Washington Post

Reform Panel Votes Buchanan Off Ballot

Pat Buchanan was voted off the Reform Party's ballot Saturday by the party's executive committee, most of whom are supporters of founder Ross Perot.

By Thomas B. Edsall Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, July 30, 2000

PHILADELPHIA, July 29 The Reform Party's executive committee last night voted to disqualify the candidacy of Patrick J. Buchanan in a controversial and disputed decision virtually certain to turn the party's national convention in Long Beach, Calif., next month into a chaotic confrontation.

A spokesman for Buchanan immediately challenged the legitimacy of the executive committee meeting in Texas, charging that a quorum was not present and that the party chairman refused to attend the session at a hotel at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

"It was a bogus meeting with no authority," declared K.B. Forbes on behalf of the Buchanan campaign. Forbes dismissed the session as "a meeting of dissidents who couldn't even put together a quorum."

The decision to disqualify Buchanan was based on his submission of hundreds of thousands of requests for primary ballots. Forces loyal to former Reform Party candidate Ross Perot, many of whom back John Hagelin for the 2000 nomination as the only way to defeat Buchanan, contend that many, if not most, of the names submitted by Buchanan do not meet party rules and amount to stuffing of the ballot box.

Jim Mangia, the party's national secretary and a leader of the anti-Buchanan wing, charged that Buchanan is trying to "hijack the party and steal the nomination," which comes with $12.6 million in federal funds for the November campaign.

Brian Doherty, another Buchanan spokesman, called the charges against Buchanan "false and outrageous." He told the Associated Press before the vote that the Perot forces "are just doing everything they can to obstruct us or impede Buchanan's nomination. They can't defeat us legitimately, so they go about it trying to defeat us in other ways."

The conflict between the Buchanan campaign and the Perot wing of the party has reached such levels of hostility and distrust that it is unclear how the party convention that will begin on Aug. 10 in Long Beach could reach a decision between Buchanan and Hagelin that would not be viewed as illegal by
the losing camp. The two sides no longer agree on even the rules governing the nominating process.

Ballots have already been sent out to many, if not all, of the people whose names were submitted by Buchanan and to the 24,000 whose names were submitted by Hagelin, as well as to the individuals who separately requested ballots and all registered members of the Reform Party.

Mangia said he believes the accounting firm hired to tabulate the results will disregard all Buchanan ballots, effectively giving the nomination to Hagelin, but Mangia indicated that he was not entirely sure of the process.Buchanan backers have already forced the calling of a full Reform Party
National Committee meeting on Aug. 8 in Long Beach, at which they hope to have a majority of the 164-member group and to effectively take over all the party machinery, replacing the anti-Buchanan majority on the executive committee with Buchanan loyalists.

Mangia contended, however, that it takes two-thirds of the national committee to either overturn an executive committee decision or recall its members. He estimated that Buchanan has 70 to 80 national committee members, just under a majority, and nowhere near the two-thirds level.

Forbes contended that, in effect, there was no executive committee decision to disqualify Buchanan because, in his view, only five of the 10 executive committee members were there, short of a quorum, and the party chairman, Gerry Moan, did not attend. Two of those present at the hotel, he said, were
not members of the executive committee, and the person who orchestrated the meeting, Perot loyalist Russell Verney, had lost his position as a national committeeman during the Texas Reform Party convention.

Perot loyalists on the committee claimed that the recall drives against two committee members violated party rules and that the seven members constituted a quorum when they voted unanimously to disqualify Buchanan.