ASHINGTON - They are staking out town dumps, suburban malls, and city supermarkets, collecting signatures to place the Reform Party's presidential candidate on the Massachusetts ballot in November.
The trouble is, no one is certain who the candidate will be. Or if there will even be a national Reform Party worthy of the name in November.
Roiled by a divisive power struggle, the party that Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot created is in danger of self-destructing as newcomer Patrick J. Buchanan grapples for control of the movement with Perot loyalists and other party regulars.
Less than eight months after Reform leaders cheered Buchanan's defection from the Republican ranks and his bid to succeed Perot as the party's presidential contender, some party members and leaders at state affiliates across the country are angrily pulling the welcome mat from under the conservative commentator.
''If Buchanan prevails, the party is dead,'' said Jim Mangia, national secretary of the Reform movement, reflecting the view of many party regulars.
Anti-Buchanan sentiment has so mushroomed that some Reform leaders are proposing such radical notions as bypassing the 2000 presidential elections altogether rather than entrusting Buchanan with the party's political future.
Yesterday, California Reform Party members rejected a move by Ross Perot loyalists to keep presidential hopeful Patrick Buchanan off the ballot in the nation's most vote-rich state, the Associated Press reported.
By a show of credentials, Buchanan's opponents joined his supporters yesterday to kill a watered-down version of the resolution.
The resolution, which had been approved Saturday by eight of 13 members of the California party, originally called for the state's organization to split from the national party after the convention, unless Buchanan agreed to ''affirm'' the party's practice of electing a vice presidential candidate at the national convention, rather than leaving it up to the presidential candidate; to apply no ''litmus tests'' to any running mate; and to make no attempt to change the national party's platform to reflect his social issues.
Buchanan got word of the California vote minutes after speaking to about 50 people at the Rhode Island Reform Party Convention in Warwick.
''I think what you're seeing is sort of last ditch efforts by people who are unreconciled to my nomination to derail it, even if it causes damage to the party, and they've failed at every stop so far,'' he said.
But some longtime party members have not given up blocking him.
The Reform Party in Minnesota has already broken ties with the national party and other state parties are considering the move.
Other top Reform activists are pleading with Perot to rush to the rescue. Some want Ralph Nader to jump in. But many are asking Buchanan simply to go away and take with him his socially conservative agenda that clashes with the Reform Party's generally libertarian social platform.
The tempest is like no other in the party's brief, tumultuous history. And the stakes are great, not only for the Reform Party, which wields a war chest of $12.6 million in federal matching funds for the 2000 election. Both Republican and Democratic leaders fear the possibility that a resurgent Reform movement could sway the election's outcome.
The conflict is expected to escalate until the Reform Party chooses a presidential nominee at its national convention Aug. 10-13 in Long Beach, Calif.
Buchanan advocates see the opposition as driven by hard-liners reluctant to share the power they accumulated in the party's formative years or miffed that Buchanan has overshadowed their preferred candidates.
''What we have here is different elements of the party that wanted candidates other than Pat but were unable to compete as well as Pat,'' said Bay Buchanan, her brother's campaign manager. ''We're talking about a handful of disgruntled individuals who are unhappy with their choice.''
Stuck in the midst of the conflict are activists such as Andy Lizotte, the Massachusetts Reform chairman who is mobilizing the petition drive to ensure a spot on the Massachusetts ballot for whoever emerges from the convention in Long Beach as the party's presidential nominee.
''I'm not really sure how this is all going to unfold,'' Lizotte said. ''It's one of those stay-tuned situations.''
Turmoil has never hovered far from the Reform movement, from Perot's mercurial quest for the presidency in 1992 to Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura's attempt to seize control of the party apparatus in 1999. But nothing has shaken the party like the Buchanan brouhaha.
At issue are Buchanan's social agenda and his campaign to stack state committees with his delegates to the national convention. Buchanan's foes accuse him of trying to hijack the party to promote his opposition to abortion, homosexuality, and more lenient immigration policies, among other issues.
Several state committees recently adopted anti-Buchanan resolutions, ranging from Colorado's proposal to forgo the 2000 presidential election to Connecticut's call for Buchanan to ''cease and desist'' from ''demeaning and demoralizing'' statements about the Reform Party.
''If we're going to save this party, we have to take drastic action,'' said Victor Good, chairman of the Colorado Reform Party. ''We need somebody who will be a leader of all the people, not a divisive messenger of intolerance. We would just as soon have nobody run for president and forfeit our matching funds than have someone like Pat Buchanan.''
The Connecticut resolution blasted Buchanan for publicly describing the Reform Party as ''a dysfunctional `run-down mansion,''' for vowing to ''append'' his social views to the party's platform, and for trying ''to take over state Reform Party organizations or establish competing organizations in a number of states, including Georgia, Wisconsin, California, and Colorado.''
Donna Donovan, the party chairwoman in Connecticut and the organization's national press secretary, said the Reform movement has reached a crossroad.
''It's very serious, and it's going to take a real rising up of a lot of the old-timers in the party to say, `Time out, this isn't where this party was intended to go,''' Donovan said.
Buchanan backers said they are not trying to give the party a conservative makeover, and they described their push for delegate support simply as a requisite step in securing the party's nomination.
Under party rules, primary ballots will be sent to about 1 million Reform members this month and the results will be announced at the convention in August. However, the results could be overturned by two-thirds of the convention delegates, so Buchanan has gone after and captured the support of more than a third of the delegates, enough to block an override if he wins the mail-in primary.
''We're feeling very good about the delegate count,'' Bay Buchanan said. ''We're very enthusiastic.''
As for Perot, his top political adviser, Russell Verney, said many party leaders and longtime loyalists were initially eager to join ranks with Buchanan. Perot has said nothing publicly about the chaos in the party or Buchanan's candidacy.
''There was a golden opportunity for the Buchanan camp to come in and make a whole lot of friends,'' Verney said. ''I'm perplexed because they have done exactly the opposite. Rather than come in and cooperate, they have tried to coopt the party.''
Verney said many Reform members are concluding that Buchanan is less intent on winning the presidency than he is on ''creating a right-to-life party he can use as a fund-raising vehicle in 2001 and beyond.''
Bay Buchanan said her brother is focused solely on winning the presidency, and she attributed Verney's criticism to his diminished role in the party he served for several years as national chairman. ''He realizes the party is moving on,'' she said, ''and he is having trouble with it.''
