Who will capture the presidential nomination of the Reform Party, and does it matter?

Great Debates
1

2004 will mark the fourth Presidential race in which the Reform Party will take a part in, and yet it seems as if the party is losing more and more steam with each election. After Ross Perot performed quite strongly in 1992, he did considerably less well in 1996, and the 2000 selection of Pat Buchannon seems to have almost destroyed the party’s chances of making it. (Though it is interesting to note that the Reform Party may have been one of the contributing factors that got George W. Bush the White House.)

Does anyone know whether the Reform Party will be operating during the same primaries and caucuses as the Democrats and Republicans, and just who will get the nomination anyway? Has Buchannon or Perot expressed an interest? Or maybe it’ll be Stockdale’s turn, or Ventura? I just don’t know enough about the party to know who are considered the front-runners for the nomination…

2

I have no clue what’s going on with the Reform Party, but I can’t picture them having any effect on the upcoming election. In 1996, Perot got a sufficient percentage of the vote to qualify the party for about twelve million dollars in funds from the federal government, to pay for the party’s presidential candidate’s campaign in 2000. However, Buchanan did not get enough votes in 2000 to qualify for the funds again, and thus the party has virtually no money to run a campaign with now. Their support is so low that no one in the media would care if they ran a candidate. In short, there’s no way for them to get a campaign off the ground.

3

The same could be said about them getting Bill Clinton the White House. Perot caused the “anti-Clinton” vote (for lack of a better term) to be split. Despite all the yelling and moaning, GWB grabbed a larger percentage of the popular vote in 2000 than Clinton did in 92. Which of course doesn’t matter, since we don’t elect presidents based on popular vote, and never have.

4

I checked their website, hasn’t been updated in a while. Looks like Buchanan killed it dead. The only chance it would have of becoming significant again is if Ventura or Perot himself made it so.

5

Ted Weill. (Warning, midi - never a good sign for a presidential candidate)

All the other third-party candidates can be found here.

6

Kantalooppi, thanks so much for providing that link. It’s been a big kick for me reading the resumes for those “other” candidates.

It is impossible to summarized the candidates listed, except to say they don’t appear to a group of your run-of-mill, everyday crackpots.

7

This topic was covered in an earlier thread: “Will the Reform Party be back next year?” – http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=222564

8

In 1992 and 1996, the Reform Party was all about Perot. In 2000, as ITR champion pointed out, its value to a potential candidate lay in the pot of Federal campaign funds that its nominee would have access to, as a result of Perot’s previous success.

And as ITR champion mentioned, that pot of money is no longer there. Since the Perotistas have pretty much drifted away as well, the Reform nomination has no value to anyone. You or I could probably win that nomination this year if we were sufficiently motivated, but what good would it do us?

9

And I thought it was Ralph Nader that got GWB into the White House.

:smack: