Dissidents Decide to Leave Reform Party

A dissident faction of former presidential candidate Ross Perot’s Reform Party decided to go it alone Saturday after failing to resolve their differences with Perot loyalists.

The self-described National Reform Party Steering Committee believes Perot wields too much power in a group they say was intended not just to support the Texas billionaire’s bids for the White House but to build a third major political party in the United States.

Late Saturday, spokeswoman Carolyn Guillot of Santa Monica said the steering committee decided to “hold a democratically called founding convention totally unaffiliated” with the original Perot party no later than Oct. 15.

The steering committee, a group of 50 current and former Reform Party members from 16 states, met at a suburban hotel.

“When we started this party, it was going to be the party with no special-interest money,” said Nelisse Muga. The San Diego woman helped with a drive to collect voter registrations to create a new Reform Party ticket in time for the 1996 presidential election.

“Now special-interest money runs the Reform Party, Ross Perot’s money,” she said.

The Reform Party elected national leadership at a meeting of state delegations in Nashville in January. An inaugural convention is being planned for this fall.

Party dissidents first gathered in Schaumberg, Ill., last October, after former Colorado Gov. Richard D. Lamm lost the Reform Party presidential nomination to Perot.

Some felt the nomination process was unfair. Others were upset with a decision from Perot’s headquarters in Dallas that the party would support no candidates for Congress in 1996. They allege tendencies toward Dallas despotism have grown since.

After the Schaumberg meeting, the dissident group applied to the Federal Election Commission for recognition as the Reform Party’s national governing body. In March, the commission closed its case on the matter, saying it had received insufficient information to decide.

Russell Verney, chairman of the Perot party’s national organizing committee, showed up at Saturday’s meeting to plead for peace.

“We can’t steer ourselves in a circle and fire inward. We have more than enough work for all of us to do positively,” Verney said.

Some dissidents agreed.

“My own impression is you’re just losing members and wasting time,” said Chuck Hunting, 40, of Dallas, Ore. “Let’s kiss and make up and get on with this.”

However, some felt Perot’s shadow over the third-party movement has grown too large for compromise.

“We have to break with [Perot] completely and build this party from the bottom up,” said Howard Johnson, 55, of Jacksonville, Fla.

Some former Reform Party members from New Jersey have already jumped ship to a state-level third party known as the Conservative Party.

“Don’t worry about Dallas. Go home and build up your state parties, and Dallas will need you in 2000,” said Frank Conrad, 53, of Beechwood, N.J., a Conservative Party volunteer.