Reform Party of the United States of America

Reform Party of the United States of America
Reform Party of the United States of America
Chairman	Rodney Martin
Founded	1995
Ideology	Populism, Protectionism
Political position	Center
International affiliation	none
Colours	Red & blue
Website
	www.reformpartyusa.org

The Reform Party of the United States of America (abbreviated Reform Party USA or RPUSA) is a political party in the United States, founded by Ross Perot in 1995 who said Americans were disillusioned with the state of politics – as being corrupt and unable to deal with vital issues – and desired a viable alternative to the Republican and Democratic Parties.

Its biggest victory came when Jesse Ventura was elected governor of Minnesota in 1998. Since then, the party has been fraught with infighting. Americans usually refer to it simply as the Reform Party.

History

The Party grew out of Perot's efforts in the 1992 presidential election, where – running as an independent – he became the first non-major party candidate since 1912 to have been considered viable enough to win the presidency. Perot made a splash by bringing a focus to fiscal issues such as the federal deficit and national debt; government reform issues such as term limits, campaign finance reform, and lobbying reform; and issues on trade. A large part of his following was grounded in the belief he was addressing vital problems largely ignored by the two major parties. On these strengths, he won two of the three presidential debates and placed second in the other.

A Gallup poll showed Perot with a slim lead, but on July 16 he suspended his campaign, accusing Republican operatives of threatening to sabotage his daughter's wedding, and was accused by Newsweek Magazine of being a "Quitter" in a well-publicized cover-page article. Even after resuming his campaign on October 1, Perot was consistently dogged by the "quitter" moniker and other allegations concerning his character, to the extent that on Election Day many voters were confused as to whether or not Perot was actually still a candidate. He ended up receiving about 18.9% of the popular vote, a record level of popularity not seen in an independent candidacy since Theodore Roosevelt ran on the Progressive ticket in 1912. He continued being politically involved after the election, formally turning his campaign organization (United We Stand America) into a lobbying group. One of his primary goals was the defeat of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during this period.

In 1994 the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, largely on the strength of the "Contract With America", which recognized and promised to deal with many of the issues Perot's voters had mobilized to support in 1992. However, after passing some two-thirds of the "Contract", old-guard Republicans rejected the remainder, including a balanced-budget amendment and Congressional term limits.

Dissatisfied, the grassroots organizations which had made Perot's 1992 candidacy possible began to band together to found a third party intended to rival the Republicans and Democrats. For legal reasons, the party ended up being called the "Reform Party" ("Independent Party" was preferred, but already taken, as were several variants on the name). A drive to get the party on the ballot in all fifty states succeeded, although it ended up with lawsuits in some regions over state ballot access requirements. In a few areas, minor parties became incorporated as state party organizations.

When the 1996 election season arrived, Perot at first held off from entering the contest for the Reform Party's nomination, calling for others to try for the ticket. The only person who announced such an intention was Dick Lamm, former Governor of Colorado. After the Federal Election Commission indicated only Perot and not Lamm would be able to secure federal matching funds – because his 1992 campaign was as an independent – Perot entered the race. Some were upset that Perot changed his mind and in their view overshadowed Lamm's run for the party nomination. This built up to the beginning of a splinter within the movement when it was alleged certain problems in the primary process, such as many Lamm supporters not receiving ballots, and some primary voters receiving multiple ballots, were Perot's doing. The Reform Party claimed these problems stemmed from the petition process for getting the Reform Party on the ballot in all of the states, since the party claimed they used the names and addresses of petition signers as the basis of who received ballots. Primary ballots were sent by mail to designated voters. Eventually, Perot was nominated and he chose economist Pat Choate as his vice-presidential candidate.

Between 1992 and 1996, the Federal Election Commission changed its rules regarding how candidates could qualify to participate in the presidential debates. As Perot had previously done very well in debates, it was a decisive blow to the campaign when the FEC ruled that he could not participate on basis of somewhat vague criteria --- such as that a candidate was required to have already been endorsed by "a substantial number of major news organizations", with "substantial" being a number to be decided by the FEC on a case-by-case basis. Perot could not have qualified for the debates in 1992 under these rules, and was able to show that various famous US Presidents would likewise have been excluded from modern debate by the FEC.

