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CONVERSATION

The Evolving Third Force

A conversation with
David Belmont

Thursday, November 9, 1995

David Belmont is a national organizer with the Patriot Party. He is based in New York City. Beginning in 1979 with the New Alliance Party, Belmont has worked on three presidential campaigns. He was Ballot Access Coordinator for Dr. Lenora B. Fulani when, in 1988, she became the first African-American and the first woman in history to gain access to the ballot in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia and qualify for federal matching funds. He spoke about his experience with party organization and independent politics during a telephone interview.

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CONTENTS

Roots of New Alliance
Campaign '88
Campaign '92
Fundraising
Media Exposure
After New Hampshire
Insurgency Strategy
Challenging the System
Double Standard
'92 Goals
Enter Perot
Process-Oriented Party
Patriot Party
California in Campaign '96
Perot Voters
Party Organization
Independents in '96
After '96



THEME KEY
David Belmont

Candidates Parties Electorate Strategy Issues Media Money Ballot Access
Media Exposure

After New Hampshire

Enter Perot 		Roots of New Alliance

Campaign '92

Patriot Party

California in '96

Party Organization

Independents in '96

After '96 		Roots of New Alliance

Process-Oriented Party

Perot Voters 		Campaign '88

After New Hampshire

Insurgency Strategy

Challenging the System

'92 Goals

Enter Perot

Process-Oriented Party

Party Organization 		Roots of New Alliance

Campaign '88

Campaign '92

Double Standard

'92 Goals

Enter Perot

After '96 		Fundraising

Media Exposure

Insurgency Strategy 		Campaign '88

Campaign '92

Fundraising 		Campaign '88

After New Hampshire

Challenging the System

Double Standard

California in '96
Candidates Parties Electorate Strategy Issues Media Money Ballot Access

Roots of New Alliance

The New Alliance Party was founded in 1979 in New York City. The key issues we built the party on were democracy and the need for the Black, Latino, gay, liberal wing of the Democratic Party to go independent. By democracy we mean the thorough-going restructuring of the American political process to make it more democratic, to make room for more viewpoints, for genuine dialogue, not just opinions, but where people would be empowered to be participants in a real decision making process. We felt at the time (and still do) that the major impediment to that was the two-party system. . .the two-party monopoly. At the time, we were the only political force we knew that was talking this language. We, in fact, felt it was more important to address the political process than it was to have the most correct platform in the world.

We've come out of the left I suppose. I mean, we were an independent Left organization; we're not a split from another left grouping. Historically, the Left has either subsumed itself into the Democratic Party or stayed out of electoral politics. We and the Greens are the only Left forces doing anything serious electorally.

We justifiably feel that a genuine Left viewpoint is absent from the American political dialogue, but that's neither here nor there. There are many viewpoints that are absent from the American political dialogue. The process is entirely controlled by the people who bought it off. You can call it what you want. If you want to call it Big Business, that's fine. If you want to call it intrusive government, that's equally true.

When we started doing little party building efforts in the early '80s, we were talking to people saying, "What we're about is more democracy. What do you think?" And people said, "I think I am powerless. I think I'm being ripped off. I think my taxes go to stuff I don't even know about." We were saying in the mid-80s that there was going to be an electoral revolution in this country, it was just a matter of time. If folks could find a vehicle, if there was an independent candidate with enough resources. In fact, Fulani's presidential campaign committee in 1988 was called Lenora B. Fulani's Committee for Fair Elections. And that's all we talked about.
[CONTENTS] [THEME KEY]

Campaign '88

Eighty-eight was our biggest campaign. That's when we achieved ballot access in all 50 states.

1988 was our campaign to establish that the barriers that impede independent politics could be overcome as a way of demonstrating the structural inequities in the mainstream, to make the structural monopolization of the electoral process by the Democratic and Republican parties more visible. I mean, independent presidential candidates have to collect 20 times the number of signatures as major party presidential candidates to get on all the state ballots. [See Winger, Ballot Access for Minor Presidential Candidates.] And we did that. We had to sue 12 states over outrageous ballot restrictions in order to accomplish this, not to mention collect over 1.2 million signatures. The Libertarians had done 50 states but had never found a way to reach the mainstream with the inequity issue. [See Redpath, Ballot Access - The View from the Street.] We attempted that and pulled it off with modest success. Our fundraising success (we qualified for matching funds and raised almost $2 million in total) was a measure of the responsiveness of grassroots Americans to this message.

