EW YORK - The state arm of the national Reform Party positioned itself firmly against Pat Buchanan and endorsed a little-known physicist for president yesterday.
''I never knew being so far behind was such an asset,'' said John Hagelin, joking. Hagelin hopes to wrest the Reform Party nomination from front-runner Buchanan in the nationwide, mail-in primary that started this week.
''I think I like New York,'' Hagelin added.
Since party founder Ross Perot announced last week that he would not run, Hagelin has emerged as the sole challenger to Buchanan for the Reform Party nomination, which comes with $12.6 million in federal funding for the general election.
''It's a referendum on what the character of the Reform Party will be,'' said Lenora Fulani, a leader of the New York Independence Party, the state affiliate of the national Reform Party. ''Pat Buchanan wound up with a narrow and ideological campaign.''
Hagelin, 46, is a founder of the Natural Law Party, which grew out of the teachings of Transcendental Meditation leader Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He holds a doctorate in physics from Harvard University and lives in Fairfield, Iowa, where he is a professor at the Maharishi University of Management.
He advocates preventive health care, the elimination of political action committees, and the application of scientific thinking to policy problems.
''He's a virtual unknown,'' admitted Fulani, a left-wing activist who forged a bizarre political alliance with the socially conservative Buchanan and then withdrew her support. ''That said, independents love to support underdogs.''
The Reform Party's mail-in primary voting continues until the party holds its convention Aug. 10-13, in Long Beach, Calif.
At a news conference in Manhattan, Hagelin and Independence Party leaders said Buchanan's conservative views on social issues such as abortion and immigration did not fit with the Reform Party's goals of cleaning up campaign finance, making government more accountable, and fixing the health care and educational systems.
''We don't want to see this effort to reach out perverted by some narrow and exclusive candidacy,'' Hagelin said.
He said the major party presumptive presidential candidates, Texas Governor George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore, weren't different enough to offer voters a real choice.
''Just two wings of the same bird of prey,'' he said. ''If you want the Republicans and Democrats to listen ... compete with them.''