Despite legal action by the Perot team, and an 80% majority of Americans demanding he be allowed into the debates, the FEC refused to budge and Perot was reduced to making his points heard via a series of half-hour "commercials" that most Americans channel-surfed past. In the end, Perot and Choate won 8% of the vote.

By 1997, factional disputes began to emerge with the departure of a small group that believed Perot had rigged the 1996 party primary to defeat Lamm. These individuals eventually established the American Reform Party. During this time, Perot himself chose to leave the party to its own devices, concentrating on lobbying efforts through United We Stand America.

Mid-term elections of 1998

In 1998, the Reform Party received a boost when Jesse Ventura was elected governor of Minnesota, the highest office win for a national third party since the beginning of the century.

According to the Women's League of Voters, Reform candidates obtained more votes nationwide in 1998 than did any other third party in America, even without those garnered by Ventura. Counting Ventura's performance, Reformers took in more votes than all other third parties in the United States combined, establishing the Reform Party as America's favorite political alternative.

This was a particularly impressive feat when one considers that none of Perot's money, influence or organization was involved in any of the candidacies, including Ventura's. The party was operating entirely on its own resources, and had in fact run fewer candidates with less money than the next-most-popular party, the Libertarians.

Presidential election of 2000

The Reform Party's presidential candidate for the 2000 election was due federal matching funds of $12.5 million, based on Perot's 8% showing in 1996. This made the nomination an attractive target to would-be candidates.

During 1999, party leaders agreed that the necessary resources to win a presidential election were not available even with those funds. The decision was made to run a campaign aimed at obtaining at least the 5% popular vote necessary to maintain FEC funding, as well as increasing efforts at fundraising and voter registration, in hopes of presenting a better candidacy in 2004. A number of hopefuls presented themselves to the party, including celebrities such as Warren Beatty and Donald Trump. Neither Trump nor Beatty impressed the Reform rank and file; neither seemed to have bothered to research the party's platform or ideals, and were all too clearly there to be seen rather than to run a serious campaign.

Of the more serious candidates, only two had the political organization and support necessary to seek and win the primary vote: Republican Patrick J. Buchanan and Natural Law Party candidate John Hagelin. There were half-a-dozen others who ran low-budget or regional campaigns seeking the nomination, such as Lenora Fulani, but events would transpire to effectively exclude them from the race.

Buchanan had originally approached the party's leadership with various promises, including that he would commit himself to the party's growth over the next five years in order to help create a more serious contender versus the major parties. Another promise was that he would stay away from his usual lightning-rod issues and stick to the more moderate Reform platform planks. The "Buchanan Brigades" began to appear at various Reform Party functions, re-registering from Republican to Reform in the process, and at first the party's resurgence as a national force seemed inevitable.

"Mashville"

Problems first became evident at a meeting of the National Committee in Nashville, which was at the time being televised live on CSPAN. The National Chair had come under fire for misuse of party resources and abuse of his authority, and as he attempted to defend himself against these allegations a Buchanan supporter walked up to the podium and disconnected the microphone. A non-Buchananist immediately reconnected the mike, whereupon he was attacked by the Buchananist. Only two were fighting, and that for only a few seconds, but the attempt of everyone around them to pull them apart gave the impression of a much larger fracas, especially with the camera zoomed in. The media promptly dubbed the incident "Mashville".

"Mashville" was presented as evidence that the National Chair had lost control, and that combined with the earlier allegations were enough to force his resignation. Pat Choate, Perot's 1996 VP candidate --- and a Buchanan supporter --- was elected as the new National Chair. Another Buchananist, Gerald Moan, was elected to chair the 2000 National Convention, and when Choate later resigned, Moan was elected as National Chair.

