marriage. and i don't intend to stress my wife out. >> senator, can you please tell us -- [ overlapping speakers ] >> you are campaign this week -- you are cutting -- your aides say you wanted to spend more time together with your wife. is that a factor or what? >> that will be a result of. that obviously i wanted that. >> senator can you tell us specifically when in the course of this campaign you have seen donna rice? and tell us exactly when, and all the times. >> all very repetitious. i met miss rice at a party of 40 or 50 people or more and asked her, i think new year's day or the next day. i did not remember her name. subsequently, and not any time before, i went aboard the boat after a fund-raising event in miami with mr. broadhurst and

mr. broadhurst alone. there was no -- there were no invitations for anyone to join us. there was no plan for anyone to join us. i was there for a day and a half or two to relax. about 11:30 that night, a group of about a dozen or 15 people showed up at the boat. then having dinner the man who came on board the boat knew the owner and said i want to show my friends this boat can we come aboard. we said of course. the crew took them aboard. they circulated on the boat. we talked to a few of them, said hello, how are you. talked about miami or anything else. i don't know. miss rice came up, introduced herself, said we met -- you won't recall this but we met at mr. henley's party in aspen. you were with your wife, i was helping serve the meal. i generally remembered that.

we talked 15 minutes. i talked 30 or 40 minutes to other people in that party, men and women. i went up above and down below. her conversation and mine took place in a space no bigger than that and could not have been more than ten minutes. she said i've never been involved with a campaign, i'd like to, maybe i can help with entertainers, how do you do that. i said leave her name, i can tell you i did not remember her last name. she wrote down her name and address and number. and left it on the boat. then came the ibmany trip. then the only other time i saw her was this weekend in washington. that's it. >> did you ever have intimate relationships with donna rice while you were separated or not. >> no. >> senator, you are indicating that you made a mistake. has your -- apart from the allegations of sexual impropridy

has your image suffered in another way in that you will be perceived as someone who attends don henley parties and goes on vacations on expensive yachts. and is more of a jet-setter than you would like. >> i think i had on jeans at don henley's house, as others did. there were all kinds of people there. i have known people in the entertainment industry for many years. people in colorado knew that. some of those people campaigned for me in 1980. that's no secret. people know who i am. >> senator you indicated that you made a mistake in judgment in permitting these appearances of improprietiy. you have been in politics for a long time. you have run for president before. even accepting your version of events, some people in politics have suggested that this suggests sort of a recklessness on your part, flirting with danger, if you will. can you address that issue?

>> i once said i love dang he. i don't love it that much. no. i just didn't use good judgment that's all. i used very poor judgment. >> senator -- >> i shouldn't have done it. if i were up to anything that i shouldn't have been, i sure wouldn't have done it that way. >> senator -- can you senator just describe how you perceive your relationship with miss rice, what kind of a friendship or what -- >> friendship. she's intelligent. attractive, obviously. but we don't -- you don't form that kind of relationship that's being suggested here in that space of time. >> senator the washington times reported that a passenger on the plane that miss rice flew on had

seen an inscription in a book that said something in lieu of flowers, until we meet, love gary. did you make that inscription. >> i don't think i made that inscription. i probably made one that i shouldn't have. it didn't reflect on any intimacy. i suppose i sign or distribute dozens of one book or another that i've written over a period of time, and probably in the space of a week or two, maybe in the hundreds. i cannot -- i frankly will tell you cannot recall what i said in there. but i might have said something like that, but i couldn't verify. >> senator hart, how is your fund-raising going? will this affect it adversely. >> we obviously -- as i said, two tests we've had of that, one in new york last night, which is a difficult time to raise money in. i've been trying over the years. we exceeded both anticipation and the revenue we targeted. to my knowledge, there were --

no one dropped out of. that i think some of you may have been there, and i think you can verify the atmosphere in the room. i thought it was quite warm. i didn't run into anyone there who said you have got serious problems on your hands or this is my last act ever support. in fact it was quite the opposite. the personal response that i got ahead of time was very, very positive. our -- in routine, obviously intensified over the last two or three days. our campaign has been in contact with our key financial supporters, and even they obviously -- well not obviously -- have been under siege from other candidates trying to pick me off. to my knowledge, and i don't want to be categorical here because i can't be, no one has acknowledged there interest in leaving. >> some people think your relationship and dealings with miss rice indicate a certain

willingness to take risks considering the situation you were in. >> that's what we were talking about. >> others ask if you are willing to take these kinds of risks when you are the frn in a campaign for president what kind of risk taking would you be engaging in as president? >> as i said earlier, i think in response to mr. shogun's question or someone over here, we were talking about the issue of judgment and character. my position is -- and i feel very strongly about it, that character and judgment, among other quality of leadership, determination, will, commitment, and the rest, competent tent are tested over time and are tested in a variety of ways. i would submitted -- and i think a fair assessment of my character and judgment and leadership ability would have to include my entire public life, and indeed as it has my entire personal life before that public life. and i'm perfectly willing to

submit that entire life to scrutiny. other people in public life have made mistakes. some of them have been a lot worse than mine. some of them have gone on to become presidents, some of them have become very good presidents. some of them hundreds of years after they have been brilliant presidents are still scrutinized in their personal lives. i've learned a lot in the last few days. i've already suggested that the major lesson is even innocently, you can't do something that's going to give anybody the impression of something that's not innocent. but i also learned that there is a terrible terrible price to pay for being in public life these days. >> we have time for two more questions. two more questions. go, kevin. >> people in the american public looking at your relationship with this woman, knowing that you had thrown down gauntlet as it were to the press corps

saying follow me, that was a risk. would you say it was risky what you did? >> i didn't think so, of it at the time in terms of as i say, going to din e inviting these people into my house to see it and me going out that afternoon having worked all morning on the speech that i gave yesterday. any of those individual actions is risky. looking back on it now, if someone had said ahead of time, if you did this, if you did this, if you did this, and if you did this, could that be interpreted this way? obviously. but i was tired. i didn't think about it that way. i was not calculating anything. i just did what seemed to come naturally because it was innocent. >> senator, when we had the conversation on the plane where you said follow me, i have two questions. one, there was a young woman on the plane who is described as a friend of mr. broadhurst. was that donna rice. >> what plane were we on? >> the plane from austin to

denver. >> no. there was not donna rice. >> where do you rank adultery on the list of acts by which you judge a politician or a president. ? >> i'd like to follow up on julia's question, how are you to persuade us or anyone who has looked at this story given that you did sign a book with this woman, did you go on a cruise with her, you spent relaxed casual time with her in washington -- how can you convince us or anyone that your story is true? what can you tell us. >> i can tell you the facts and leave it up to you and the public to believe them. if you don't believe me, there is nothing i can do. i have told you the facts, mr. broadhurst told you the facts, ms. rice has told you the facts. that's the best we can do. next on road to the white house rewind, democratic candidate gary hart withdraws from the 1988 presidential race less than a month after his

campaign began. the former colorado senator facedle gagss of a extramarital affair with a miami woman named donna rice. in this ten minute event in denver, the former colorado senator continued to deny the affair saying he was quitting the race to spare his family and friends from quote further rumors and gossip. michael dukakis won the 1988 democratic nomination but lost to george h.w. bush in the general election. >> thank you very much. [ applause ] apologize fore being late. there was a little traffic coming down bear creek canyon this morning. i intended, quite frankly, to come down here this morning and read a short carefully worded political statement saying that i was withdrawing from the race, and then quietly disappear from the stage. and then after frankly tossing and turning all night, as i