Reform Party

Reform Party, United States political party established in 1995. The party was formed by businessman H. Ross Perot, who had run as an independent presidential candidate in 1992. Perot believed that voters had become dissatisfied with the two major political parties—the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

The Reform Party was organized as a loose confederation of state organizations. In each state Perot supporters held petition drives to get either the party’s candidates or its name (depending on state law) on the ballot, and by election day 1996 the Reform Party or its candidates were on the ballot in all 50 states.

In 1996 the Reform Party used a three-part convention/nominating process. The first part was a convention held in August in Long Beach, California. The convention approved a platform that called for an amendment requiring a balanced federal budget, campaign finance reform, term limits for members of Congress, and direct referendum to approve any new tax increases. The platform also included a statement supporting high ethical standards for the president and members of Congress; a requirement that congressional candidates raise all of their money from either their home state or district; and a call for the replacement of the Electoral College with a direct vote from the citizenry.

The second step in the process was determining the party’s nominee for president. Both Ross Perot and Richard D. Lamm, a former Colorado governor, sought the nomination. The party sent out about 880,000 ballots to its members, who had one week to return them. Perot won the nomination with 65.2 percent of the ballots cast, while Lamm received 34.8 percent. However, there were criticisms of the balloting process, which had been financed by Perot and managed by one of his lieutenants. Some people who were not members of the Reform Party received ballots, while some party members failed to receive a ballot. In addition, many received their ballot after the deadline had passed for returning it.

The third part of the process was another convention held on August 18, at which Perot accepted the nomination of the Reform Party. However, Lamm refused to endorse Perot. Several weeks later, Perot announced his running mate—entrepreneur and author Patrick “Pat” Choate.

The Perot-Choate campaign had problems from the start. Perot was not taken as seriously as a candidate in 1996 as he had been in 1992. The press overlooked him, and neither major party allowed him to join in the televised presidential debates. Perot threatened to take the issue to the Supreme Court, but he later backed down. Perot was also criticized for accepting federal campaign money to fund his campaign. It was this criticism that hurt Perot’s campaign the most. Reform Party supporters who had turned to the party because they were suspicious of the mainstream political system felt that Perot had sold out. At no time during the campaign did the polls show Perot with more than 8 percent of the vote, which was the percentage of the popular vote he won on election day.

In 1998 the Reform Party had its first major electoral success when Jesse Ventura, a former professional wrestler, was elected governor of Minnesota. Ventura won a plurality of the votes in the race, defeating Republican Norm Coleman and Hubert H. Humphrey III of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. In February 2000, however, Ventura left the party after conflicts with supporters of Perot and Patrick J. Buchanan, a former Republican who joined the Reform Party in 1999 to seek its nomination for president.

During the 2000 presidential race, the Reform Party again held its national convention in Long Beach, California. At the convention, Buchanan and another candidate, John Hagelin, a physicist from Iowa, vied for the party’s presidential nomination. The party eventually split into two camps and held separate conventions. Neither side recognized the validity of the other candidate, and both Buchanan and Hagelin claimed to be the party’s nominee. In addition, both claimed that they should be given the $12.6 million in federal campaign funds from the Federal Election Commission.

In September 2000, however, the commission voted that Buchanan should receive the money because Hagelin had not met the federal requirement that a candidate be the party’s nominee on the ballot in at least ten states. The same month a superior court judge ordered Hagelin to stop campaigning as the presidential nominee for the Reform Party. Hagelin decided to campaign nationally as the presidential candidate of the Natural Law Party. However, due to the disagreements within the Reform Party, some state chapters put Hagelin on the ballot as the Reform Party nominee. In the 2000 presidential election, both Buchanan and Hagelin failed to receive even 1 percent of the total popular vote.

In the 2004 presidential election the Reform Party endorsed the independent candidate Ralph Nader. Nader received about 1 percent of the popular vote.