The other main arena in which we publicized the lack of democracy in the major party dominated electoral process was the presidential debates. I mean, here was the first Black candidate, the first woman candidate to get on the ballot in all 50 states, she has matching funds. . .and the debate sponsors are not including her in the debates. We sued the League of Women Voters and the Internal Revenue Service in some very creative legal actions over this. We began to carve out a public dialogue within legal, media and political circles as to the barriers to and the need for independent political options.

It was a very untraditional campaign in this regard. We weren't trumpeting this or that social issue or economic program. We were championing democracy, opening up the process. . .in our activities as well as our words. We spend virtually all the money we raised getting on the ballot, doing these lawsuits, doing some media and candidate public appearances about democracy.
[CONTENTS] [THEME KEY]

Campaign '92

Going into '92 for real put ourselves on the map as a "major" minor party, one that was able to run a full-fledged national campaign. In '92 we ran a very different campaign. We were looking to impact on the national dialogue, and we actually ran Fulani in the the Democratic primary in New Hampshire while we were preparing an independent run, a 40-state run. In '92 we did 40 states, spent considerably less money and resources.

We were looking to bring the issue of democracy, the unfairness and exclusivity of the political process into the national political dialogue in a major way. We wanted to impact on the dialogue in the presidential campaign. I think we did this rather creatively. We got started on our matching funds drive early. Our initial payment, in December of '91, was $642,000. At that point, Fulani had more matching funds than all the major party candidates except Tom Harkin. This wasn't just bucks, it was news, front page of the New York Daily News in fact.

And we wanted to impact with that money, spend it wisely. Certainly in '92, the Democratic Primary in New Hampshire was the beginning of the dialogue in the major presidential campaign. Remember, there were a lot of relatively big name Democrats running; it was a wide open field. As the incumbent president, Bush had the Republican nomination sewn up, although Buchanan upset the apple cart with a 37% showing (that was the first sign of Bush's vulnerability). But the Democratic side was where the competition and more intense dialogue was at. Clinton had the shrewdest campaign with the best organization (and the backing of the Democratic Leadership Council) but he had not yet established himself as the front-runner. Remember, Tsongas won New Hampshire.

Fulani was able to establish herself as the insurgent candidate with the money (the large matching funds payment) and the message. It wasn't about votes. It was about impact. For example, we put out this booklet (and distributed tens of thousands of them up there) that put out the position that the lack of democracy in the U.S. over the past 40 years had killed the American economy. Remember, the big debate in New Hampshire was over the economy. To my knowledge, we were the first campaign to make that statement, to hold the political process, the politicians of both major parties accountable for the economic problems in this country. This was months before Perot came on the scene with basically that message. A lot of Americans believe this message. . .and they're right.

Our campaign in New Hampshire also featured lawsuits, public relations offensives and mass pickets protesting/challenging Fulani's exclusion from the major debates and forums. It set up an intense antagonism between the Fulani campaign and the Democratic Party candidates, which would later play out in a highly publicized challenge to Senator Paul Tsongas' fraudulent New York nominating petitions and Fulani's highly publicized encounter with Bill Clinton at Harlem Hospital. More on this later.
[CONTENTS] [THEME KEY]

Fundraising

We are grassroots fund-raisers. We raised $4 million during the '92 campaign and the average contribution was $24. We had a street canvass and a door-to-door canvass in various states, most notably California. California is a state with a strong tradition of giving grassroots money. I think at the peak of our fundraising effort we had 40 people raising money full-time in California alone.

$4 million is chopped liver relative to the major parties. But it's a significant amount of money to raise. . .and it took a lot of work. It just barely gets you in the game. Perot is so rich that he didn't have that problem with his '92 campaign. The presidential candidate is allowed to spend unlimited amounts of their own money on the campaign. Otherwise, the contribution limit is $1,000 for an individual. [See Campaign Financing Laws.]
[CONTENTS] [THEME KEY]

Media Exposure

By 1992, Fulani had nearly ten years of experience being in front of the media. She'd gotten real good. When she first started running for office, the media treated her as fringe, as a joke. They'd put her on novelty shows. She really went through it all. . .it was pretty humiliating. But, she was on the air when local talk radio first took off. She's built herself into a real spokesperson. It's now to the point that when CNN needs the independent Black perspective on anything that happens, they call up Lenora Fulani. She's taken seriously, has relationships with leaders in the media, with international figures. This took a lot of time and hard work, but it paid off.
[CONTENTS] [THEME KEY]

After New Hampshire

One of the more pernicious control mechanisms in American politics is the way the media tells you who the "real" candidates are. So, in the New Hampshire Democratic primary it was the "big six" and then Wilder dropped out and it became the "big five." A few primaries later it had whittled down to the "big three" (Clinton, Tsongas, Brown).