Broken promises, broken rules

At first Buchanan's decision to run as a Reformer was met with mixed support, in that if he kept to his promises it was felt he would make for a good showing. But antipathy, and then outright opposition, began to form as Buchanan's campaign started using "big party" tactics and techniques which the rank and file considered anti-Reform, such as deliberately excluding other candidates from Buchanan-controlled debate venues. Buchanan also began to expound his more extreme views on issues such as immigration and abortion, formally breaking the first of his promises and alienating the largely-centrist core of the party.

But the real opposition came in the aftermath of Buchanan's public refusal to allow his ballots to be examined for legitimacy. According to party rules, a primary ballot can only be sent to party members, or to people who request a ballot, but the party's phones began ringing with complaints from people who received ballots in the mail that they never requested. Those who were willing to answer questions revealed that they had given money to Buchanan's previous campaigns, indicating that they had been mass-mailed using a list of past donors... an act that would invalidate over half a million primary votes, and amount to the biggest single case of confirmed ballot fraud in American history.

The Executive Committee met and declared the intent to audit the ballots, whereupon Gerald Moan --- now the National Chair, and openly a Buchanan supporter --- declared that he and Buchanan had personally cut a deal to keep the voting list secret. Moreover, the deal had been made when Moan was a committee chair and not the National Chair, and in either case neither position could legally prevent the party from confirming the veracity of votes cast in one of its own elections. The Committee voted to investigate the matter and then reconvene to make a decision, which was opposed by Chairman Moan, Treasurer Tom McLaughlin and Regional Representative Bob Belcher. The motion carried by 7-3.

Moan and his followers immediately moved to secure the nomination for Buchanan by attempting to block further investigations and decisions. All three refused to show for the July 30, 2000 meeting in an attempt to prevent the Committee from having the legal minimum necessary to conduct business, but Moan had neglected to remember that the National Chair did not count for quorum under party rules. McLaughlin put a lock on the party's treasury, however, and refused to accept orders from the Executive Committee regarding its use and disposition. Regardless, the Committee declared Buchanan's exclusion from the primary on grounds that his votes could not be checked for validity without Buchanan's cooperation.

Buchanan still had a chance to win --- the party's rules allowed for a two-thirds majority of the National Convention to override the primary vote. If, out of some 660 delegates, Buchanan could convince 440 to vote for him, he would win the nomination.

The "Freedom Party"

It does not appear that Buchanan had any such interests. His Brigades began forming and registering new state organizations under the name of "Freedom Party" during 2000 in every state where resistance to Brigade takeovers succeeded. Buchanan himself announced to the press, when the Colorado Freedom Party was created in June, that it would be seated as "the real Reform Party of Colorado" at the National Convention. To do this would require removing the staunchly anti-Buchanan Reform Party of Colorado first, indicating that Buchanan was already planning on forcibly removing state parties opposed to his takeover. He even referred to the Freedom Party as "an insurance policy". Boulder News, June 2000

Chairman Gerald Moan ordered a National Committee meeting to be set just a few days before the National Convention. At the meeting, he declared the intent to have all the Freedom Parties recognized as legitimate Reform state parties, unilaterally ruled that the FP members present could vote for themselves on the matter, and instantly set off a five-way argument with the party's own parliamentarian, Beverly Kennedy, telling him he had no such authority. His response was that she was there to advise him, and that he was choosing to ignore her advice.

At that point, the majority of the National Committee attempted to leave the room, but were physically restrained by security officers hired by the Buchanan campaign at party expense. A struggle ensued, finally resulting in the doors to the room breaking open and party members literally tumbling out into the corridor where a news camera was waiting for the results of the meeting. National Secretary Jim Mangia recovered in a few seconds and denounced Moan and the Freedom Parties for attempting to usurp the Convention, but the press simply ran the story as "another Reform Party fracas" without adding any details.

National Convention, 2000

It is a common misconception that the Reform Party "split" in 2000. In point of fact, when the hall reserved for the National Convention (at taxpayer expense) was to be opened, according to the official schedule, Buchanan's paid security prevented the anti-Buchanan delegates from entering by blocking the doors.

