Courtesy of Kevin Dean in the SPUSA. (And sorry I sent on the Libertarian satire song, to lbo, been too swamped to see that Doug had already sent it on via Frances Bolton.)
Michael Pugliese
FULANI RESIGNS AS BUCHANAN CO-CHAIR, DROPS ENDORSEMENT
Text of resignation letter:
June 18, 2000
Patrick Buchanan Buchanan Reform 8233 Old Courthouse Road Suite 200 Vienna, VA 22182 Via fax and courier
Dear Pat,
This letter is my resignation as co-chair of Buchanan Reform 2000.
When you first made your decision to leave the Republican Party and join the
Reform Party to seek its presidential nomination, you and your campaign manager Bay Buchanan approached me, asking for support for your candidacy. My
decision to give that support was based on several premises. First, that you
would seek to unify the party and thereby project it as a party open to all
the American people. I strongly recommended to you that you not take sides in
the internecine fights between those allied with Ross Perot and those allied
with Jesse Ventura and that you make a substantial investment in reaching out
to the party's independent sector. I advised you to use your stature as a public figure - and my support of your candidacy - to bring people in the party together.
Second, we acknowledged and agreed that we had pervasive differences on social issues. However, your support for the party's core principle of political reform and our agreement on many matters concerning trade and foreign policy was sufficient basis for an alliance. I felt comfortable with
our disagreements. Indeed, I thought they enhanced the projection of our partnership as a left/right coalition - a construct which has been central to
the principles of the Reform Party from the beginning. In November, I publicly endorsed your candidacy for the Reform Party nomination and accepted
a position as a co-chair of the Buchanan campaign.
You then began to concern yourself with the task of accessing the ballot, qualifying for the Reform Party primary and positioning yourself to win the
nomination. At that point disputes began to break out within various state
parties which were electing delegates to our National Convention. I attempted
to mediate numbers of these "on the ground" disputes.
My position was and remains that you had every right to bring your forces into Reform and to have them participate fully in the organizational life of
the party. Insofar as your forces overwhelmed anemic state organizations and
captured delegate seats as a result, it is my opinion that you were entitled
to do so. My sole concern was the extent to which your actions "on the ground" were contributing to polarizing, rather than unifying the disparate
forces in the party, having the destructive effect of driving scores of activists away. In various situations I made recommendations to you about how
to proceed to help you win friends and propel the party forward. In a few cases, you took my advice. In many you did not. That was, of course, your prerogative and your call.
More and more scenarios unfolded at the state level that caused further dissension in the party. In particular, you blocked with the Dallas-led forces, helping them to regain strength they had lost at the Dearborn convention when more than 60% of the delegates - mine included - voted to reject the Dallas leadership and elected Jack Gargan as chair. Again, you had
every right to make that choice, though you risked alienating the party's independents by doing so.
This pattern reached its pinnacle at the National Committee meeting in Nashville where you, over my strenuous objections and my concerted efforts to
reunify the party, directed your allies to vote with Dallas to remove Gargan
from the chairmanship. During the credentialing process, when the vote to seat the New York Independence Party delegation allied with me was nearly ratified, your supporters suddenly switched their votes to recognize the rival Jack Essenberg delegation (whose legitimacy had just been struck down
by the courts), which provided the votes needed to assure Gargan's removal.
That was a critical turning point in the party's internal affairs. Not only
was the party hopelessly split, but you demonstrated that you were more than
willing to "stick it" to your friends, as well as your enemies, to achieve
your own (and in this case, Dallas') ends. Though you now call for unity and
have made an appeal to the party to overlook disagreements and come together,
your appeal is unfortunately five months too late.
Many in the party are now upset and unhappy with you and your campaign. Some
have deliberately fed the media's insatiable appetite for controversy and scandal. While I don't agree with how you have handled many situations and
while we disagree - as we have from the start - on social issues, I respect
your right to make your own decisions. However, those decisions have had ramifications and it is those ramifications I wish to address and which cause
me to tender my resignation as co-chair of your campaign effective immediately.
After the initial announcement of my endorsement of your candidacy - an announcement that explicitly put forth a new right/left coalition and proclaimed your intention to broaden your base beyond its social conservative
borders - you began to backtrack off of that promise. You shaped your actual
campaign - both inside and outside the party - to appeal to a narrow constituency in ways that increasingly excluded me, my adherents inside the
party and the base to which I relate.
Some people have vocally criticized you for being a social conservative and
have rejected your candidacy on that basis. That is not my issue. I never objected to you or your social conservative followers becoming part of a non-ideological pro-reform coalitional party. To the contrary, I welcomed you. But I must and do object to your efforts to transform the party into a
party of and for only social conservatives.
As I told you when you and I met last week, I believe that decision was and
is a mistake. You and Bay have both told me that the choices you made were,
in large measure, determined by what the Brigades would and wouldn't accept,
and that they wouldn't accept a broadening of your message and your associations. You may be right. However, throughout the course of our partnership I have met many of your followers who enthusiastically welcomed
me and our coalition. I remain touched by their desire to go beyond the divisions that afflict our country. While this particular effort failed, I
believe that millions of Americans are seeking leaders capable of bringing
ordinary people from across the political spectrum together.
You now appear to be close to succeeding in your goal. Thus the issue for me
became whether there was any role for me in your campaign. When you and I met, we discussed much of this history and I put a proposal on the table. I
asked you to support me for the position of National Chair at our upcoming
convention. As a founder of the party, having received 45% of the vote for
Vice Chair in Dearborn last year, as a leader of the party's largest state
affiliate and having been a part of the Buchanan coalition from the beginning, supporting me for chair was the test of whether you still intended
to broaden your coalition and maintain the party's commitment to left/center/right alliances. You and Bay rejected my request. You have thus
indicated to me that you are fully committed to using your campaign to change
the fundamental character of the Reform Party in a direction that most American independents do not support.
Consequently, I withdraw my endorsement of your bid for the Reform nomination
and I resign my position as co-chair of your campaign. I continue to be a "card-carrying member" of the Reform Party and an active participant in all
of its affairs and those of the state party I proudly serve.
Respectfully,
Lenora Fulani
==================================================================== Brought to you by BuffNET http://www.buffnet.net