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At 3 a.m. Mondale Campaign Coordinator Tom Donilon was awakened by one of the staffs delegate counters. The news from California was dismaying. Hart was headed for a remarkable victory in the state. In the end Hart won 32 of California's 45 congressional districts, Mondale only nine, Jackson four. That translated into a nearly 3-to-l Hart victory over Mondale in delegates: 205 to 72 (Jackson got 29). Donilon relayed the discouraging report to Campaign Chairman James Johnson and Adviser John Reilly. The acute problem was to avoid the debacle of Mondale having to confess at his 1 1:59 a.m. press conference that despite his boastful prediction, he did not have the needed 1,967 delegates after all.
At 7:30 a.m. aides began contacting uncommitted delegates, mostly elected Democratic officials and regional party leaders, to ask them to stand by for a call from Mondale. The candidate, refreshed and unshaken by the reports from California, turned on his powers of persuasion. He made some 50 telephone calls, reaching such party luminaries as Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg and Alabama Governor George Wallace. The unstated threat: Mondale was certain to win, and late arrivals on the bandwagon were less likely to be remembered favorably by the candidate. About 40 recipients of the Mondale message took it seriously enough to join him.
That, by the reckoning of Mondale's aides, put their boss over the top. He had gone into the final day of primaries just 225 short of a convention delegate majority. He had picked up a respectable 201 delegates on the with sey's wipeout of Hart partly offsetting the California defeat. The time difference from the Pacific Coast had blunted the impact of California. Most TV viewers had gone to bed, like Mondale, with the expectation that the nomination fight was over. In much of the U.S., the next day's morning newspapers conveyed the same impression. Mondale was determined to keep that idea alive.
As reporters, cameramen and his aides counted off the seconds ("nine, eight, seven"), Mondale strode to the microphones in the Radisson Plaza at 11:59 a.m. on the dot and declared, "Today, I am pleased to claim victory I am the nominee. I've got the votes." He cited a precise number of delegates behind him: 2,008. Mondale pledged to work for "a unified convention," saying that he would make personal appeals to both Hart and Jackson to join him in that effort. He conceded under questioning that the friction among the candidates had been great, but he tried to down-play it. "Our Democratic Party is a family," he said, "and as families sometimes do, we squabble. But our bonds are stronger than our battles."
Most independent counters agreed that Mondale had achieved a majority. The U.P.I, tally, generally considered the most reliable, placed Mondale's strength on Wednesday at 1,969, two delegates more than needed. Hart had 1,212 and Jackson 367. By U.P.I.'s count, Mondale at week's end had gained six more delegates. An additional 379 were still to be chosen, were uncommitted, or had been pledged to candidates no longer in the race. The presumed inevitability of a Mondale nomination seemed likely to solidify and enlarge his support by the start of the Democratic Convention in San Francisco on July 16.