Gary Hart presidential campaign 1984

In February 1983, during his second term, Hart announced his candidacy for president in the 1984 presidential election. At the time of his announcement, Hart was a little-known Senator and barely received above 1% in the polls against better-known candidates such as Walter Mondale, John Glenn, and Reverend Jesse Jackson. To counter this situation, Hart started campaigning early in New Hampshire, making a then-unprecedented canvassing tour in late September, months before the primary. This strategy attracted national media attention to his campaign, and by late 1983, he had risen moderately in the polls to the middle of the field, mostly at the expense of the sinking candidacies of Glenn and Alan Cranston. Mondale won the Iowa caucus in late January, but Hart polled a respectable 16%. Two weeks later, in the New Hampshire primary, he shocked much of the party establishment and the media by defeating Mondale by ten percentage points. Hart instantly became the main challenger to Mondale for the nomination, and appeared to have the momentum on his side.

Hart's campaign was disorganized and chronically in debt, to a final count of $5 million.Fact|date=January 2008 In states like Illinois where delegates were elected directly by primary voters, Hart often had incomplete delegate slates. Hart's "new ideas" were criticized as too vague and centrist by many Democrats. Shortly after he became the new front runner, it was revealed that Hart had changed his last name from Hartpence to Hart, 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, Lee, caused some to question Hart's "flake factor". Nonetheless, he and his wife have remained married for almost fifty years.

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 primaries, with Hart winning states in the West, Florida, and New England. Mondale fought back and began ridiculing what he claimed to be the emptiness of Hart's ideas. In the most famous television moment of the campaign, he ridiculed Hart's "new ideas" by quoting a line from a popular Wendy's television commercial at the time: "Where's the beef?". Mondale's remark was not effectively countered by Hart's campaign, and when Hart — who was seen by many voters as a fresh, honest alternative to typical politicians — ran stereotyped negative TV commercials against Mondale in the crucial Illinois primary, his campaign descended to the level of ordinary politics that Mondale represented, and Hart's appeal as a new kind of Democrat never quite entirely recovered. Once primaries in the delegate-rich states of New York and Pennsylvania arrived, Mondale's vast fund-raising superiority as the party-establishment candidate helped him overcome Hart's greater attractiveness as a fresher political face. Nevertheless Hart bounced back in states where there was a greater appetite for change, and he won primaries in Ohio and California. By the time the Democratic convention arrived, Mondale had a lead in total delegates (owing largely to the un-elected super delegates from the party establishment) that Hart was not quite able to overcome, and Mondale was nominated. But this race for the nomination was the closest in two generations, and most felt that when Mondale later was trounced in the election against Ronald Reagan, winning only his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia, that Hart and younger, more independent candidates like him represented the future of the party.