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Follow the soft money
A new ad featuring Hillary Rodham Clinton marks the beginning of what will likely be a long season of soft-money spending.
By Anthony York
[11/10/99]

Gore's premature obituary
The media hyped the vice president's dip in the polls over the summer, but ignored his resurgence in the past month.
By Eric Boehlert
[11/10/99]

Bill Bradley: Al Gore's debate coach
The vice president may call his main opponent a "bad Democrat." But Bradley helped Gore prep for the most celebrated debates of his career.
By Jake Tapper
[11/10/99]

Choice or corruption?
Mexico's PRI holds its first-ever primary and -- surprise! -- the insider candidate wins.
By Scarlet Pruitt
[11/10/99]

Same package, different wrapper
President Clinton takes his standard political stump speech to a new medium -- the Internet.
By Jake Tapper
[11/09/99]

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There are three co-chairs for the campaign -- Bay Buchanan, Lenora Fulani and me. It's a very nice balance. Lenora is a person of the left, Pat and Bay are persons of the right and, by and large, I'm a person of the center. We are putting together a left-right-center coalition, and we're saying "OK, here are four items we all agree upon -- trade policy, immigration, campaign reform and foreign policy." Imagine this. Pat Buchanan and Lenora Fulani are going to walk through the streets of Harlem, taking our program to the inner city.

Lenora and I strongly disagree with Buchanan on the abortion issue, and we have a whole list of other items we disagree on. But we can't do anything about even the items we agree on because we have a political system that is broken, that has been taken over by corporate interests. So our first overarching political priority, right-left-center, is real political reform.

What is your platform on political reform?

We have come to be governed by a corporate elite, who control and own both parties. That must be changed. You must open up democracy so it's possible for people other than the Republicans and Democrats to run. We should have public financing and strictly limit private contributions to $1,000 -- with no PAC money, no soft money, no corporate money, no foreign money, no dirty money. Only American voters should be permitted to finance our campaigns. We are going to run a $35 million campaign with no PAC money. We are going to run a straight campaign on public money and individual contributions. That's the way it should be done.

Secondly, we should have a common standard in this country on what it takes to get on the ballot and run for federal office. Right now it's balkanized into 50 states and D.C.

Third, we need real enforcement of the campaign laws that exist. We now have a sham called the Federal Election Commission, with three Republicans, three Democrats, and under law any campaign violations have to be dealt with by the FEC. And when the FEC deals with the issue, it usually dismisses major complaints against the two major parties. The general counsel of the FEC concluded that both the Clinton and Dole campaigns had major campaign violations in taking dirty money, foreign money and soft money. But by a 5-0 vote the commission rejected the advice of its own counsel and threw those away. We want the right of private civil action. If you're a candidate and your opponent goes out and takes Chinese money, which is a violation of a federal law, you should have a right through civil action to sue and get redress on that. Under the current law you can't have that.

What do you think of Buchanan's comments at the 1992 Republican Convention, that "there is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself."

There is a cultural war under way, inside the United States. The core of that cultural war is whether we shall be one nation. Shall we be a melting pot of a country, where we share a common interest, a common history, a common language? Or are we going to balkanize this country into a hyphenated America? That's the issue, and it is destroying France, it is destroying Canada, it is destroying the Netherlands.

What about the social issues you disagree on? How can you justify working with Buchanan when he is so opposed to abortion, which you support?

You know, I don't agree with him on the social issues at all. I ran pro-choice, as did Perot. But you take his five campaign stands that his campaign is going to be run on. Four of those are straight out of the Reform Party platform and his platform. And in politics, any time you get four out of five, you close the deal immediately.

What case can you make to socially liberal voters that Pat Buchanan would not be an anathema to them on issues like abortion?

Let's say Pat was to succeed in putting in Supreme Court justices that would share his view, which is tough given the Senate. Their only remedy is to reverse Roe vs. Wade. Then it would become a democratic choice, a state-by-state choice. The furor on Roe vs. Wade is in part about the abortion issue. But it is also about the fact the decision took it out of the political process. Yeah, Pat Buchanan would try to overturn Roe vs. Wade. But it would then be democratically determined and, by the way, that is the way it should have been in the first place.

How do you respond to gay voters who are concerned about such Buchanan statements as "with 80,000 dead of AIDS, 3,000 more buried each month, our promiscuous homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide"?

Pat's wrong on that. AIDS is a virus and a disease, it's not a moral judgment.

Do you support gay marriage?

If people want to have gay marriage, they should have gay marriages. Anybody that wants to have a relationship, want to say my benefits will go here and there, they should have the right to it.

What about Buchanan's comment that "women are simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed in the fiercely competitive world of Western capitalism. The momma bird builds the nest. So it was, so it ever shall be. Ronald Reagan is not responsible for this, God is"?

I disagree with that, obviously. Look at who's running the campaign, two women. I'll tell you what the risk is on that statement, he runs the risk of being slapped on the side of the head by his sister Bay. And, by the way, the gender balance in the Reform Party is heavily for women -- lots of women, smart, competent women, that in the other two parties are pushed aside. And, Jesus, they're brilliant in this party.

