan, winning only his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia. Many felt that Hart and other similar candidates, younger and more independent-minded, represented the future of the party. Hart had refused to take money from Political Action Committees (PACs), and as a result he mortgaged his house to self-finance his campaign, and was more than $1 million in debt at the end of the campaign.
1988 presidential campaign Hart declined to run for re-election to the Senate, leaving office when his second term expired with the intent of running for president again. On December 20, 1986, Hart was allegedly followed by an anonymous private investigator from a radio station where he had given the Democratic Party's response to President Reagan's weekly radio address. That alleged investigator report claimed that Hart had been followed to a woman's house, photographed there, and left sometime the following morning. This allegation would ultimately cause him to suspend his planned presidential campaign. After
Mario Cuomo announced in February 1987 that he would not enter the race, Hart was the clear frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in the
1988 election. Hart officially declared his candidacy on April 13, 1987. When Lois Romano, a reporter for
The Washington Post, asked Hart to respond to rumors spread by other campaigns that he was a "womanizer", Hart said such candidates were "not going to win that way, because you don't get to the top by tearing someone else down." The
New York Post reported that comment on its front page with the headline lead in "Straight from the Hart", followed below with big, black block letters: "., and then a summary of the story: "Dem blasts rivals over sex life rumors". In late April 1987, the
Miami Herald claimed that an anonymous informant contacted the paper to relate that Hart was having an affair with a friend, claimed it was the equivalent of the
Iran-Contra scandal, provided details about the affair, and told the
Herald that Hart was going to meet this person at his Washington, D.C., townhouse on May 1, a Friday. As a result, a team of
Herald reporters followed
Donna Rice on a flight from Miami to Washington, D.C., then staked out Hart's townhouse that evening and the following day, and observed a young woman and Hart together. The
Herald reporters confronted Hart on Saturday evening in an alley about his relationship with Rice. At some point, the reporters for the
Herald learned that
The New York Times was planning to feature the quote in their article on Sunday. When the two articles appeared on the same day, a political firestorm was ignited. Hart later noted that his "follow me around" comment was not "challenging the press with a taunt", but, made in frustration, was only intended to invite the media to observe his public behavior, and never intended to invite reporters to be "skulking around in the shadows" of his home. He did not think of it as a challenge,' Dionne would recall many years later. 'And at the time, I did not think of it as a challenge. The next day, Monday, the young woman was identified as
Donna Rice, and she gave a press conference also denying any sexual relationship with Hart. but his staff believed that voters were not as interested in the topic as the media was.
Time magazine had similar results: of those polled, 67% disapproved of the media writing about a candidate's sex life, and 60% stated that Hart's relationship with Rice was irrelevant to the presidency. When queried about the matter,
Mario Cuomo remarked that there were "skeletons in everybody's closet." On May 8, 1987, a week after the story broke, Hart suspended his campaign after
The Washington Post threatened to run a story about a woman Hart had dated while separated from his wife, and his wife and daughter became similar subjects of interest for tabloid journalists. At a press conference, Hart defiantly stated, "I said that I bend, but I don't break, and believe me, I'm not broken." Hart identified the invasive media coverage, and its need to "dissect" him, as his reason for suspending his campaign, "If someone's able to throw up a smokescreen and keep it up there long enough, you can't get your message across. You can't raise the money to finance a campaign; there's too much static, and you can't communicate. Clearly, under the present circumstances, this campaign cannot go on. I refuse to submit my family and my friends and innocent people and myself to further rumors and gossip. It's simply an intolerable situation." The unprecedented nature of the investigation and reporting on Hart's personal life was widely noted and reported at the time;
The New York Times also pointed to his odd ambivalence toward the presidency even before being caught by "the system": "Only half of me wants to be President. ... The other half wants to go write novels in Ireland. But the 50 percent that wants to be President is better than 100 percent of the others." His campaign chairwoman, Colorado congresswoman
Patricia Schroeder, jumped into the race following Hart's withdrawal, but soon after withdrew herself at an emotional press conference on September 28, 1987. In December 1987, Hart returned to the race, declaring on the steps of the New Hampshire Statehouse, "Let's let the people decide!" Hart said that the other candidates did not represent his new ideas of strategic investment economics, military reform and "enlightened engagement in foreign policy." but was soon confronted with more negative stories about prior debts from his 1984 campaign. He competed in the New Hampshire primary and received 4,888 votes, about four percent. After the Super Tuesday contests on March 8, in which he won no more than five percent of the vote, Hart withdrew from the campaign a second time. Eventual Democratic nominee
Michael Dukakis lost the
1988 United States presidential election by a substantial margin in both the popular and
electoral vote, by margins unequaled since, winning in only 10 of 50 states. A
Miami Herald editor who participated in the paper's initial Hart scandal stories disputed the possibility of a conspiracy theory involving
Lee Atwater as published in
The Atlantic, which described a reputed deathbed admission by Atwater that he had staged the incident with Donna Rice aboard the yacht
Monkey Business. Later career After his Senate service and presidential races, Hart resumed his law practice. He remained moderately active in public policy matters, serving on the bipartisan
US Commission on National Security/21st Century, also known as the Hart–Rudman Commission, commissioned on behalf of
Bill Clinton in 1998 to study U.S.