In New Hampshire, we met Larry Agran, former mayor of Irvine, California and current director of CityVote. He was running in the Democratic primary. He was raising this issue. He was saying, "Why is the media telling you who the 'real' candidates are? We're all on the ballot here." And he was talking loud. He actually busted into a debate with Fulani at one forum. That's where we met him, on the way to storming the stage! He wanted to go the distance in the Democratic primaries. We were set on an independent run. So, what we did was join forces with him on a number of projects, most notably the New York primary.

As I said earlier, we started in New York. We have a lot of experience with New York ballot access, including the intricacies of the technical requirements which make it tough for candidates to stay on the ballot in New York. So we were able to get Agran on the ballot in the New York primary. We also put Eugene McCarthy on the ballot. This put us in the position to have a couple of high profile fights with some of the media-anointed Democratic Party big shots.

You see back in New Hampshire, Fulani and Rev. Al Sharpton did a press conference where they basically said that the so-called "major" Democratic Party candidates would not be welcome in the Black community in New York because they excluded Fulani from the debates and forums during the New Hampshire primary. So, when Bill Clinton showed up at Harlem Hospital for what was basically a photo opportunity, Fulani confronted him. Bill got his Harlem picture in the paper all right, but the picture included Fulani standing up on a chair castigating him for his lack of democracy. It ended up on the front page of virtually every newspaper in the country.
[CONTENTS] [THEME KEY]

Insurgency Strategy

Then there was the Tsongas challenge. Paul Tsongas ran an off-again, on-again campaign. But he did attempt to make the ballot in New York. His petition was invalid, through and through. One, he didn't collect enough signatures. At the time, 10,000 valid were needed. He collected barely 12,500 raw signatures, nowhere near enough to have enough good ones in New York. Second, his petition was fraudulent. In New York primary petitioning, the circulators of the petition (called "witnesses" in New York) sign a statement on each page that they personally collected the signatures and that they are enrolled members of the party. Well, his witnesses signed off on signatures they didn't collect. This is standard practice in petition drives that are having trouble making the signatures. You're desperate, you cut corners. But it's fraud. We had hard proof of this. His campaign had hired students from out of town, mainly Massachusetts (which is where he is from), and bussed them into New York to gather signatures. The students collected the signatures, brought them into office where enrolled Democrats signed off on their work. We have tape recordings of several students who stated that this was the case. And, third, he paid the students $0.50 per signature. That's illegal in New York; you can pay petition circulators, but not by the signature (piece work).

So, we challenged his petition. This is a little known practice; it's not done in most states. But it's state of the art in New York politics. And we were trained in it. We grew up in New York, ran all our early campaigns there. In fact, when we did our first ballot drives in other states (in '84 when we ran an independent presidential candidate in 33 states), we thought the whole nation was into petition challenges and were pleasantly surprised to find out that this was not the case.

You see, our initial New York City campaigns were run on what we called the "inside-outside" tactic. We ran candidates both in the Democratic primary and as independents in the general election. This is not legal in most states ("sore losers" laws prohibit it) but allowed in New York. So, in the Democratic primary, our candidates (mainly community folks. . .Black, Latino) would face the heat of challenges by the Democratic Party machine using the hypertechnical requirements of New York election law. We took it on the chin more than a few times, but we learned the craft. So, when Tsongas filed an incredibly weak, fraudulent petition, and we had hard evidence of it, we figured this was another opportunity to play high profile hardball politics. And his petition was in big time trouble and everybody knew it: his people knew it, the political reporters knew it, the elections officials knew it.
[CONTENTS] [THEME KEY]

Challenging the System

Then we also challenged, Paul Tsongas had withdrawn but not withdrawn by that point, and he was attempting access to the ballot in New York. We challenged him and had the goods on him and had a high profile petition against his New York petition. In fact, they had to pass a law to keep him on the ballot.

It is actually a challenge to a filed petition. This is somewhat, though this happens in a handful of other states sometimes, this is the state of the art in New York. New York is petition-challenge heaven. See, we grew up in New York. We thought the whole nation was this way.

