[1] Hart was born in Ottawa, Kansas, the son of Nina (née Pritchard) and Carl Riley Hartpence, a farm equipment salesman.

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.

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.

Buchanan hit Hart hard for supporting the Panama Canal Treaties and for backing then-President Jimmy Carter in 80% of his Senate votes.

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.

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.

"[19] 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.

[19] Following his reelection, Hart received an age waiver from Hidalgo and was commissioned as a lieutenant (junior grade) in the Judge Advocate General's Corps on December 4, 1980.

"[18] Although Hart sought to be commissioned in the grades of lieutenant commander or commander (in keeping with contemporaries in Congress who had served in World War II and the Korean War), Navy Judge Advocate General John S. Jenkins advised Hidalgo to commission Hart at the lower rank because he "didn't bring to the program anything that was so unusual that we could recommend appointment at a higher grade.

"[19] Following ten days of active duty with the United States Sixth Fleet in August 1981, Hart was promoted to lieutenant on January 1, 1982.

[19] Pundits such as Rowland Evans and Robert Novak suggested that Hart's appointment was a cynical political maneuver designed to "clear the biographical decks" for the 1984 presidential election in an era when military service was perceived as a tacit prerequisite for the presidency.

[21] 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.

Although he had cultivated longstanding friendships with prominent actors and journalists (including Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Penny Marshall and Hunter S. Thompson) as a byproduct of his work on the McGovern campaign, Hart was little known to the general electorate and barely received above 1 percent in the polls in a competitive field that encompassed such recognizable candidates as former Vice President Walter Mondale, Project Mercury astronaut John Glenn, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, and even his old boss, former Senator George McGovern.

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.

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.

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.

In his address to the convention, after his name was placed in nomination for president by Nebraska governor Bob Kerrey and he received a 15-minute standing ovation, Hart concluded, "Our party and our country will continue to hear from us.

"[42] 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: "Gary: 'I'm No Womanizer.

[51] 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.

"[52] The scandal spread rapidly through the national media, as did another damaging story about angry creditors of the $1.3 million debt Hart had incurred in his 1984 campaign.

[54] 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.

"[57][58] 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.

"[52] 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.

"[63] He initially rose to the top of the polls nationally, and second behind Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis in New Hampshire,[64] but was soon confronted with more negative stories about prior debts from his 1984 campaign.

[71] In late 2002, urged by former Oxford classmates, Hart began testing the waters for another run for the presidency, launching a website at GaryHartNews.com and a related speaking tour to gauge reactions from the public.

According to an October 23, 2004 National Journal article and later reports in The Washington Post, Hart was mentioned as a probable Cabinet appointment if Kerry won the presidency.

[78] 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.

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.

"[82] In January 2000, Hart revealed that he is the political thriller writer John Blackthorn, whose books include Sins of the Fathers and I, Che Guevara.