[WEBNOTE] Today's New Republic includes
a long interview with Russ Verney in which Judis writes:
"They (Old Guard Party Leaders) expected Buchanan to distinguish, in
Verney's words, between "the need for a campaign" and "the obligation
of running a political party." Buchanan and his staff would worry about
the campaign and leave the Reform Party to Verney and the others.
Buchanan's run would keep the party from losing its public funding and
ballot access; after November, Verney and other party leaders figured,
they could recruit a different, perhaps more moderate, candidate for
2004."
Dave Goldman got it right. The Verney machine welcomed Pat if the
Brigades would reorganize the Party in those states where the Old
Guard had allowed it to fall into disrepair, collect a million signatures to
get the Party on the ballot in all 50 states, recruit millions of new
members, raise millions of money from private donations, wage a
national campaign, return the Party to a place of influence in national
politics, but leave control to them.
When the Buchanan supporters asked for some say in the Party, they
were rejected. When these supporters began to win state elections, the
Old Guard was frightened. Now they threaten, "Replace us and we will
destroy the Party and Buchanan's chance to be President."
Clearly, our most pressing challenge is to bring reform to the Reform
Party. [End]
Buchanan 1, Reform Party 0.
Unhostile Takeover
Ross Perot's Reform Party is about to do something no third party has done in a century: transcend its founder. And it will be thanks to Pat Buchanan.... "What you have seen--there is no doubt about it--is a Buchananization of the Reform Party," the candidate told me on the eve of the Pennsylvania party's June 10 convention. He's absolutely right....
Nobody understands this better than the old guard itself. Veterans of the Perot campaigns are apoplectic, and they blame Buchanan himself... "Here is somebody you invite over to your house," complains Russell Verney, the former chairman of the Reform Party, "and the first thing they do is start evicting you." Verney and the others are right about what is happening, but they are letting themselves off too easily in their explanations why. In truth, Buchanan didn't steal the Reform Party's soul. He purchased it, using his name recognition as currency. And it was Perot veterans like Verney who presided over the transaction, out of sheer desperation to survive...
After 1996, most state Reform Party organizations outside Minnesota atrophied. In 1998, the party ran House candidates in just 16 states and Senate candidates in only eight, with no candidate getting even two percent of the vote. In Iowa, when its gubernatorial candidate failed to receive two percent of the vote, the Reform Party lost its ballot status. In Pennsylvania, one of the original Reform Party states, members couldn't even gather the 36,000 signatures necessary to get their gubernatorial and Senate candidates on the ballot.
And so, as the 2000 presidential election approached, party leaders knew they desperately needed a presidential candidate who could inspire the party's base and secure its funding and ballot access.... They began frantically casting about for a candidate of their own....
With its $12.6 million in federal campaign funding, the Reform Party offered Buchanan a chance to sustain his cause and his presidential ambitions. So he began meeting with Verney and Pat Choate, Perot's 1996 vice presidential candidate. They, in turn, arranged meetings with other Reform Party leaders: Donna Donovan from Connecticut and Patricia Benjamin from New Jersey, as well as left-wing-sect leader Lenora Fulani, who had influence in New York and several other Eastern and Midwestern states. In October, Buchanan agreed to run, and the Reform Party leaders agreed to support him....
they agreed to look the other way, on the theory that Buchanan would use the party merely as a means of running for president. They expected Buchanan to distinguish, in Verney's words, between "the need for a campaign" and "the obligation of running a political party." Buchanan and his staff would worry about the campaign and leave the Reform Party to Verney and the others. Buchanan's run would keep the party from losing its public funding and ballot access; after November, Verney and other party leaders figured, they could recruit a different, perhaps more moderate, candidate for 2004.
They figured wrong. Buchanan and his sister Bay, who manages his campaign, are taking over the Reform Party state by state. In some states, like Pennsylvania, where the leadership already backed Buchanan, the takeover has been amicable. At last week's convention at the Bucks County Sheraton, there was not a murmur of dissent on delegate selection. But in other states the Buchanan forces have resembled, in national party Treasurer Tom McLaughlin's words, "a Viking raiding party." In New Hampshire, Buchanan recruited former Christian Coalition Chairwoman Shelly Uscinski to run his state campaign and to bring a voting majority to the state Reform Party convention. When the handful of existing Reform Party members tried to block her, Uscinski set up her own Reform Party. Similar events have taken place in Iowa, Wisconsin, Virginia, and Colorado. Some of these states will send rival delegations to the Reform Party convention in Long Beach, California, this August...
Buchanan has prominently featured his views on abortion, education, immigration, homosexuality, and the Confederate flag. I can see little difference between what he said in his past campaigns and what he said in speeches and in an interview in Pennsylvania last week. He is as personally affable as ever and displays a generous sympathy for workers whom the new economy has bypassed, but in his public utterances he is the same holy terror who demonizes Mexican immigrants and calls down God on his enemies. In his speech to the Pennsylvania Reform Party, he spoke about an 82-year-old widow he met on the Arizona border, terrorized by "illegal aliens" who poison cattle and who, he claimed, have killed her guard dogs by throwing them meat filled with broken glass. "This lady is an American, she loves her country, and she lives in a maximum-security prison in her own house because the United States does not have the courage to defend the borders of the United States," Buchanan intoned.
Buchanan's lust for culture war seems every bit as strong today as it was at the Republican convention in Houston in 1992. When I asked him about a column he wrote this spring defending the Confederate flag and attacking those who drag "Jefferson's name ... through the gutter," he launched into a tirade. "It is part of an overall cultural war," Buchanan said. "It entails first the dethroning of the Old and the New Testament, and the removal of religious and Biblical instruction for public institutions, the undermining of the religious beliefs that are based on that faith which is being systematically done, and demythologizing the heroes of the past. It is basically the deconstruction of America. We have to stand up for it" ....
Buchanan also assured Reform Party leaders he would not change the party's platform. Yet in April he told the right-wing weekly Human Events that he wanted to create "a socially conservative party" to replace the old Reform Party and that he would "append to the platform a personal statement of my convictions and beliefs about life and other social, cultural, and moral issues, and my commitment to appoint only pro-life justices to the Supreme Court." When I asked him about this, Buchanan insisted that such a statement will not affect the platform itself. But Verney says, justifiably, that it is a "distinction without a difference." Indeed, in his fund-raising speech in Pennsylvania, Buchanan touted himself as "the most pro-life candidate in the race." Donna Donovan's verdict on Buchanan and his sister seems right: "They want to own the party and build it as a right-wing, pro-life alternative for people that are currently chafing in the Republican Party."
Still, if Buchanan was less than forthcoming in his early conversations with Reform Party leaders, those leaders are also guilty of deceiving themselves. After all, Buchanan and his sister had every reason to seek control of the tottering Reform Party. In the party's constitution, two-thirds of the delegates to the national convention can overturn a primary nomination. Why wouldn't Buchanan try to ensure that he gets a majority of the convention delegates selected by the state parties? It was also predictable that Buchanan would want delegates to present a unified front at the Long Beach convention, which will be televised, and that he would want state parties to help him get on the ballot and gain visibility in the fall.
Verney, Donovan, and Benjamin no longer nourish illusions about Buchanan. Verney is now trying to prevent the party from endorsing anyone. Donovan says she will probably vote for Ralph Nader in November. But other Reform Party leaders continue to look the other way...
