Hart Picks Family Life Over Life as a Candidate : Politics: Citing ‘the prospect of being an absent father,’ the state senator dropped out of the race for state schools chief and will not seek reelection.

SACRAMENTO —  As the year opened, state Sen. Gary K. Hart began to mount what promised to be a vigorous campaign to capture one of the state’s highest offices.

Known in the Capitol as “Mr. Education,” the Santa Barbara Democrat was one of the early favorites to succeed Bill Honig as state schools chief.

To raise his name recognition outside his Santa Barbara-Ventura district, Hart did all the right things: made appearances in vote-rich Los Angeles, spoke to large audiences, raised campaign funds and enlisted support among business executives and Hollywood luminaries.

But as the pace picked up, Hart, who will turn 50 in August, found himself in airports almost as much as at home with his wife and three daughters, and doubts started to creep into his thoughts.

They were fueled, in part, by the death from cancer and heart failure several months ago of Hart’s father. As an only child, the senator needed to arrange for his aged mother to move to Sacramento.

Then, in early April, he took a few days off the campaign trail to accompany daughter Elissa, 16, a high school junior, on a tour of prospective colleges around New York and Philadelphia. Returning to his capital home after enjoying the time with his eldest child, Hart found himself wrestling with a choice familiar to other ambitious working parents: how best to juggle the demands of career and family.

Hart said he confided his growing reservations about the rigors of the campaign to two others: his wife, Cary, a pediatrician he met in 1968 in the snows of New Hampshire when both were volunteers in the “children’s crusade” of presidential hopeful Eugene J. McCarthy, and William Whiteneck, a longtime Capitol aide and friend.

Whiteneck said that Hart struggled with the question for months.

“I watched him being tugged and pulled,” said Whiteneck, noting that sometimes Hart had to weigh whether to attend a political fund-raiser or go to volleyball games or plays to watch his daughters. His other daughters are 13 and 10.

Hart said he reached his decision through “an evolutionary process” after the college trip, a holiday he hoped would “recharge the batteries somewhat . . . and diminish some of the emotional regrets about not seeing her (Elissa) more.”

Instead, it caused him to pause and consider that as the 1994 campaign is reaching a crescendo, Elissa will be graduating from high school and heading for college.

“Between now and then is very limited and then she’d be away at college,” Hart said. So if he remained a candidate, the trip would have been a “kind of a last hurrah” before his daughter left home.

In the end, Hart dropped out of the race, choosing fatherhood over politics, and his children over the 5 million children in the state’s public schools.

In making the April 19 announcement that he would not run for Honig’s job, Hart said that as he laid the groundwork for a full-blown campaign, “the amount of time away from my family has been enormous and the prospect of being an absent father over the next 1 1/2 years with three school-age children is just too high a price to pay.”

Hart also said he would not seek reelection to the Senate, noting that the district has been redrawn to cover new, more conservative areas in San Luis Obispo County and that a reelection fight probably would be expensive and keep him away from his family almost as much as a statewide campaign.

Hart, a fixture in Central Coast politics for two decades, will remain in the Senate until his term ends in 18 months. He has not said what he will do after he leaves office.

His career began when Hart was in his 20s and ran unsuccessfully for a seat in Congress. He lost the race but four years later won a seat in the Assembly, stepping up to the Senate in 1982. Six years later, he lost another congressional contest.

Still, with a telegenic earnestness, the rangy, 6-foot, 4-inch Hart had long been considered a potential statewide candidate, especially because he has consistently won legislative races in heavily Republican areas. Although he twice flirted with statewide races, he backed away.

Former Rep. Mel Levine (D-Los Angeles), who in 1992 lost a bitter U.S. Senate primary, said he respects his friend’s decision, citing the overwhelming amount of time during his campaign that he spent drumming up donations.

“The process of devoting close to every moment in every day to get the visibility to run statewide . . . would cause any halfway sane individual” to question whether the prize is worth it, said Levine, adding that as a defeated candidate he has more time for such things as coaching Little League games.

Hart acknowledged his ambivalence about raising the minimum $2 million needed to capture Honig’s job. “You’ve got to really enjoy it and sometimes I did and sometimes I didn’t,” he said.

In contrast, Hart relished pursuing education policy issues, making a name for himself on a 1983 package of reform bills and a 1992 law that allows parents, teachers and others to create charter schools that operate free of most state and local controls.

Underscoring his interest in policy, Hart, a former teacher, found a way to get a firsthand look at education issues last fall by spending the semester teaching two U.S. history courses at a Sacramento high school.

Unlike most of his legislative colleagues with children from Southern California districts, Hart some years ago moved his family to the capital so he could share their day-to-day lives. In contrast, most Southern California lawmakers stay in Sacramento for the legislative week, Monday morning to Thursday noon, and then fly home.

Hart shrugs off questions about whether he spends more time with his children than other politicians, saying he is “not that great a father.” Hart said his wife devotes far more time on routine chores of helping with homework and picking up clothes.

Still, he said without a hint of regret in his voice, he values his family time so much that “I’d like to enjoy it more.”