Having expected something of this sort by this time, alternate plans had hurriedly been made over the preceding few days since Moan's attempt to personally install the Freedom Party as delegates. An auditorium down the street had been obtained and donations from the barred delegates themselves paid for everything from the hall to new voting cards, a truly grassroots eleventh-hour recovery.

As things got underway, reports trickled in of delegates being required to sign loyalty oaths to Buchanan in order to enter the taxpayer-paid event, and those few legitimate state parties which attempted to remain at the original venue wound up walking out and crossing over to what Buchanan insisted on calling the "rump convention". The New York delegation was last to do so, trying until the end to raise issues about illegalities being conducted, only to be shouted down or ignored. Led by Lenora Fulani, these delegates reported that in essence the "BuchananReform" event was no longer bothering to attempt even the veneer of rulebook legitimacy, since the press seemed not to be interested in the complaints emanating from the actual Reformers.

Gerald Moan has admitted that he did not follow the party's rules for removing an existing affiliated state party. Instead, he states that he took the initial "roll call" vote and then personally declared the FP delegates to be legitimate on grounds of "unanimous consent". The actual rules, however, require two-thirds of the elected delegates from existing Reform affiliates to vote in favor of removing an affiliate, and over half of these had been forcibly prevented from entering the convention hall earlier. The various Freedom Parties simply never met the requirements for sending delegates to the Reform Party National Convention.

Nonetheless, it was on the strength of the Brigade-created Freedom Parties, and the willingness of the party's elected Chair and Treasurer to suborn the party's rules in order to advance the cause of a particular candidate, that Buchanan claimed he had won the Reform Party's nomination.

On basis of the fact that Buchanan did not receive a two-thirds majority of elected Reform Party delegates at the National Convention, and likewise did not receive a majority of primary votes cast to that point (having been disqualified), it was impossible for him to be considered the nominee of the Reform Party. By default, John Hagelin won the primary vote, which was not overturned by the Convention, thus becoming the Reform Party nominee for the 2000 presidential election.

I like cheese

FEC investigation

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) never got around to examining the party's rules. Instead, they called for a preliminary hearing, and required that in order to be heard, each candidate must show that they were on the ballot as the party's official candidate in X number of states.

This had nothing to do, either under US law or party rules, with how the Reform Party chose its nominee, and the FEC clarified that it wasn't meant to --- it was an entirely bureaucratic move intended to prevent "non-serious" candidates from wasting their time.

Buchanan's campaign immediately launched a series of lawsuits against the Hagelin campaign declaring himself the rightful Reform candidate in various states. It took months for the states involved to settle these suits, and in the end Hagelin won enough of the challenges to meet the FEC's requirements.

However, the FEC had already ruled, refusing to count those states which Buchanan had embroiled in legal manuevers, saying that they did not want to "waste time" waiting for the results. At least one of the FEC board members protested against what he called a rush to judgement, but the FEC nonetheless declared that Hagelin had not met the criteria, would not therefore be heard before the board, and awarded Buchanan a default ruling worth over twelve million dollars in taxpayer funds without ever having to show that he was the party's actual nominee.

On basis of the FEC's ruling, the Buchanan campaign rapidly went from state to state declaring that the FEC had "recognized" his nomination and had Hagelin removed from as many ballots as possible. This ruling also ensured that the FEC would not investigate the Buchanan campaign, and continued to formally recognize Gerald Moan as its National Chair. This solidified the Buchanan takeover of the party, initially built on a house of cards but ultimately supported by a disinterested FEC.

The Minnesota branch of the Reform Party, which helped elect Ventura, disaffiliated from the national party after the Buchanan takeover and renamed itself the Independence Party of Minnesota. Many other state Reform organizations followed suit, refusing to belong to an organization headed by people they believed to have acted criminally.

Ultimately, the Buchanan campaign spent over $30,000,000 according to the FEC, for a vote total of less than half a million --- fewer actual votes than he claimed to have received in the primary, and less than half a percentage point of the popular vote all told. Having spent more than $60 per vote, he is on record as having run one of the least efficient presidential campaigns in history.

