Former Colorado senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart said that the amount of money required to run a modern presidential campaign should frighten Americans. Gary Hart: Billion-dollar Clinton campaign should 'frighten' Americans The two-time Democratic presidential candidate is alarmed by current ‘dynastic’ politics.

Gary Hart has serious reservations about a Hillary Clinton candidacy.

The prospect of a billion-dollar Clinton campaign “ought to frighten every American,” he said in an interview with POLITICO, and Democrats would be better served by a competitive primary that forced her to speak in more depth about the issues.


Hart, a two-time Democratic presidential candidate, offered his opinions in a phone interview Wednesday where he also expressed admiration of Elizabeth Warren and gave advice to prospective challenger Martin O’Malley, a former Hart campaign staffer.

“I like Hillary Clinton. I really appreciate what she and her husband have done … but we need new leaders,” said Hart, a former Colorado senator who rose from the bottom of the polls and nearly took down Walter Mondale in the 1984 primaries.

The post-Citizens United campaign finance environment has sullied the presidential process, he said, benefiting establishment politicians who cater to financial backers. He pointed to his own experience, noting that he and his wife mortgaged their home for between $50,000 and $75,000 — an amount that made a significant difference in his first campaign in 1984.

“I’m now told the Clinton campaign intends to raise $1 billion. Now, that ought to frighten every American,” he said.

The role of money in elections, the 78-year-old Hart said, is a driving force behind the current “dynastic” nature of American politics.

“If you’ve got to have a billion dollars to run for president, how many people can do that? Only the Clintons and the Bushes and one or two others,” he said.

“This country is 330 million people, and we should not be down to two families who are qualified to govern. … When you create dynastic networks, you shut a lot of people out,” he added.

Hart, who finished second to Mondale in the 1984 Democratic primary, said he has no doubt Clinton will get a primary challenger. And he argued that the challenger — whether it’s O’Malley or anyone else — should force Clinton to clarify her stance on key issues, something he says would be “therapy” for the party.

“The job of a challenger is to force specificity: Here is my plan, now let’s see her plan,” he said. Asked whether Clinton has not been adequately specific — he used the words “specific” or “specificity” 10 times in a half-hour interview — the former senator said she hasn’t been “pressed.”

His advice to prospective challengers to Clinton, like O’Malley? Be specific on policy, play up the generational divide and aggressively court small-money Internet donors.

Time and again, Hart spoke to the notion of 50 percent — the rough number of Democrats he says are not yet supporting Clinton for president. “If the polls say she has 50, there are 50 that she doesn’t have. … Why isn’t she at 95 [percent]?”

Long before serving two terms as governor of Maryland, O’Malley got his start in politics by working on Hart’s long-shot 1984 campaign while he was still in college. (Hart has recounted buying O’Malley his first legal beer on the latter’s 21st birthday.)

The two exchange emails and phone calls from time to time, Hart said, and O’Malley, 52, occasionally asks him for advice on speeches. They haven’t spoken on the phone in three or four weeks, according to Hart, who laughed off a recent New York Post Page Six report alleging that he is a shadow manager for O’Malley’s prospective presidential campaign. The former governor has a nascent campaign staff in place and is openly considering a bid.

Hart said there’s a parallel between O’Malley’s situation and his in 1984, when he took on a former vice president and overwhelming establishment favorite in Mondale. Hart, who barely registered a blip on the polls in Iowa at the outset, pressed a generational contrast with the man eight years older than him. He won the New Hampshire primary and nearly defeated Mondale in part by galvanizing younger voters.

Hart anticipates that O’Malley — who can point to a progressive record and is more comfortable with retail politics than Clinton — will use similar themes against the front-runner more than 15 years his senior. “I think he’ll draw a generational distinction, just because it’s obvious. I think he will pursue this search-for-new-leadership theme,” Hart said.

To that effect, he pointed to Barack Obama — who harnessed energy from the liberal base in 2008 and became competitive through his online fundraising — as a potential model. “So, could a Martin O’Malley do that? Possibly. If he develops an identity and a persona that a number of those searching 50 percent can identify with,” Hart said, arguing that Obama “had a depth of feeling, understanding and thoughtfulness that very few political leaders had.”

While O’Malley won’t be able to compete dollar-for-dollar with Clinton, according to Hart the former governor could remain competitive if he earns enough small-donor online contributions to compete in early states and gain momentum.

Hart said he has not communicated with any potential Democratic hopefuls other than O’Malley, but he offered strong praise for Warren, a progressive favorite who has captured the imagination of the left.

“I think it would be interesting in that she is very courageous, not just on the financial industry,” Hart said of a possible run by the Massachusetts senator, noting that he takes her at her word that she isn’t going to jump into the race. “There is an obvious integrity to her that is very, very appealing. By the way she speaks and what she says and how she says it, you believe this is a fiercely independent political figure who is saying a lot of things that people want to hear about how the game is fixed and rigged for the powerful.”

Hart isn’t sure yet whether O’Malley can step into that role as a grass-roots liberal alternative to Clinton. “I think he’s got to establish that through his speeches and his behavior,” he said.

Hart’s candidacy for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination derailed in 1987 after the Miami Herald reported on an extramarital affair.

On the Republican side for 2016, Hart suggested that nearly all the potential candidates are not qualified for the presidency. The only potential hopeful who wants to bring the GOP back to a more inclusive, mainstream party of the 1980s, he said, is former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — “but here we go with the dynasties again.”

Hart is similarly unimpressed with the Senate, which he says is “degrees lower in quality, person to person” than when he served two terms in the 1970s and 1980s. He pointed to a “sadness” in the country, of a leadership gap created by politicians who “demean themselves to beg for money” from an establishment donor class and a political media that feeds it.

“We’re narrowing it to fewer and fewer people,” Hart said, lamenting the current political environment. “And they’re smaller people. Where are the Roosevelts? Where are the Harry Trumans, for heaven’s sake?”

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