ASHINGTON - GOP presidential contender Patrick J. Buchanan said yesterday that he might quit the Republican race and campaign for the Reform Party's nomination.
''The door really is wide open,'' Buchanan said. ''We are very close to making that decision.''
The Reform Party's Jesse Ventura, the Minnesota governor, has discounted suggestions for weeks that the party should nominate Buchanan for president.
Ventura has said the party founded by Ross Perot is based on conservative economic principles, not Buchanan's social conservatism on abortion and other issues.
The Capitol Hill newspaper The Hill published an interview Friday in which the governor ruled out ''a retread from another campaign or another party'' as the Reform Party's candidate.
But Buchanan, appearing on NBC's ''Meet the Press,'' said his sister and campaign adviser, Bay Buchanan, is talking to people in the Reform Party for him.
''We are taking a hard look at leaving the Republican nomination run and running for the Reform Party nomination,'' Buchanan said. ''The decision has not been made yet ... but I tell you honestly we are leaning in that direction right now.''
A telephone call to the party chairman-elect, Jack Gargan of Cedar Key, Fla., went unanswered yesterday.
Buchanan said he is being swayed by the belief that ''my party at the national level has become a Xerox copy basically of the Democratic Party. ... I think what we have is a one-party system in Washington that is masquerading as a two-party system, and I think what we need is a real opposition party.''
The idea of a third-party candidacy by Buchanan is making the Republican front-runner, Texas Governor George W. Bush, nervous, Time magazine reported in its issue on newsstands today.
