Peace and Freedom Convention Becomes Free-for-All

Peace and freedom lost out to a political free-for-all during the Peace and Freedom Party’s national convention on Saturday as pitched floor fights erupted over the credentials of newly recruited delegates bent on exploiting the party’s coveted ballot status.

At issue for many at the convention, which was held in a Portuguese community social hall in a working-class Oakland neighborhood, was more than the mantle of what is to some voters only a 1960s left-wing anachronism.

Rather, many delegates coveted Peace and Freedom’s status as a “qualified” political party, which would let their candidates’ names appear on the state’s November ballot and thus avoid the usually hopeless fate of write-in campaigns.

The outcome of the convention, which became bogged down in procedural anarchy during its opening session Saturday, could have an impact beyond the party’s tiny membership.

One hopeful, Lenora Fulani, who won the party’s non-binding June presidential primary in California, was seeking the Peace and Freedom nomination to boost her unusually well-organized nationwide campaign to siphon liberal votes from Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis. Her aim is to deny the Democrats the White House and punish Democratic leaders for allegedly ignoring the party’s left wing.

“I want to defeat Michael Dukakis and dump the Democratic Party,” she told a reporter. “I want people of color, progressives and others who have been told they have no choice but the Democratic Party to realize they cannot be taken for granted.”

Fulani’s plans for the party’s nod were frustrated as more than half of the convention’s 200 delegates were challenged as either unqualified or illegal.

Some delegates, mostly those backing Fulani, 38, a New York psychologist, registered as Democrats earlier this year to vote for the Rev. Jesse Jackson in that party’s primary while simultaneously seeking to be elected Peace and Freedom delegates.

Other delegates were challenged because they entered the convention under an unusual and controversial party rule allowing illegal aliens, minors and other “disenfranchised citizens” to come to the convention by gathering enough petition signatures among other party members.

Delegate status is important because the party’s nomination is determined at the convention, not during the primary election. Several veteran party members accused Fulani’s New Alliance Party and other groups of “packing” the convention. Before those matters could even be addressed, the convention wrestled in vain for hours with the dilemma of who could vote on the question of whose votes could be counted. The convention could not even agree whether to break for lunch.

Debates were peppered not only with such conventional parliamentary challenges as “point of order” and “point of information” but such new challenges as “point of sexism,” “point of racism”--even “point of fascism.”

By late afternoon, party leaders conceded they were unable to decide who was eligible to vote and suggested that voting be opened to anybody who walked in the door. More hours of inconclusive debates and half-finished voting could not decide this issue.

The party has 45,207 registered voters--less than 0.4% of the voters in California--according to a May report by the secretary of state. Parties can maintain ballot status by signing up only one-fifteenth of 1% of the state’s registered voters--roughly 8,400 people.