See, our initial tactic was we ran our local candidates, both in the Democratic primary and in the general election, as independents. In the Democratic primary they would face the heat of challenges by the Democratic machine using the hypertechnical requirements in New York. You know, we took it on the chin a few times to be sure. We also learned what the game was all about. We would challenge them back, and then when Tsongas filed an incredibly weak and fraudulently-collected petition, and we had hard evidence of that, we figured this is another opportunity to play high profile hard ball politics. And we challenged him.
[CONTENTS] [THEME KEY]

Double Standard

What happened was very exposing of the lack of democracy in the process. Basically, the Democratic Party and the state apparatus (which was Democratic at the time; Cuomo was still governor) rallied around Tsongas. They ruled his way at every turn, tried to prop him up in the media with puff pieces railing against New York's bad election laws. The state legislature even had a bill ready to be passed changing the rules ex post facto in order to insure his place on the ballot. But that allowed us to raise the issue of the double standard and expose this abuse of power. I mean, we're this small force with a history of running predominantly candidates of color in New York City. We take it on the chin all the time from these laws; our candidates are thrown off the ballot. Now this rich white guy running for President with the backing of the major party apparatus, he begins to get preferential treatment. Our rap was: "we're not in favor of these kinds of ballot laws, but if they're on the books, they should apply equally to everyone, don't you think?"

Tsongas made the ballot on hyper-technical grounds that a judge cooked up in a case of creative first impression. But we had made the issue of unfair ballot laws in New York and their double standard application front page news. Tsongas had his Pyrrhic victory. We had made the political point.
[CONTENTS] [THEME KEY]

'92 Goals

Relative to Fulani's '88 campaign, the '92 campaign sought to bring out the democracy issue into the dialogue. Our plan was to steer more of our resources toward penetrating the national debate, to project the issue of democracy relative to the economy, relative to the powerlessness of the American people. Our ballot drive was scaled back, our goal was 40 states (which we did), not all 50. For instance, we decided that we were not going to expend the resources to petition in California (which was over 130,000 valid signatures). Our play was to secure the nomination of the Peace and Freedom Party. Fulani won the primary but was denied the nomination in a sectarian floor fight at the Peace and Freedom presidential nominating convention.

So, even without California and overall less ballot-qualified jurisdictions, we felt we would get more votes in '92 than in '88 (when Fulani got almost 250,000 votes nationally). With Fulani having risen in stature significantly in the intervening years, with our message sharper than ever and getting more of a response, we felt we were going to do better and make ourselves more of a player in whatever evolved post-'92. We've always felt that our party and our constituencies would become part of something larger as independent politics grew. There were going to be other political forces involved.
[CONTENTS] [THEME KEY]

Enter Perot

And then, lo and behold, in April, here comes Ross Perot. This added a whole other dimension to the '92 election. . .and to our campaign. Our theme that Americans should have the right to independent options was suddenly corroborated by a white billionaire independent presidential candidate, who would go on to poll almost 20% of the vote. One of Perot's advisers contacted us for guidance on how to construct a 50-state ballot access drive. Perot did a lot to popularize the intricacies and unfairness of independent ballot access.

It also immediately became clear to us that our chances of topping the our '88 vote had evaporated. But, at the same time, the heightened legitimacy of independent politics made it even more possible for Fulani to insert her message into the campaign and build bridges with the emerging Perot constituency, preparatory to a post-'92 coming together of diverse forces in the independent political movement.

In fact, what Fulani did was say,"Listen, I'm running. If you want to vote for me, that's fine, but vote for an independent. Let's see if we can have the independent vote in this country have a major impact."
[CONTENTS] [THEME KEY]

Process-Oriented Party

The rest of the campaign had us working with, developing situations where we could do joint work with, other independents and beginning to raise the issue of a diverse process-oriented party. Perot was not articulating a social program, in the traditional sense. Here is this clearly major player with major bucks, running as an independent, raising the issues of democracy and the deficit. Those were his two issues: anti-beltway and cutting the federal budget. We knew that perspective to be popular with the American people from our grassroots fundraising, we've talked one-on-one to millions of Americans. We knew there was a basis for a process-oriented party and from a cultural standpoint to a political standpoint, we wanted to insure (to the extent possible) that it would be diverse. Particularly that the Black community, the gay community, communities of color would be included in that.
[CONTENTS] [THEME KEY]

