Gary Hart - 1988 Presidential Campaign and The Donna Rice Affair

1988 Presidential Campaign and The Donna Rice Affair

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. In January 1987, he was the clear frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in the 1988 election.

Hart officially declared his candidacy on April 13, 1987. Rumors began circulating nearly immediately that Hart was having an extramarital affair. In an interview that appeared in the New York Times on May 3, 1987, Hart responded to the rumors by daring the press corps: "Follow me around. I don't care. I'm serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They'll be very bored." The Miami Herald had been investigating Hart's alleged womanizing for weeks before the "dare" appeared in the New York Times. Two reporters from the Miami Herald had staked out his residence and observed a young woman leaving Hart's Washington, D.C., townhouse on the evening of May 2. The Herald published the story on May 3, the same day Hart's dare appeared in print, and the scandal spread rapidly through the national media. Hart and his allies attacked the Herald for rushing the story into print, claiming that it had unfairly judged the situation without finding out the facts. Hart said that the reporters had not watched both entrances to his home and could not have seen when the young woman entered and left the building. The Miami Herald reporter had flown to Washington, D.C. on the same flight as the woman, identified as 29-year-old model Donna Rice. Hart was overwhelmed with questions regarding his views on marital infidelity. His wife, Lee, supported his position that the relationship with the young woman was innocent. A poll of voters in New Hampshire for the New Hampshire primary showed that Hart's support had dropped in half, from 32% to 17%, placing him suddenly ten points behind Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis.

On May 5, the Herald received a further tip that Hart had spent a night in Bimini on a yacht called the Monkey Business with a woman who was not his wife. The Herald obtained a photograph of Hart sitting on a dock wearing a Monkey Business T-shirt, with Rice sitting on his lap. The photograph did not appear in print until it was published on the cover of the National Enquirer on June 2, 1987. On May 8, 1987, a week after the story broke, Hart dropped out of the race. At a press conference, he lashed out at the media, saying "I said that I bend, but I don't break, and believe me, I'm not broken." A Gallup Poll found that nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of the U.S. respondents it surveyed thought the media treatment of Hart was "unfair." A little over half (53 percent) responded that marital infidelity had little to do with a president's ability to govern.

Not everyone was impressed with Hart's diatribe against the press. Television writer Paul Slansky noted that Hart had tried to deflect blame for his downfall from himself to the media, and that he offered no apology to betrayed supporters who now suddenly had to find other candidates to back. To many observers, the press conference was redolent of Richard Nixon's "Last Press Conference" of November 7, 1962, in which Nixon blamed the media for his loss in the 1962 California gubernatorial election. Hart, in fact, received a letter from Nixon himself commending him for "handling a very difficult situation uncommonly well".

Having withdrawn from the presidential race, Hart left for Ireland to spend time away from the media with his son. He rented a cottage in Oughterard, though remained in contact with key members of his team. What news did filter out was that he was not excluding a return to the race. The New York Times also pointed to his odd ambivalence towards 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."

Former National Security Council member Roger Morris suggests in his book Partners in Power, the Clintons and Their America that the alleged Hart-Rice sex scandal was really an intelligence operation to deny Hart the presidency. CIA agent Chip Tatum claims to have been tasked with "neutralizing" Hart. Hart's biggest offense, according to Morris, was his advocacy of "further investigation and exposure of the alliance between the mob and the US intelligence community." The Miami Herald's account of how it researched and produced the Gary Hart-Donna Rice story was said to be closely examined by investigative reporters from the national media after allegations were made that the story may have been initiated by conspirators to eliminate Hart as a viable candidate. Since then, no story has ever been published by the national media challenging The Herald's account of how one of Ms Rice's own girl friends called the paper with the original tip that Rice was planning to meet with Hart at his home in Washington. According to The Herald, after the original tip, no one outside The Herald's reporting team influenced the surveillance and reporting that produced the story.

In December 1987, Hart returned to the race, declaring "Let's let the people decide!" He competed in the New Hampshire primary and received 4,888 votes, approximately four percent. After the Super Tuesday contests on March 8, he withdrew from the campaign a second time.