Thursday, Aug 21, 2008
The short-lived marriage between Perot loyalists and Buchanan supporters is officially annulled at the Reform Party Convention.
Aug 11, 2000 | Reform Party leaders gathered in Long Beach Thursday to nominate their presidential candidate, but instead they officially split their party in two. Now, the people who once followed Perot are asking the Federal Election Commission to put this mutant, Humpty Dumpty of a party back together again.
Watching the mitosis of Texas billionaire Ross Perot's political brainchild isn't pretty. But it's not hard to see why these two groups don't get along. The troops supporting Pat Buchanan are all the folks whose absence the media bemoaned at the Republican Convention in Philadelphia, where the culture wars were shelved in favor of George W. Bush's spoon-fed message of inclusiveness. One delegate proudly waved a Rebel flag; another preached in the hallway that "lost people, when they die, go to hell." The party chairman pointed to a Costco warehouse store across the street and bemoaned the presence of "communist Chinese on U.S. soil."
The other side is composed of Perot loyalists and Natural Law Party refugees who would seem more at home in bohemian Venice Beach than Long Beach. Many of them, including John Hagelin, the presidential nominee they are pushing as an alternative to Buchanan, are past or current followers of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Others are independent-minded political crusaders who say they are fed up -- either with the two-party system, Buchanan's right-wing positions, or both.
But in some ways it makes sense that these two posses are housed under the political roof designed and constructed by Perot. Buchanan can be seen as the heir to Perot's sound-bite-ready political oration, his irascible personality and much of his egomania. Hagelin represents Perot's flightiness, his political naiveti and the rest of Perot's egomania.
The split between the two groups became official Thursday when old-guard Perot loyalists -- led by Reform Party national secretary Jim Mangia, Perot spokesman and former national party chairman Russ Verney and Hagelin -- marched into the Long Beach Convention Center with 200 or so supporters in tow and demanded to be seated as delegates.
When national party chair and Buchanan loyalist Gerry Moan rejected their request, the group marched out and set up shop around the corner, preparing a parallel convention. So while Buchanan formally receives the Reform Party nomination at the Long Beach Convention Center this weekend, John Hagelin will also formally receive the Reform Party presidential nomination at the Long Beach Performing Arts Center.
Which candidate will receive the $12.6 million in federal grant money awaiting the Reform Party presidential candidate? Under a claim filed Thursday by the Mangia/Hagelin wing of the party, the six-member FEC board will ultimately have to decide which is the real Reform Party, and which presidential nominee will receive the election-year booty.
"We've never had to do anything like that before," said FEC spokeswoman Sharon Snyder. "This would be a precedent-setting event for the commission."
Moan says that the Buchanan party at the convention center is the real deal. "The problem the other side seems to have is a problem with democracy," he said. "In a democracy, whoever has the most votes wins, and they don't seem to like that."
"If the FEC held up these funds after we fought, bled and died to build this party ... then they will be passive conspirators in the denial of democracy in America," Buchanan said.
Buchanan forces were thought to control at least 70 percent of the convention delegates before the Hagelin faction stormed out. But Mangia says Moan and Co. ran roughshod over Reform Party rules, and illegally credentialed Buchanan supporters as delegates to ensure the conservative television commentator had full control over the convention.
But Mangia says the group at the Performing Arts Center is the true Reform Party. "We tried to get in, and they wouldn't let us in," he said. "And I'm the national secretary of that group." Mangia said his Reform Party has unanimously elected him national chairman.
Get Salon in your mailbox!