Takeover attempt / Alarmed Reform Party factions are joining to stop Buchanan

Sunday, June 25, 2000
BY GIL KLEIN
Media General News Service

WASHINGTON -- Factions of the Reform Party, alarmed at the direction Pat Buchanan is taking it, are joining to try to stop his candidacy at what could be a tumultuous convention in Long Beach, Calif., in August.

Some anti-Buchanan Reformers accuse the former Republican presidential candidate of strong-arm tactics in his bid to take over the party and warn of a "bloodbath" at Long Beach.

As Reform Party members begin mailing in their primary ballots July 5, the anti-Buchanan forces are rallying behind John Hagelin, the founder of the Natural Law Party.

"Don't underestimate Hagelin," said James Mangia, the Reform Party's national secretary who opposes Buchanan. "There's a tremendous growing opposition among the grass roots of the party against Buchanan." But Buchanan believes he can defeat Hagelin in the primary and have an overwhelming number of delegates at the convention to win the nomination.

At stake is $12.6 million in taxpayer money that will go to the winner's campaign, as well as the viability of the Reform Party founded by billionaire Ross Perot in 1992.

While Perot won 19 percent of the vote that year and 8 percent in 1996 to win a public subsidy for the Reform Party in this election, third parties have a hard time surviving a transition from their founding leaders. Buchanan, who ran in Republican primaries in 1992 and 1996, was invited into the party because of his name recognition and because he supported the party's tenets of opposing international trade agreements and reforming the campaign finance system.

But he has alienated some party members by ousting established party leaders and replacing them with his own people.

And he plans to issue a personal statement with the party's platform that states his personal conservative social positions opposing abortion and homosexuality.

"Pat will make no attempt to change the platform," his sister and campaign manager, Bay Buchanan, said. "He will ask his delegates to ratify it without change. But he would like to state his views on social issues so everyone is clear [that] as a candidate he feels strongly about this, whereas the party
does not have a position on these issues."

Yet some Reform Party leaders believe it was founded on libertarian social principles.

"If this bus is taking a radical turn to the right, there are a lot of us who will be leaving quickly," said Russ Verney, the party's first national chairman, after the Buchanan forces had outmaneuvered party regulars at the Texas state convention in Dallas.

Buchanan's campaign has little sympathy for Verney.

"Russ Verney invited Pat Buchanan into this party," said Buchanan spokesman Brian Dougherty. "And when he did, he knew very well that Pat Buchanan was socially conservative and that he is [against abortion]."

Buchanan's organizers realized "we could not ensure our nomination or election unless we had delegates who are pledged to us and committed to us," he said. "That meant we had to go into party after party in state after state and elect our people."

Last week Lenora Fulani, the liberal activist who had allied herself with Buchanan in an effort to make a right-center-left coalition, denounced him and withdrew from his campaign.

"I must and do object to your efforts to transform the party into a party of, and for, only social conservatives," she wrote Buchanan.

Hagelin believes he is the beneficiary of this discord. Even though he has little name recognition, he said he would unite "all those who are turned off by Pat Buchanan's message of exclusivity and intolerance" -- those who are part of his Natural Law Party movement as well as students, women,
minorities, gays and lesbians and environmentalists.

"It is the American people and not the Buchanan Brigade who will decide the Reform Party nomination," he said at a news conference last week. "I'm currently engaged in a massive direct-mail campaign to get out the vote, and I fully expect to win this plebiscite."

Hagelin, who was on the ballot in all 50 states in 1996 as head of the Natural Law Party, wants to merge his supporters with the Reform Party.

A quantum physicist, Hagelin looks for scientific solutions to problems, especially in promoting preventive health care, stopping criminal behavior, improving education and protecting the environment.

Selection of the Reform Party candidate is a complicated process. State parties have been holding conventions to select delegates to the Long Beach convention. But they are committed to nominating whoever wins the mail-in primary unless two-thirds of them vote to override it.

About a million ballots have been mailed out to Reform Party members as well as to anyone who has ever signed a party petition. Ballots can be mailed back until Aug. 4.

Buchanan has been organizing delegates at the state conventions, but if Hagelin wins the primary, the convention could turn into a brawl.

"Believe me, it's going to be a bloodbath at that convention," Mangia said. "The Buchanan forces run around like brown-shirt bullies."

Anti-Buchanan forces have wrested control of the credentials committee from pro-Buchanan people, making Verney the chairman. "The credentials fight could take days," Mangia said. "It could stop Buchanan from ever getting on national television. They want to play hardball, we'll play hardball."

Bay Buchanan said Mangia has engaged in questionable tactics himself. "If he wants to talk about brown-shirt tactics, he should look at his own wardrobe," she said.

Buchanan has been welcomed into the party by most of its members, she said.

"We're talking about a few disgruntled individuals who were not able to get their own candidate off the ground," she said. "They are desperate without a horse trying to win a race."