Buchanan consolidated his grip over the party leading up to the Long Beach, California, national convention. There, he named Ezola Foster, an African American woman who is a member of the ultraright John Birch Society, as his vice-presidential running mate. She had served as a co-chair in Buchanan's 1996 presidential bid and in late April the ultrarightist candidate named her as a national co-chair of his current campaign.

"She has stood up for flag and family, God and country her whole life," said Buchanan. "And when I left [the Republican Party] to go to the Reform Party, she came with me," he added, citing her loyalty.

Two days before the national convention, which began August 10, the Reform Party held a closed-door national committee meeting. Buchanan's opponents, many of whom were supporters of Reform Party founder Ross Perot, backed John Hagelin for the party's presidential ticket. Hagelin, a physicist who was a two-time presidential candidate on the Natural Law Party ticket, asserted that he was the true Reform Party candidate.

Local cops were called when a shoving and shouting match broke out. Buchanan's opponents, about one-quarter of the 120 delegates attending, stormed out and held their own national committee session, then a convention, two blocks away.

When they tried to explain their version of the meeting to reporters and camera crews, Buchananites drowned them out, chanting: "Go Pat go! Go Pat go!" When Buchanan's opponents shouted back, "Go, John, go!" Buchanan remarked, "You don't know this peasant army." One opponent, Jim Mangia, who was the party's national secretary, accused Buchanan's supporters of "brown shirt tactics" that included physical assaults.

On the first day of the convention, Hagelin's supporters announced they had filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission. Both groups claim the Reform Party mantle and are battling for $12.6 million in federal campaign funds due to the Reform Party's presidential candidate. In addition, the party is listed as the Reform Party in half the states, and Hagelin allies vowed to contest Buchanan for the ballot slot.

Meanwhile, the right-wing candidate stepped up his demagogic appeals at the Long Beach convention, lacing his remarks with anticapitalist, national socialist rhetoric. "I began my campaign, 18 months ago, in a tiny steel town in West Virginia called Weirton," Buchanan said. "The workers of Weirton and their families were being betrayed by Bill Clinton and sacrificed to the gods of the Global economy." Buchanan, who blurs class issues and takes the fire off the bosses where workers are engaged in struggle, said, "I told those steel workers we would stand with them...working together, the Buchanan Brigades, the Reform Party, and the union folks of Weirton."  
 
'A new, populist, conservative party'
Many bourgeois commentators and other media pundits treated the Reform Party convention as a sideshow. Noting the split in the organization and the tussle over millions in federal funds, they have written off the organization as "dying the usual death" of capitalist third parties. "While still technically alive, the Reform movement is suffering the fate of every third party established in the United States since the Republican Party was founded in 1860," wrote Los Angeles Times reporter Cathleen Decker. Its "decline was predictable."

The opposite, however, is the case. "The Reform Party...is here to stay if we are on the ballot," said Buchanan on the August 6 "Fox News Sunday" television show. "This is the one reason I've joined it, to make it a permanent institution in America." That same day he said on "Face the Nation," another TV program, "We are building a new populist, conservative, traditionalist Reform Party."

In 1992 the Reform Party presidential candidate Ross Perot won 19 percent of the vote, appealing to economically insecure and discontented layers of the middle classes. He promised to bring economic security with an iron will and clean out waste and fraud in the government. After Perot declined to take the helm of the party this past year, his allies urged Buchanan to join them and seek the Reform Party nomination.

Perot's reactionary demagogy paved the road for the incipient fascist politician, who unlike Perot is not primarily concerned with electoral success. Buchanan easily defeated Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura in a fight to control the national party, and dealt blows to rightist Lenora Fulani, a leader of the New York Reform Party, after a temporary alliance helped him secure his domination of the organization.

A third party with ballot status and federal funding has been captured by an ultrarightist. This marks a departure in U.S. politics. Buchanan, who has one foot in capitalist electoral politics and the other in forging a cadre that is preparing to fight in the streets against picket lines and mobilizations of working people, appeals to better off layers in the working class and to middle-class people who anticipate economic difficulties and social conflict down the road.

A political regroupment of ultrarightist forces has begun within the Reform Party, which now includes members of the John Birch Society and supporters of the Spotlight newspaper. Buchanan's campaign has previously attracted white supremacists, right-wing militia groups, and anti-Semitic elements. The overtly racist Council of Conservative Citizens, however, has distanced itself from Buchanan for picking a Black person as his running mate. "Buchanan picks unqualified Black woman as running mate," the organization stated on its web site.

"If we lose them, then I say good-bye, I'm not interested in them," said Angela Buchanan, chief campaign strategist for the ultrarightist politician, referring to reactionary forces uneasy with Foster on the Reform Party national ticket.  
 
Chauvinist appeal to Blacks
By naming Foster as his running mate Buchanan aims to blunt accusations of racism against his campaign, while pitching his "America First" appeal. Her candidacy complements Buchanan's assault on affirmative action and immigrant rights as he attempts to foster divisions among working people.

"She'll be an ambassador to America for what this party is all about. This shows that we are a party that is open to everybody," said Buchanan. "It is Black Americans--and especially many of those in California--who are the ones who have to go through ferocious competition for jobs in factories and 7-11s and things from huge numbers of illegal aliens coming in."

Foster, no novice at reactionary demagogy, served 33 years as a teacher and school administrator in the California school system. She has run for California state assembly twice, losing both times. Foster campaigned vigorously for California's Proposition 187, the 1994 ballot initiative that would have banned undocumented immigrants from receiving public services.

Echoing Buchanan's immigrant-bashing, she stated, "We are concerned about our American children and our American schools. We are concerned about our American workers." During a hearing of the Congressional Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims, Foster called for putting the U.S. military "on the border of Mexico to insure domestic tranquillity."

A staunch advocate for cops, Foster defended the widely-known police assault on Rodney King. In a 1993 interview with the Chicago Tribune, she asserted, "They were acting according to the training they received from the police department. They were acting in the line of duty."

Currently president of Americans for Family Values and past president of the California chapter of the John Birch Society, Foster stands firmly in defense of her reactionary positions. She went on a speakers tour for the John Birch Society in 1998. When asked about the opposition of Black rights organizations to the Confederate battle flag being displayed prominently at government buildings, she remarked, "The Confederate flag...is to be honored as part of our history.... It's not a racial issue."

In his acceptance speech, Buchanan focused heavily on American nationalist themes, claiming the World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund--institutions dominated by U.S. imperialism--violate U.S. sovereignty. His message tries to get workers thinking of themselves as "Americans" first, rather than part of an exploited international class with interests diametrically opposed to those of the capitalist class. "I will personally tell [UN secretary-general] Kofi Annan: Your UN lease has run out; you will be moving out of the United States, and if you are not gone by year's end, I will send you ten thousand Marines to help you pack your bags."

"When I become President all U.S. troops will come home from Kosovo, Kuwait, and Korea," Buchanan said, driving home his anti-worker, anti-immigrant speech, "and I will put them on the borders of Arizona, Texas, and California, and we will start putting America first."  
 
 
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