Who Is Reform Party’s Man? States Sort It Out

The confusion created at the Reform Party’s fractious nominating convention two weeks ago has spread to the states, where election officials are trying to sort out which candidate--Pat Buchanan or John Hagelin--belongs on their ballots.

In Iowa, for example, one man’s name may be drawn from a hat.

How many ballots a candidate appears on could help determine who gets the $12.6 million in federal funds due the Reform Party’s presidential candidate. Acknowledging that, Buchanan supporters filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday to prevent Hagelin from calling himself the Reform Party’s candidate in everything from his speeches to his pamphlets and Web site.

Hagelin, who was campaigning in Los Angeles on Tuesday, asserts that he left the main Reform convention in Long Beach with support from a sizable bloc of party members, including one of its founders. He has charged that conservative commentator Buchanan unfairly seized control of the party and corrupted the mail-in primary--which Hagelin lost--that was to determine the Reform nominee.

Regardless, Hagelin, a physicist, has received more attention in 2000 than in his previous two presidential campaigns as the Natural Law Party’s candidate.

“He’s had more [television] appearances in the last two weeks than he’s had in his lifetime . . . so obviously people are confused,” said Gerry Moan, the chairman of the pro-Buchanan Reform faction that filed Tuesday’s lawsuit.

The complaint will be heard next Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in Lynchburg, Va., Moan said. Last April, the same judge, Norman K. Moon, awarded control of the Reform Party to a group that included Moan and Buchanan supporters.

A ruling in Buchanan’s favor could bolster his case with the Federal Election Commission that he alone deserves the $12.6 million in taxpayer money that Reform earned for its 2000 campaign. The amount was based on Ross Perot’s performance as the party’s 1996 candidate.

The FEC is just beginning to sort it all out. “There is the possibility that you could have more than one qualified candidate,” said FEC spokeswoman Sharon Snyder, “and there are legal questions that we have not had to address before.”

The commission won’t begin deliberations until one or both candidates can prove they will appear on at least 10 state ballots in November, a threshold neither Buchanan nor Hagelin had met as of Tuesday.

There is similar confusion in the states, which use their own rules to determine the names on their presidential ballots. Iowa announced Tuesday that, lacking any clear Reform candidate, the secretary of state on Thursday will draw either Buchanan or Hagelin’s name from a “receptacle”--probably a hat. The winner will be listed on November’s ballot as the Reform candidate, but the runner-up will still be listed as a candidate “nominated by petition.”

Montana will hold a similar drawing on Thursday, but only the winner will be listed on the state’s ballot. In Connecticut, Moan said, election officials have threatened to throw the Reform Party off the ballot if both Buchanan’s and Hagelin’s names are submitted.

Buchanan is currently the Reform candidate on California’s ballot because he was named by the Reform Party organization that the secretary of state recognizes. Hagelin is expected to be listed as the Natural Law candidate, said Alfie Charles, spokesman for Secretary of State Bill Jones.

“It shouldn’t be an extremely complex issue in California,” Charles said, “but other states are going to have a more difficult time of it.”