Sunday, Jul 20, 2008
The right-wingers and the Perot loyalists will battle it out all weekend at the Reform Party Convention, but the fight for the $12.6 million prize will likely end up in court.
Aug 10, 2000 | The Reform Party Convention in Long Beach, Calif., this weekend has been cast as a war for the ages. One side is led by a hard-driven, hard-right political pit bull with the temerity and organization to reshape it into a true right-wing party. The other side is a band of political refugees and libertarian ideologues still wrestling with the wake of Ross Perot's megalomaniacal run for the presidency, struggling beyond hope to not be sucked into the vacuum left by his departure.
The battle between Pat Buchanan and old-guard Perot loyalists unified behind physicist John Hagelin has already been a political blood bath. Anyone complaining about the scripted nature of the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, or holding their noses as the Democrats prepare to descend on Los Angeles, should take a look at Long Beach this week. There have been name calling and yelling fits, lawsuits and intimidation and secret splinter-group meetings.
The party's Perot loyalists have proven they will do whatever it takes to stop Buchanan. And Buchanan, likewise, will do the same to capture the party's nomination. On Tuesday, a fight over credentialing delegates led the anti-Buchanan forces to storm out of the meeting and set up a shadow convention in a nearby hotel. Both groups are claiming they are the real Reform Party, and if the split continues, the dispute may have to be settled by the Federal Elections Commission.
"The FEC will have to decide who is the nominee of the party," Perot ally and former party chairman Russ Verney said Wednesday. "A court will decide custody of the $12.6 million."
The anti-Buchanan forces say they have prepared lawsuits claiming Buchanan committed fraud in the Reform Party's mail-in election, which will determine the nomination. That election is currently underway, and the winner is set to be announced Friday. But according to Reform Party rules, those results can be overturned by a two-thirds majority of the delegates to the convention, which is why Buchanan's forces have focused so intently on credentialing and seating sympathetic delegates. According to their own campaign counts, Buchanan is thought to control close to 70 percent of the delegates in Long Beach.
Though the ending of this saga is not yet written, it appears increasingly likely that Buchanan will walk away with the grand prize and build a bona fide right-wing party in America. Even if Buchanan loses the party's mail-in primary (the results of the vote will be announced Friday), the Buchanan forces seem to have won the credentials challenges to do whatever they damn well please this weekend in Long Beach. Most of his opponents, it now appears, are opting to boycott and hold a convention of their own.
"It's over now," said Buchanan's sister and campaign manager Angela "Bay" Buchanan after yesterday's walkout. "It is Pat Buchanan's nomination. They needed to win in there, and they did not have the numbers. We've won fair and square."
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