October 29, 1999

POLITICAL MEMO

Buchanan's Reform Tour Is Snubbed by Ventura

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Related Articles

Buchanan Bolts G.O.P. for Reform Party Run (Oct. 26, 1999)

Campaigns: White House 2000 -- Patrick J. Buchanan (Ref.)

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By FRANCIS X. CLINES

INNEAPOLIS -- It is a different world for Patrick J. Buchanan as he works the political fringe, going forth as a makeover candidate stumping somewhere between Republican pariah and Reform Party swain.

He had joked that retailoring his failed Republican Presidential candidacy for the Reform Party might occasion at least a body-slam, if not a blessing, from Gov. Jesse Ventura of Minnesota, the wrestler-turned-Reform Party power broker. Instead, Buchanan's requested courtesy call was snubbed Thursday as he passed by on his new mission to storm the Reform ticket.

"If he thinks for one minute that he's going to step into my party and automatically be crowned the candidate, he's sadly mistaken," Governor Ventura gruffly noted.

"Pitchfork brigade" loyalists have been in evidence this week as Buchanan has taken his venture on a five-state tour. More than 500 cheered him at a rally in a Detroit suburb on Tuesday night. Two-hundred-fifty more ate barbecue in Piggie Park on Wednesday night in West Columbia, S.C., delighted to hear the candidate defend the Confederate flag, attack China as a persecutor of Christians and rail against the two major parties with their "Doublemint twin" candidates.

"Free at last!" Buchanan exulted after finding out what it was like to campaign as a non-Republican at a factory line in Gaffney, S.C. But his initial stabs at third-party politicking have hardly been free of baggage.

The morning after he scrapped his lifelong calling to the Republican Party, Buchanan was offered precious television time on two networks. It was this sound biter's dream, the chance to boost his Reform agenda.

But the interviewers continued to focus on his controversial attitude toward Hitler, not the North American Free Trade Agreement. And they asked about his willingness to debate not George W. Bush or Al Gore but Donald J. Trump, the profoundly inexperienced but garrulous political outsider. Trump has been denouncing Buchanan as an anti-Semitic "wacko" and has been threatening to challenge him for the Reform nomination.

Thus Buchanan, while hoping for a fresh stake as a mainline Presidential contender, finds himself having to fight off a descent into a tabloid culture that has endlessly nurtured Trump.

Buchanan would prefer to be grilled about his America First Presidential agenda. Instead he had to tell one interviewer about a past call, carefully culled from the record, that Christianity must be recognized as the moral foundation for American society. "I believe that Christianity is the true faith," Buchanan declared, exasperated and defensive. "I would like all folks to come to it, but I believe America's Constitution forbids a religious test."

This may not be the stuff of vision, but it is an unavoidable part of early sparring. "We ought to be talking about where America goes in the world," Buchanan complained.

"He's a fading lion," said Rich Williamson, the state Republican chairman in Illinois who worked with Buchanan in the Reagan White House. "His problem is that after winning the New Hampshire primary in '96 he actually thought he had a chance to be President. Pat's never recovered; he doesn't know his time has come and gone."

For Buchanan, the intoxication of politics is in the crowd that delighted him for its size on Tuesday night in Warren, Mich. Afterwards, he recalled "the fire" of his cheering loyalists in New Hampshire in 1996 when he defeated the Republican front-runner, Bob Dole. "I thought, 'This thing is on fire again,' " he enthused.

The Buchanan stump speech featured signature red-meat lines against Government "elites," heavily laced with dashes of isolationism. "Why don't we bring our soldiers home and protect the borders of Texas?" he asked, rousing the crowd at Piggie Park in combining his call for a freeze on immigration and his opposition to global commitments.

"Pat's a great American," said Maurice Bessinger, who arranged the tangy fund-raiser in his West Columbia barbecue restaurant, where the Christian pamphlets are next to the toothpicks. "Pat's fighting against giving up our sovereignty to one-world government," Bessinger said in a typical comment on the Buchanan trail.

The candidate is avidly knocking the rust off his battle armor. He is speech-writing a different drummer for his old Republican pitchfork brigades, insisting they will penetrate the Reform Party's arcane nominating process and secure him the nomination. Talk of having to fight Trump or Governor Ventura leaves Buchanan complementing them in a generous tone as "colorful gentlemen." But he flatly pronounces himself the instant front-runner for his new political Grail.

At the heart of his party-switching, Buchanan visualizes not so much winning the Presidency as forcing his way into the debates of the major party candidates. He plans to attract attention by merrily storming the Reform line with his insurgents. The risk is that he will become merely a leitmotif for the two major nominees in moments of media boredom.

"I figure I'll be at about 15 percent in the polls by July," insisted Buchanan, who had faded to single digits in the Republican polls. "Then there's no way to keep me out of the television debates," he said.

"And, if I get in the debate, why then it's up to me and the free media skills I have," he said with a cocky smile before being interrupted by a tiny gray-haired woman who actually curtsied before him at the Carolina barbecue.

"My candidate!" said the woman, Sarah Steagall, secretary-treasurer of the Reform Party in South Carolina. She offered a dumpling smile of endorsement, but a minute later confided that the third-party field was not exactly closed. "I'm on Donald Trump's mailing list, too," she noted, watching Buchanan seek out the local television reporters. They were recording his America First riffs but asking more about rivals named Ventura and Trump, not Bush and Gore. "Trump is sending me pictures of himself," Ms. Steagall beamed on the fringe of things. "Very expensive pictures. In color."