Normally when a candidate runs for office he or she is trying to expand their base. But the perception from the outside is that Buchanan's basic appeal is limited to a base of homophobic, racist, anti-Semitic white males.

That perception is wrong. First of all, we are going to very aggressively go out to bring blacks, Hispanics, minorities not only into the campaign but to vote for Buchanan. The person who is going to lead that effort is Dr. Lenora Fulani. Fulani is the first black woman to run for president on the ballot in 50 states, twice. She got a million signatures to put her on the ballot. She is a practicing Christian. She is a Ph.D. psychologist. She has done more for grass-roots democracy than any other person in the country, even Jesse Jackson.

And it's a very simple message she's taking. That you've been used by the Democratic Party for years, they've put into place programs that have widened the income and wealth gap inside this country. They have put into place a system that punished children of the poor, who are disproportionately black. They have put into place a system that aggressively punished single mothers, who are disproportionately black, and that they have not earned your respect or your vote.

What is your position on welfare reform?

Pat Buchanan is against the welfare-reform bill. What's the purpose of welfare? Fundamentally, to get the money to the children. Now what does this bill do? It was punitive on the parents; and who does it hurt? The children. Bill and Hillary Clinton knew it. It was political expediency. They didn't need to do that. They were going to beat Bob Dole enough. It was cheap politics.

How would you help minorities?

You've got to be reviving the schools. None of this nonsense of partial Head Start. You have real funding on that, you put your money into excellence, into schools with kids. You've also got to expand your college and other programs. You've got to give people who are going to work with their hands the same access as people going to college. Lots of people are not cut out to go to college, to learn a trade. It's a very honest and significant way to make a living, you need to make role for them.

What role is Ross Perot taking at this point?

Totally neutral, in both statement and in fact. He's running his business full-time. He replaced about most of the top management of Perot Systems a year ago and took it public. He is sending his son to Europe, they're making a massive expansion there. So he is building and bankrolling a major electronic processing company.

He could have presumably stopped Buchanan if he wanted to.

He could have been the nominee if he wanted to. But Ross is neutral, he's going to let the members of the party select their nominee.

The presumption was that when Jesse Ventura's candidate, Jack Gargan, beat your candidate, Pat Benjamin, for party chair, this implied he had more support within the Reform Party than do you.

No, what swung the difference there was Lenora Fulani's support. Ventura had Minnesota, some delegate strength. It was Lenora's people who made the difference, Lenora swung it to Jesse, to break the influence and power of Russ Verney, the existing campaign chair.

How do you feel about Jesse Ventura?

I have an evolving attitude. I've had Jesse on my show several times and he's a very likable, engaging guy. And, for all the World Wrestling Federation buffoonery, he's really a hero. He served as a Navy SEAL, put his life on the line.

As a governor, I think he's doing a pretty darn good job on the governing side of it. And he also did something enormously important for the Reform Party. Before Jesse there was a media embargo where they would only talk to Perot. The power, the real power, is the power to ignore. And he broke that media embargo. It was enormously helpful.

He also made it clear that the Reform Party is composed of thousands of us. It's not just Ross Perot. Yes, he put up the money, he provided the leadership, but the rest of us really own the party. Up until Jesse it was "Ross Perot's Reform Party," like Ross Perot's car, Ross Perot's company. After Jesse it's never been that way again. It's now just the Reform Party. It was a major accomplishment.

The problem with Jesse is that he was catapulted into the position of a national figure before he had the experience to handle it. When you're in national politics, there is no tougher game. I mean it's laughable when Donald Trump talks about all the tough New York real-estate guys he dealt with. They're minnows compared to the sharks in this pool.

So Jesse vastly overexposed himself, and he never should have done the Playboy interview.

What's your problem with the Playboy interview?

Jesse destroyed a major part of his base, both in Minnesota and nationally, with his interview. And in the process of doing that he destroyed a major portion of his influence within the Reform Party. His comments on religion and his seemingly condoning the Tailhook scandal, though he's equivocal in that part of the interview. But many people have interpreted that as being down on women. Those two things are killers.

But even prior to that, why was there a conflict between his side and your side?

Control. It's just about politics. Jesse clearly wants to run for president in the year 2004. Part of the convention he made with the people of Minnesota is that he would not run in 2000. So basically he wanted a stand-in, a Lowell Weicker or God knows who, to hold the seat until the year 2004. But you can't do that in politics. People don't vote for somebody who's holding your chair. You're either in it full bore to win or you're out of it. I mean, how many votes would Lowell Weicker get as a place-sitter? I mean give me a break.

Are there any differences in issues between you and Ventura?

Yeah, very different positions on trade and immigration, for example. He's very libertarian. But I really think we're past all that to be honest with you, I mean I think all of that is pre-Playboy.

Do you think he should leave the party?

My view is he made a major mistake, and he should be allowed to deal with it himself. But on the other hand Russ Verney has a positional responsibility. If he's calling for the resignation of Clinton, he should equally apply it to our own party.

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