homeland security. The commission issued several findings calling for broad changes to security policy, but none were implemented until after the
September 11 attacks. He earned a
D.Phil. in politics from the
University of Oxford in 2001 with a dissertation entitled
The Restoration of the Republic; while at Oxford, he was a member of
St Antony's College. Hart gave a speech before the American international law firm
Coudert Brothers on September 4, 2001, exactly one week before the September 11 attacks, warning that within the next 25 years a terrorist attack would lead to mass deaths in the United States. Hart met with aviation executives in Montreal, Canada, on September 5, 2001, to warn of terrorist attacks. The
Montreal Gazette reported the story the following day with a headline, "Thousands Will Die, Ex-Presidential Hopeful Says." On September 6, 2001, Hart met with National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice to urge, "You must move more quickly on homeland security. An attack is going to happen." In a subsequent interview with
Salon.com, Hart accused President
George W. Bush and other administration officials of ignoring his warnings. He is a member of the
Council on Foreign Relations. Hart also sits on the advisory board of Operation USA, a Los Angeles-based international relief and development agency. It was announced in January 2006 that Hart will hold an endowed professorship at the
University of Colorado. He is the author of
James Monroe, part of the
Times Books series on American presidents published in October 2005. Hart is an Honorary Fellow of the Literary & Historical Society of
University College Dublin. He is an advisory board member for the
Partnership for a Secure America, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to recreating the bipartisan center in American national security and foreign policy. He is also a member of the ReFormers Caucus of
Issue One. In September 2007,
The Huffington Post published Hart's letter, "Unsolicited Advice to the Government of Iran", in which he stated that "Provocation is no longer required to take America to war" and warns
Iran that "for the next sixteen months or so, you should not only not take provocative actions, you should not seem to be doing so." He went on to suggest that the
Bush-
Cheney administration was waiting for an opportunity to attack
Iran, writing: "Don't give a certain vice president we know the justification he is seeking to attack your country." In an essay published in November 2007, Hart linked American
energy policy with national security. Hart wrote, "In fact, we do have an energy policy: It's to continue to import more than half our
oil and sacrifice American lives so we can drive our
Humvees. This is our current policy, and it is massively immoral." Hart currently sits on the board of directors for the Energy Literacy Advocates. He founded the American Security Project in 2007 and he started a new blog in 2009. Since retiring from the Senate, he has emerged as a consultant on
national security, and continues to speak on a wide range of issues, including the environment and
homeland security. In 2006, Hart accepted an endowed professorship at the
University of Colorado at Denver. He has been a visiting lecturer at Oxford University,
Yale University, and the
University of California. He is Chair of the
U.S. State Department's International Security Advisory Board, Chair of the
U.S. Defense Department's Threat Advisory Council, and Chair of the
American Security Project. He was vice-chair of the Advisory Council for the
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, Co-chair of the U.S.-Russia Commission, Chairman of the
Council for a Livable World, and President of
Global Green, the U.S. affiliate of Mikhail Gorbachev's environmental foundation. Most notably, he was co-chair of the U.S. Commission on National Security for the 21st Century, known as the
Hart-Rudman Commission, which predicted terrorist attacks on America before
9/11. Hart has written or co-authored numerous books and articles, including five novels.
U.S. Special Envoy for Northern Ireland In October 2014, President
Barack Obama and Secretary of State
John Kerry named Hart as the new
United States Special Envoy for Northern Ireland. Hart is the second former U.S. Senator to hold the post. The first was
George Mitchell, former seat-mate and former
Majority Leader of the United States Senate, who served from 1995 to 2001. In a statement, Kerry called Hart "a longtime friend" and said he was "a problem-solver, a brilliant analyst, and someone capable of thinking at once tactically, strategically, and practically." ==Publications==