The kingmaker speaks

How many people are in the national headquarters of the Reform Party?

A couple, plus lawyers, accountants that we hire. They have a small budget to pay for Russ Verney, the Reform Party chairman, maybe $150,000 to $200,000; in that range. But you know, the Democrat and Republican parties are 19th century artifacts. They're set up for very different times, when you had ward healers. You don't need the buildings, the 30,000 staffers or whatever.

The Reform Party is in many ways the first cyber-party, because we have thousands of people who are on these various Internet mailing lists, to whom we send our stuff, and they go out and campaign.

How many people wake up every morning and do something that day for the Reform Party?

Hundreds, hundreds, hundreds. You work at home, you're fully informed through the Net, you're able to communicate with vast numbers. You don't need the print room, you don't need the mail room. You write your message, you check it, you send it out and it's gone.

And we're all volunteers. As I said in accepting the co-chair of the Buchanan campaign, "I accept this in the tradition of the Reform Party as a non-paid volunteer." Now how much would I charge for 2,000 hours of my time per year? We have hundreds of people like that.

What's the scenario for the 2000 election?

Depending where the states are, you need 38 percent to win the presidency. That's your low number, you shoot for 41, 42 percent. Pat's going to get 10-15 percent right off the bat from the social conservatives; he'll just pull them straight out of what was the Republican Party because the Republicans have gone left; Gary Bauer will not be on that ticket.

He will pull another 10 or 15 percent out of the traditional Democratic Party; the Democratic Party is going right. It's gone dramatically right with Al From and the Democratic Leadership Council.

He'll get the independent vote. He'll do very well with the 18-35 year-old generation. Perot did super with them. It was Jesse Ventura's best cohort. This is the generation that filters through TV. What they're looking for is conviction politics. They might not agree, but they want to know, "do you really believe this?" Well, the one thing you can say about Buchanan is we won't have a pollster, we don't need one. This is what we believe and that's it.

Are you implying you might win the election?

I'm serious. Yes, that's the way we're running the campaign, to win the election. A good place to go back and take a look was the 1996 Michigan primary, which were open primaries. Times were good in Michigan in 1996, they were booming. Buchanan drew 34 percent of the total vote. Now we bring in the independent voter, the new voter.

Have you thought about any vice presidential candidates yet?

Fundamentally, you need somebody that can draw heavily into the Democratic base like [former congresswoman] Marcy Kaptur, though she hasn't been approached. A Democrat with solid labor ties, who was there on the trade issues, economic nationalism and foreign policy.

What would be your goals short of winning the presidency?

If you don't win in 2000, that you can win in 2004. We need to win 25 percent of the vote. That gives you $75 million to $80 million for 2004.

What percent of the vote would you regard as a defeat?

Anything under 15 to 20 percent.

You have to get on the ballot in 30 more states for Buchanan to become the Reform Party nominee. What's involved?

It varies state by state. Overall, we have to get about 600,000 signatures. You've got to get it done by July. It won't be easy, it's going to require a lot of work, but we've got Matt Sawyer, who did the stuff for Perot, hired full-time. We'll do it. There's no question about that.

When would you receive the $12 million?

After Aug. 13, after you're designated the nominee of the party by the convention in Long Beach.

How much money will you have?

We'll raise about $20 million, from individual contributions up to $1000. With the public money, that will give us $30 million to $35 million, which is all we need. Here's what you'll never see in our campaign. You'll not see 737s and 747s hired. You'll not see two hairdressers, a million aides, a staff of pollsters and speech writers. You will see a lot of this campaign using commercial flights. And when you sum all that up, we will use our money competitively with the major parties.

You won 8.6 percent of the vote in 1996. Do you think Buchanan will be able to do better than that this time?

Absolutely. It's a function of the debates. Half the voters in America make up their minds on the debates. If Perot and I had been in the debates, we'd have beaten Dole.

Do you think you'll be able to get into the debates?

Absolutely.

Why can't they exclude you again?

I'll tell you what, we will sue them, we will chase George Bush and Al Gore all over the country on this. If they're unwilling to debate Pat Buchanan, a certified third-party candidate, they're unfit to be president.

So they could exclude you, but you'll try to build political pressure to force them to do it.

If the debate commission excludes us, we're just going to take it straight to the other two candidates and say, "Hey, quit hiding behind the skirts of the debate commission here." Or with George Bush, I mean, "Your mommy can't protect you here anymore, come on out."

Have you been designated by the FEC as a national political party?

There's only three. We are designated in 1997. Now if they want to set something for other parties, let them do it.

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