The Reform Party Rolls the Dice
LABASH, MATT
The Reform Party Rolls the Dice Ousted by Perot loyalists, Jack Gargan tries to rally his troops in Las Vegas. BY MATT LABASH Las Vegas HERE IN LAS VEGAS, sin and diversion beckon. There's the...
...While trying to obtain the location of the new meeting place (Perot henchman Russ Verney suggested it should be in Roswell, N.M., "so they can return to their roots"), I'm repeatedly told it's "out behind the orange dumpster...
...But sure enough, to get to the meeting, now scheduled for a conference-suite complex beneath a parking garage, one must walk around a barbed-wired lot, behind an orange dumpster...
...Immediately following the disaf-filiations, Garganite Reformers spill into the hall to argue over newly vacated party posts...
...Or if your taste runs to the exotic, you've got your X-rated comedy hypnotists, nancy-boy master magicians, and the $5.95 steak-and-egg cornucopia down at Hotel San Remo...
...There's the Elvis-a-Rama museum, featuring the King's Social Security card and husky-size jumpsuit...
...The Garganites have also sued, alleging that the Perotistas refused to hand over party monies, the website, and records while plotting a coup against Gargan just 45 days after he took power...
...Since Gargan, who was elected to the post just last July at a party convention in Michigan, disputes the legality of his ouster, the party has split in half and is entangled in litigation...
...In his bolo tie and cowboy hat, Thompson looks like he just finished punching cattle across the eastern Mojave, though he's a plumbing contractor from Illinois...
...Despite his spry St...
...They are drowned out, however, by a neighboring personal-growth convention, where peppy motivational wranglers bounce around, Jazzercise-style, to a Gloria Estefan sound track...
...We are here for yet another Reform party convention— the third in eight months...
...As a gaggle of supporters gather around an Alexis Park breakfast table, startling a group of Japanese tourists, Gargan gavels the meeting to order then quickly recesses to meet up with the 200 or so conventioneers behind the orange dumpster...
...or a "Call the question...
...As Gargan's parliamentarian, Thompson has spent several hundred hours studying Rob^irt's Rules of Order, the Bhagavad-Gita of a party that is loaded with frustrated parliamentarians...
...It seems that if 25 percent of a state's delegates aren't in attendance, those state parties can be disaf-filiated...
...Ten of those delegations are reinstated after electing new officers and composing bylaws during the lunch break...
...Paddy's Day boutonniere, Gargan looks piqued...
...But we are not here for fun or sin (unless you count backbiting...
...Gargan charged that the meeting was illegal, and refused to call it to order, which resulted in nearly an hour of shouting, shoving, and microphone tampering...
...Not so long ago, every Cybill, Donald, and Lowell was trying to catch a peek up Reform's skirt...
...Not only has he been under pressure, but with his flight arriving well before his hotel's morning check-in, he's put in an 8-hour all-nighter at the Stardust casino's slots...
...disruption...
...It reads: "Winners know when to quit...
...The spring-breakers tend to get liquored in the hotel jacuzzi...
...Governor Jesse Ventura's troops have disaffiliated so they can tend to the business of "the people of Minne-SOOO-da," which includes booking Ventura's TV appearances and selling his action figures over the Internet...
...But while the nomination picture is relatively clear, intraparty relations have grown exceedingly complicated...
...The directions sound like some sort of counterspy argot, the Reformese equivalent of "the eagle has landed...
...Once at the actual convention, we are at the mercy of Tim Thompson...
...Or maybe it's from encountering Reform party regulars like Shawn O'Hara, a former Southern Baptist evangelist running for Trent Lott's Senate seat...
...Which faction is the true Reform party will soon be decided by a Virginia federal court...
...It's a political purge that would do Mao proud, though perhaps such measures are understandable after Nashville's anti-Gargan putsch...
...The party, to put it politely, is in disarray...
...His good friend Pat Choate is interim party chair...
...In any case, heading back to my hotel, I see a sign outside the casino, a sign intended to deter problem gambling, but one begging to be posted at the next Reform party convention...
...The Perotistas assert that Gar-gan and his treasurer blew $600,000 of the party's $2.5 million in FEC convention funds in unauthorized expenditures...
...He claims to have written over 900 books, such as I Knew Ted Bundy, and vows, if elected, to "outlaw mandatory homework" for schoolchildren...
...In Vegas, everyone is convinced of the legitimacy of Gargan, who's working the crowd during a low-rent mixer at the Blair House Suites...
...Not even the bologna-and-American-cheese buffet can spruce up the depressing surroundings, but that isn't the Garganites' fault...
...The perpetually in-fighting Reformers have proved too eccentric for Donald Trump...
...To avoid getting ambushed by the Perotistas on a technicality, Gargan decides he must open the convention at the Alexis Park (the officially declared site), then reconvene at the new locale...
...By that evening, my synapses are shot from enduring several hours of parliamentary bickering over paramount issues such as how long to break for dinner...
...But if the Reform party once resembled a demure maiden awaiting a gentleman caller, it is now a middle-aged harridan trying to conceive: She doesn't expect a long-lasting relationship, she just needs to further the bloodline...
...And other Reform candidates, like Harvey Powell (convinced he orchestrated the Gulf War through covert faxes to the Secret Service) and Maharishi University professor John Hagelin, don't seem to be achieving lift-off—despite the latter's talent for yogic hopping...
...It's easy to distinguish the Reformers from the spring-breakers at this off-strip, terra-cotta motor court...
...What we have done is shed all the troublemakers," Gargan explains, as it is determined that 36 states are, as of today, disaffiliated...
...The emergency convention had been planned at the plusher Alexis Park Hotel, until Perotistas spooked the hotel management with litigation threats, leaving the Garganite convention in what Perotista spokesperson Donna Donovan calls a "BYOLC" (Bring Your Own Lawn Chair) lurch...
...His forces have successfully infiltrated the anemic state parties...
...In such a room, it is nearly impossible for 30 seconds to elapse without a "Point of clarification...
...Meanwhile, at a February meeting in Nashville, Ross Perot loyalists coupled with Buchan-anites to oust Ventura ally Jack Gar-gan from the party chairmanship...
...The lucky suitor (who will receive Reform's $12.6 million in federal campaign funds) is Pat Buchanan...
...Acrimony was so severe that Gerry Moan, a vice chairman who facilitated Gargan's ouster, informed national committee members that hotel security had fled the room because they were "afraid for their own safety...
...The convention is not easily convened, however...
...Matt Labash is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Garganites say they are used to such harassment, claiming Perotistas have done everything from filling Gargan's answering machine with shrill noises to spamming their computers with pornography subscriptions...
...One reporter, filled with Reform spirit and hoping to become the new Montana chapter, composes his bylaws thus: "I can do whatever I want—whenever I want...
...Reformers tend to resist temporal pleasures, and adorn their shirts and ballcaps with so many badges that any sudden movements sound like a twister ripping through a scrap-aluminum plant...
...But Thompson and Gargan cause a hush when they announce they've stumbled upon a Reform party rules technicality that has, until now, been a dead letter...
Vol. 5 • April 2000 • No. 28
