Reform Party Implodes -- Again

by Jack Breibart

Things are squirrelly in the party right now.

For instance:

The party's executive committee -- or at least the Ross Perot faction of it -- voted last week in a teleconference to hold an emergency national committee meeting Feb. 12 in the land of the Grand Ole Opry to decide, among other things, the site of its 2000 presidential nominating convention.

This was after the Jesse Ventura faction hung up their telephones in protest.

The 150-member national committee (three members from each state) is the party's second highest governing entity -- next to the national convention -- and a step above the 11-person executive committee. This would be the first time the national committee has met person-to-person outside the party's national conventions.

Nonsense, says Jack Gargan, the embattled, gregarious, colorful party chairman, who has been in office since the first of the year and is part of what's known as the Ventura or Minnesota group.

"The executive committee meeting was illegal," Gargan told the American Reporter in a telephone interview from this Cedar Key, Fla. home. "There's going to be a national committee meeting, but I'm going to call it."

For one thing, Gargan said, the meeting was illegal because he and his three backers on the committee exited before he called the meeting to order. Other participants said he called the meeting to order and they left.

In a long, rambling conversation, Gargan also said not enough time was given to members to study the agenda or enough notification of the meeting.

"I've ruled that there will be regular and open meetings and that emergency meetings were illegal."

After Gargan and his followers dropped out of the session, according to meeting participants, the Perot faction introduced an 11-point resolution, which Gargan said, "was out to get mine and Ronn Young's scalp."

Included in the resolution was a clause that would prevent Gargan and Young -- the party's treasurer -- from spending any of the $2.5 million which the Federal Elections Commission has given the party to hold its national convention.

"Those bas -- Oops, I've promised not to speak ill of anyone in the party -- would love to get their hands on that money," Gargan said, "but they're going to have a hell of a time doing it."

The 11-point resolution, legal or not, was passed by the remaining executive commitee members, either by 6-1 or 7-2 votes.

"Jim Mangia (party secretary) voted on principle and against all of them -- bless his heart," said Gargan. The other "independent" votes were cast by Mic Farris, head of the party's presidential selection committee.

Gargan wouldn't say what his next move will be. "My best weapon is to keep my enemies off balance," he said. "But I'm going to come up with a doozy, d-o-o-z-y."

The battle over the site of the convention -- which has bounced back and forth between Long Beach, Calif. (the Perots) and St. Paul, Minn. (the Venturas) -- has developed into more than a struggle over the site.

"It is a battle of what direction the party will take," said Rich McCluhan, chairman of the Minnesota Reform Party.

Will it be the direction of the free-trading Ventura faction, which gained control at last summer's national convention or the path of the old-line more conservative Perot followers who had run the party until the gathering at Dearborn?

The viciousness of the fight has brought dire warnings from some leaders that the end is near for the party as founder Perot envisioned it.

"I have come to the conclusion that this party is going to 'split' in the very near future," McCluhan, chairman of the Minnesota Reform Party and a Ventura backer, wrote to his members last week.

"That's what he would like to happen," said Mangia, who considers himself "indepdendent" of the two factions but leans toward the Perot group.

Mangia, the only held-over officer from the Perot-controlled party, said he has been frustrated by his inability to bring the factions together for compromises. He failed in a bid last night to get the executive committee to agree on a neutral convention site.

"I have no idea what will happen in Nashville," Mangia told the American Reporter in a telephone interview. Mangia said he wasn't even sure how many of the national committee members would show up in Nashville. "My job is to inform everyone the meeting will be held," he said.

Mangia said he voted against the 11-point resolution at last night's executive committee meeting, not out of support for Gargan, but because he didn't believe it was the right way to do things.

Patricia Benjamin, former vice chair of the party and a vocal critic of the new administration (she lost the contest for national chair to Gargan), said she didn't envision a "split" but admitted that things "are pretty loud right now."

"The problem really is that nobody trusts anybody," Benjamin told the American Reporter from her New Jersey office.

Benjamin, however, is optimistic that something can be worked out in Nashville. "Every party has its disagreements," she said. "I think the Nashville meeting will show that our constitution is back."

Since the beginning of the year, Gargan, who took over the national chair from Perot employee Russ Verney, has been been the target of people he says "who refuse to give up power." He says they have been "nibbling" at him since his election and have refused to turn over all the party documents.

His opponents have been circulating a recall petition which they say now has more than 350 signatures.

Gargan said last night he was "hunkered down in his bunker" and willing to fight it out.

Despite his pugnacious stance, Gargan is still hopeful that eventually things will work out and the party will be saved. He just isn't sure how.

Benjamin and some other former party national leaders also have formed the Reform Party Leadership Council, which they see as guardians of the Reform Party platform and which Gargan sees as an incipient movement to overthrow his administration.

"What a dumb idea (the leadership council)," Gargan told the American Reporter when the group announced its formation in December.

All this tumult has been taking place while Pat Buchanan campaigns for the Reform Party nomination, backed by the Perot faction, and Donald Trump, the potential anti-Buchanan candidate, keeps saying he's interested in running but won't make a decision until next month.

Both Benjamin and Mangia agree that the party infighting is keeping away any other nationally-known candidates. "There are others who have been scared away," said Mangia.

And what about Perot, who has been publicly quiet through all the upheaval.

"He's very unhappy about what is going on," Benjamin told the American Reporter, "but I think he's going to stay out of it until he sees what happens in Nashville."

In a model of bad planning, the convention didn't get around to voting on the issue before it had to relinquish the convention hall.

In September, the executive committee, dominated by Perot followers and led by national chairman Russ Verney, voted 9-2 to hold the convention in Long Beach, Ca.

Later in the Fall, Rich McCluhan, head of the Minnesota Reform party, said he had conducted a meeting of the national committee which voted to change the site to St. Paul, Minn.

When the Verney-dominated exectutive committee ignored McCluhan's meeting, McCluhan went to court to get an injunction against the Long Beach site. The judge ruled, however, that it was a matter for the party to decide.

After Jack Gargan took over as chair on the first of the year, he called another executive committee meeting and ruled that the convention would be held in St. Paul. Last week, a press conference was held in St. Paul by Gargan and Young to announce that St. Paul would be host for the convention and that the city has been paid the $12,000 site fee.

Gargan admitted that the party had lost a $2,000 deposit it made earlier with the Long Beach center.

Long Beach convention officials refuse to talk about the Reform Party's back-and-forth moves. "You'll have to talk with Ronn Young," one official told the American Reporter, with an edge her voice.