Although Buchanan had declared he would spend five years on building the party he had just taken over, it is arguable that he did not remain within it for five weeks after the results of November 2000. He is only known to have acknowledged his Reform candidacy on three occasions: once on a talk show, once in the preface to his book "Death of the West", and once by appearing for half an hour at a Reform event to sign autographs and give a short speech. During the year and a half in which the Buchanan faction gripped the Reform Party, he did not mobilize any resources to assist the people he had placed in power.

Within six months, the Buchanans were again referring to themselves as "Republican" on the public airwaves.

Post-2000 Election

"Shamrocks"

Very few of the Freedom Parties which had been empowered by the FEC ever ran candidates. Most did not even mount membership drives, satisfied simply to maintain control over positions of authority within the party.

From the very beginning, Buchananists began using party assets such as websites and official minutes. To this day, Gerald Moan refuses to surrender several years' worth of the party's records. Party coffers were drained and never replenished. Few to no donations were forthcoming from the Brigades, although its leadership constantly threatened lawsuits against those who continued to resist. Each side won and lost legal battles during 2000 and 2001, with no clear victor emerging, and as things dragged on various Brigade-held parties simply ceased to exist as their officers got bored and returned to the Republican Party.

In one case, the Reform Party of Connecticut won a case against the Buchanan campaign for having falsified petitions in order to get Buchanan on the ballot. All six defendants pled guilty, with ringleader Cherilyn Bacon admitting under oath that she had called for, and received, permission to do so from the Buchanan national campaign's legal counsel. The six were accorded record fines and prohibited from political activity in Connecticut for five years...to which Bacon responded by moving to another state, whereupon she was appointed to chair Public Relations for the party by Gerald Moan.

On the St. Patrick's Day weekend of 2001, the leadership of the resistance met in Kansas City and formed the "Shamrock Resolution", referring to St. Patrick's legendary act of driving snakes out of Ireland. By the time of the National Convention of 2002, held in Denver, they were able to muster enough delegates to defeat the demoralized Brigades, who seemed unwilling to resist in Buchanan's absence. Chairman Moan had not even bothered to show up, leaving Tom McLaughlin --- the previous Treasurer, and now Vice-Chair --- to handle an openly hostile convention where he had little support and no armed guards. The outcome was inevitable: Moan, McLaughlin, and the remaining Buchananists were removed from power.

In less than eighteen months, Patrick J. Buchanan's vaunted "Pitchfork Brigades" had lost their grip on power in the Reform Party...but in the process, they had alienated over 90% of the registered membership, spent virtually all the money in all the coffers they controlled, destroyed party communication assets such as mailing lists, websites, and forums, and "ran off" over half the state organizations which had existed in November of 2000.

The few diehard remnants of the Brigades abandoned the party wholesale, forming the America First Party in April 2002 around the last eight state organizations they controlled --- all of which had begun their existence as Freedom Parties.

Presidential election of 2004

By the October 2003 National Convention, the Reform Party had only begun rebuilding, but several former state organizations had elected to rejoin now that the interference from the Freedom Parties was gone. They increased their ranks from 24 to 30 states, and managed to retrieve ballot access for seven of them (Buchanan's poor showing in 2000, and negligence since, had lost ballot access for almost the entire party).

Obviously, no serious attempt at a candidacy could be made for 2004, so the party opted to support Ralph Nader as the best option for an independent of any stripe that year.

However, the hijinks weren't quite over yet. The party's National Treasurer, William D. Chapman Sr, acting on his own, tried to get the FEC to close down the party on grounds that it did not have a substantial bank account...something that had also been true in 2001 and 2002 during the Buchanan era. The party was also being held liable for debts that had been incurred without authorization by persons no longer with the party, to the tune of $300,000. In response, the Reform Party leadership suspended Chapman from his post.

In early 2005, press releases from the Reform Party indicated that the party is in the process of rebuilding, with appeals for donations, attempts to reconstitute state party affiliates that were lost during the breakaways of such groups as the Independence Party of Minnesota and the America First Party, and the election of new party officials.