Patriot Party

In the months following the '92 election, we got together with people who came out of Perot's campaign who wanted to go third party immediately. That's what the Patriot Party is, people who came out of the Perot movement in coalition with people who have worked with Fulani and the New Alliance Party, along with a few other independent types from various state parties. In many ways, we have reached our initial goal, as articulated in 1979. For the most party, the New Alliance is now subsumed into a larger, more ethnically and politically diverse organization, the Patriot Party. And the Patriot Party in working in coalition with an emerging, even larger movement which goes by the name of the Reform Party (which Perot is forming for '96).
[CONTENTS] [THEME KEY]

California in Campaign '96

Where Perot got started in '96 was California. He did what he first thought was going to be a petition drive to qualify the Reform Party for the '96 ballot, but then found out that the legal deadline had passed for that. Then they went on a huge registration drive, which was successful. The Patriot Party of California had its own modest registration drive until that point, it had about 8,000 registrants. And Patriot has relationships with all the same political forces who got on board when Perot announced the Reform Party drive, which was basically the United We Stand types. Patriot has its broad base, bases of support in the Black community, gay community, Latino community as well as among what is loosely called the radical white center -- what we call the coalition of the "overtaxed and underserved." Patriot organizers registered about 5,000 new registrants into the Reform Party during the drive and of the 8,000 Patriot registrants, we think 7,100 changed their registration to Reform after Jim Mangia, co-chair of California Patriot, and Russ Verney, the Reform Party drive organizer, did a press conference asking Patriot registrants to do that.
[CONTENTS] [THEME KEY]

Perot Voters

I think that Perot is taking great pains at this point to project the Reform Party as a party that's open to all people. Our joint work with Reform in California and since (Ohio, South Carolina, Maine) is testimony to that. He sees that his '92 campaign mainly galvanized disenchanted white, middle class people. And you can't win on just that, you need a broader, more diverse coalition. I think he also sees that his message is relevant to a broader coalition. In fact, we feel that his message is a majoritarian message, in real political terms, a winning message in a 3-way race. If it's played right, it's a winning campaign.

[See also: The Perot Vote and "The Perot Voter" in Mulford, Third Party/Independent Politics.]
[CONTENTS] [THEME KEY]

Party Organization

Parties are a different animal than independent candidate ballot access, which is just getting a lot of signatures. You throw a bunch of bucks at a state, you're going to get a bunch of signatures. We've known that for years; we just haven't had the bucks most of the time. I mean, Perot spent $11 million on ballot access in '92, and that was for "volunteers." A party, legally speaking, is a state-by-state proposition. We have pretty successful local campaign organizations in various states: Washington, Texas, California, New York, etc. The relationship between local parties and the national party is always an issue in a presidential year because you have the national campaign which is giving a certain focus to what everybody is doing locally in electoral politics. But it has particular importance this year because you have a real national third party in the process of formation.
[CONTENTS] [THEME KEY]

Independents in '96

The lay of the land in independent politics in very volatile at this point, organizationally speaking. We have some activists in some states who are doing local organizing with the Patriot model (and sometimes with the Patriot name, depending on some of the local laws). They all wish, at this point, to have some relationship with the evolving Reform Party, but what that relationship will be remains to be seen. The political fact of life is that the force that has the grassroots ability in this period is Reform, Perot. That's where the motion at the independent electoral level is.
[CONTENTS] [THEME KEY]

After '96

The national independent political party that we're going to be around this year is Reform. There's no doubt about that. Post '96 is a more fluid situation. We're a particular force, with a particular message within the Reform Party Party movement (or whatever you call it). . .this particular process-oriented, governmental reform, deficit reduction, fiscal accountability kind of politics. [See also Mulford, Third Party/Independent Politics.]

Post '96 is where you get into really serious party building, without the benefit of the head of steam generated by a presidential campaign. Presidential campaigns are the locomotive of the whole thing. We've experienced this. Campaigns are great in terms of getting people involved. Once the campaign is over, the involvement factor drops off and the serious activists have their jobs cut out for them.

Now, we hope for a system in which, down the road (and I don't know how many more decades it's going to take to build this, but I'm hopeful that it is being built), where there is much more of a democracy in this country and there isn't this drop off after a campaign. That social and cultural life in this country would have a political component where ordinary people are involved in a process where they're empowered and are really active, in an ongoing way. We're not close to that now, so what ends up happening is that campaigns get lots of people involved (getting literature out, making phone calls, debating, etc.). Once the election happens, the grassroots involvement falls off. The major parties revert to their professional machinery. For the independents, it goes to a period of brick-by-brick consolidation of what the campaign opened up.
[CONTENTS] [THEME KEY]

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