These are long, frustrating days in the grubby offices on 8th St. SE that have served as the presidential campaign headquarters of Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.) for 11 months.
Word hasn't reached there that the war for the Democratic presidential nomination is over. Hart's young staff is still quietly fighting. The phones, the copying machine and the postage meter are going at a full clip.
"We're waiting for lightning to strike," Allison Burroughs, 23, said in the "boiler room" near the rear of the crowded second floor headquarters. A faded "Mondale Gives In" newspaper headline is pasted on a television atop her makeshift desk.
"We're not idiots. We can count, and things obviously don't look good for Gary," Rick Ridder, Hart's thin, sandy-haired field director, said in his office next door. "But something may happen. It's not over until it's over."
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A color-coded floor plan of the Democratic National Convention sat nearby. It breaks the floor into eight regions and shows the location of Hart's 30 floor phones for 30 seasoned Hart political operatives.
What could happen to shift the tides to Hart, who trails Walter F. Mondale by about 850 delegates, is unclear, but with the convention two weeks away, Hart's staff is propelled by the hope of catastrophe befalling Mondale.
Every week the staffers spot signs that they contend others missed or underestimated.
When a Louis Harris poll several weeks ago reported that Hart would run stronger than Mondale against President Reagan, a letter went out to delegates.
When a George Gallup poll reported a similar finding last weekend, an updated letter was drafted.
When the League of United Latin American Citizens called on Hispanic delegates to abstain from voting for Mondale on the first ballot as a protest against his lack of active opposition to the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration bill, another wave of hope swept through Hart headquarters.
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When Regardie's, a Washington business magazine, reported that the political action committee Mondale set up to explore his presidential bid had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in unreported contributions, one Hart aide said, "This may be the smoking gun we've been waiting for."
The article, like the Harris and Gallup polls, caused only a minor stir, however.
The "boiler room," a small, cluttered room with an "authorized personnel only" sign on the door, is the heart of Hart's pre-convention operation. Burroughs and her co-workers are there seven days a week, from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., quietly telephoning uncommitted and Hart delegates.
Each is responsible for 406 to 542 delegates and brings his or her personality to the task. Jonathan Miller, at 27 the oldest in the group, is known for "screaming and yelling," Burroughs said. Alan Khazei is methodical and persistent. Janet Allem is known as the "sweet talker."
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The group likes to think of itself as a "guerrilla operation" on a "search-and-destroy mission" hunting for delegates.
Actually, the mission is more of a holding operation. The campaign is determined to hold onto Hart delegates and has not lost any since the last Democratic primaries, which were on June 5. The hope is that if Mondale somehow fails to win the nomination on the first ballot, the convention will turn to Hart in the belief that he is more electable.
It is tiring, unglamorous work. At times the boiler room crowd has complained that Hart has been "too dovish" in his pursuit of the nomination in recent weeks.
On June 25, for example, the boiler room sent Hart a tough memo, criticizing him for missing opportunities to pick up delegates by failing to telephone people like Kentucky Gov. Martha Layne Collins and Chicago Mayor Harold Washington, both of whom headed uncommitted slates.
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"Unless otherwise directed to do so, we are not prepared to slow down and simply go through the motions of a delegate-persuasion effort.
"This campaign has been too unpredictable to rule out the possibility of Mondale's failing to achieve a first-ballot victory," the memo concluded.
"We will continue to work with the same energy and dedication that we did during the primary season . . . in the meantime we urge that you continue to work to make those possibilities possible."
Hart's resolve has been hard to gauge in recent weeks. He has been alternately reclusive, conciliatory and combative while insisting that he will not be a "spoiler."
Hart has looked like a candidate inwardly torn, not knowing whether to quit or keep going.
He acknowledges that he has difficulty knowing how to proceed. "It's been a strange period," he said in an interview. "There've been no primaries. You can't go out and have a lot of rallies . . . so what we're trying to do is get a lot of positive speeches and keep in touch with delegates."
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In doing so, Hart has given conflicting signals, sometimes on the same day.
On June 26, for example, he emerged from an early morning meeting with Mondale in New York sounding very much like someone who is trying to position himself for a bid for the vice presidency.
Seven hours later he was in Concord, N.H., sounding different. He took off his suit jacket, rolled up his sleeves and -- like someone determined to slug it out to the end -- said, "I do not quit."
