In the context of this discussion, Patrick Buchanan, the ultrarightist who is seeking to be the party's standard-bearer in the presidential elections, has come to Minnesota to win support. At a news conference February 18 Buchanan said that even if the Minnesota organization severs ties with the national party he will fight to get on the Minnesota ballot as the Reform Party candidate. Buchanan, who broke from the Republican Party last year to seek the Reform Party nomination, stated, "I believe he [Ventura] has run away from...a good fight for the people of Minnesota...on ideas and issues."

One of the reasons Ventura gave for his rupture with the national party was that Buchanan "is virtually unopposed in the quest for the Reform Party nomination."

"In Minnesota," he said, "we cannot maintain our socially moderate identity while a right-winger heads our national ticket." The Minnesota governor charged Buchanan with being "an antiabortion extremist and unrealistic isolationist," and accused him of links to Louisiana Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

Buchanan called this an "unjustified smear." "We do not seek [Duke's] endorsement and...we do not want it," he said. He defended his positions against abortion rights and for U.S. trade protectionism.

Real estate tycoon Donald Trump, who had been testing the waters for the Reform Party nomination with Ventura's blessing, ended his bid after Ventura's secession.

The day after Ventura left the national Reform Party, the party's national committee met in Nashville and dumped the party chairman Jack Gargan, a Ventura ally who was elected chair at the party's national convention last July. The raucous meeting in Nashville replaced Gargan with Pat Choate, who was Ross Perot's running mate in the 1996 presidential race.

Up until this meeting Choate was national chair of Buchanan's presidential campaign but resigned from this position after his election to the top party post. A federal judge in Virginia has ordered Gargan to give the court control of $2.5 million in federal matching funds until it can determine who is at the party's helm.

Following the Nashville meeting some party leaders have initiated an effort to draft Perot into a third try for president. This move is aimed at countering Buchanan's effort to be the party's presidential candidate. In a statement reported by the Associated Press, Buchanan said Perot "would be a formidable challenger for the nomination" but pledged to go ahead with his campaign.

Earlier in the month Buchanan defended Austrian fascist Jörg Haider, saying that he does "not see any threat to Europe or the world or anywhere form Mr. Haider or that coalition government sitting in Vienna."  
 
 
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