Activities of the party in 2005

In 2005, a dispute was occasioned. National Committee members from several states including Texas, Michigan, and Florida acquired the necessary number of national committee members (under party bylaws) to call for both a meeting of the National Commitee and the Executive Committee. At both meetings, it was determined that a National Convention needed to be called and that it would be held in Tampa, FL. The Chairman at the time, along with National Committee members from Arizona, California, and Oklahoma refused to attend the National and Executive Committee meetings and rejected the legitimacy of that Convention and boycotted it as illegitimate. As a result those state held a second Convention in Arizona.

In response, to a frivilious suit filed by the extremist group who met in Tampa, leaders of the Reform Party filed a RICO complaint claiming the Tampa group are extremists and guilty of conspiracy.^{[citation needed]}

Despite this ongoing dispute on the national level, the various Reform Party State parties have been rebuilding and are actively running candidates across the country.

=== RPUSA- FEC CASE On March 2, 2007, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Reform Party does in deed have to repay to the US Treasury (the US Taxpayers) over $333,000 PLUS interst for unauthorized costs for the Party's 2000 Convention.

This case has been prolonged and appealed by Members of the Party's Convention Committee who many Party members belive are responsible for the unauthorized costs via inside deals paid with taxpayers funds that now have to be repaid. The current Chairman Rodney Martin (according to the Arizona Convention), has sought ways to settle this issue so as to bring honor to the Party and to make the taxpayers whole, however a splinter group, some of which are now named on the FEC judgement personally, who wish to keep this matter out of the sunshine of public review has used frivilious suits to seize control of the Party via suits such as Trademark and other diversionary tactics.

As one Florida party recently stated, "perhaps its time for the Party to pay up"

Reform Party information

Official Name: Reform Party
Web Site: http://www.reformparty.org
Chairman: Charles Foster

Current party candidates

In 2006, the Reform Party ran candidates in Arizona, and was petitioning to regain ballot access in several other States where state Reform Party organizations are active. The Reform Party of Kansas nominated a slate of candidates led by Iraq War veteran Richard Ranzau. In Colorado, a former assistant Environmental Protection Agency administrator and Navy veteran with credentials as a fiscal conservative, Eric Eidsness, ran on the Reform Party ticket in Colorado's 4th congressional district in 2006 [1] and received 11.28% of the vote, five times the winning candidate's margin of victory [2]. The Florida Reform Party granted use of its ballot line for Governor to Max Linn of Florida Citizens for Term Limits (a Republican-leaning organization) in the 2006 Florida gubernatorial election. Linn retained professional campaign staff with connections to the Perot and Ventura campaigns. See RPFL site and Max Linn's website but received only 1.9% of the vote.

Recently the Reform Party has been courted by Daniel Imperato for nomination in the 2008 presidential election.

Presidential tickets

1996 — Ross Perot and Pat Choate (lost)
2000 — Pat Buchanan and Ezola B. Foster (lost)
2004 — Ralph Nader and Peter Miguel Camejo (Ran as an independent but was endorsed by the party) (lost)

Platform

The Reform Party platform includes the following:

Maintaining a balanced budget, ensured by passing a Balanced Budget Amendment and changing budgeting practices, and paying down the federal debt.
Campaign finance reform, including strict limits on campaign contributions and the outlawing of Political action committee
Enforcement of existing immigration laws
Opposition to free trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement and CAFTA, and a call for withdrawal from the World Trade Organization.
Term limits on U.S. Representatives and Senators.
Direct election of the United States President by popular vote.

A noticeable absence from the Reform Party platform has been what are termed social issues, including abortion and gay rights. Reform Party representatives had long stated beliefs that their party could bring together people from both sides of these issues, which they consider divisive, to address what they considered to be more vital concerns as expressed in their platform. The idea was to form a large coalition of moderates; that intention was overridden in 2001 by the Buchanan takeover which rewrote the RPUSA Constitution to specifically include platform planks opposed to any form of abortion. The Buchananists, in turn, were overridden by the 2002 Convention which specifically reverted the Constitution to its 1996 version and the party's original stated goals.

External links

Reform Party homepage