WASHINGTON POST

Clash Over Procedure Escalates Struggle for Reform Party Control

By Thomas B. Edsall, Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 31, 2000

Marilyn Tighe sent out a quotation from deceased dictator Joseph Stalin on the Buchanan Brigade e-mail system yesterday as a warning to fellow supporters of Patrick J. Buchanan: "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."

Maybe things were that simple in the Soviet Union, but they aren't in the Reform Party.

The struggle to turn the once secular and socially liberal party into an anti-gay, antiabortion institution of the hard right--with the winner getting $12.6 million in federal subsidies--has escalated far beyond traditional political competition.

An angry Buchanan yesterday declared that an attempt by the Reform Party's executive committee to disqualify his candidacy amounts to an attempt to "steal this nomination from us."

The two factions in the Reform Party--Buchanan's right-wing populists and the besieged and leaderless Ross Perot loyalists--have no common ground. The ideological gulf between them has translated into a profound dispute over the rules of engagement, making agreement on who will do the counting to
determine the party's 2000 nominee virtually impossible.

The Reform Party "is dysfunctional at this point," said interim party chair Gerald Moan. Moan said he is beefing up security for the Aug. 8 meeting of the party's national committee and for the Aug. 10-13 national convention in Long Beach, Calif.

"We will be prepared for every eventuality in terms of physical threats," Moan said. "I'm going to have ample security in the room to make sure physical confrontations don't take place."

Jim Mangia, the party's national secretary and a leader in the fight to prevent Buchanan from winning the nomination, said he has received a number of "death threats," including a message on his voice mail last night saying, "You miserable piece of . . . . I'm going to get you, don't worry, I'm going
to get you in Long Beach."

Former party chair Russ Verney, who is helping orchestrate the anti-Buchanan drive, said: "If you liked the video of Nashville, you are going to want the film from Long Beach," referring to an earlier national committee meeting in Nashville that police threatened to halt because of the danger of violence.

The increasingly hostile struggle for power between the Buchanan forces and the Perot loyalists who are supporting John Hagelin for the nomination moved past the point of negotiable resolution at a rump meeting Saturday night of some members of the party's executive committee in Dallas.

At this session, which the Buchanan campaign adamantly claims was illegal, the committee took the extraordinary action of voting to disqualify Buchanan as a candidate for the nomination and to order that ballots cast for him in the mail-in voting now taking place not be counted.

The committee members charged that Buchanan's lists of hundreds of thousands of names to receive Reform ballots were made up of people who did not qualify to vote.

The Buchanan campaign, with the support of chairman Moan, contends that the executive committee could take no action because two of the seven members voting against Buchanan had been recalled from their posts.

In a political party where e-mail is a preferred form of communication, the executive committee action produced an explosion of activity on the Internet.

"Just who . . . is Russ Verney to be speaking about the 'future of the Reform Party'?" asked Buchanan supporter Lynn Johnson. "There will be an uproar when they're thrown out."

The ideological division in the party has steadily intensified, especially after the "left-right" alliance between Buchanan and Marxist Lenora Fulani collapsed and Fulani joined the anti-Buchanan side.

But at a fundraiser last night in Sterling, Va., the Associated Press reported, Buchanan told about 100 supporters: "The reports of my political death are premature."