"It's an illegal meeting!" Jack Gargan, the embattled chairman of the national party, hollered from the podium as the audience chanted that he be turned "out, out out!" from his post. A motion to oust him had not come up by mid-afternoon, but even Gargan and his allies expected it to succeed.

"I will not lay down," Gargan vowed.

At one point, a Perot ally who identified herself only as Melanie of San Diego rushed the front of the room and tried to unplug Gargan's microphone because he wouldn't call the meeting to order.

Gargan supporter Sue Harris de Bauche of Virginia slapped and pushed Melanie to the floor, and two police officers separated the two. One escorted Harris de Bauche from the room, as it rang with members telling each other to "shut up" and begin the meeting.

"Democracy can be messy, can't it?" said Donna Donovan, spokeswoman for the Perot faction.

That's one way of describing months of infighting so fierce that members of the party founded by Ross Perot openly speculated about whether it would survive to participate credibly in this year's presidential race.

Over the Internet, in court and in the press, the factions have battled over everything from the location of the party's nominating convention, its philosophical direction, its procedures and even whether certain national committee members were qualified to be present on Saturday. For months, a move has been afoot to oust Gargan, Ventura's hand-picked chairman who took his post in January.

Certain that enough votes existed to oust Gargan, Ventura fired a preemptive strike at the national party Friday by quitting, branding the organization "dysfunctional" and urging the Minnesota state party to break away.

The same day, Ron Young, the treasurer of the Reform Party and a supporter of Gargan, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia seeking the party's financial records, which he says were never turned over to him by his predecessors, who are loyal to Perot.

At the meeting, Gargan's allies were far outnumbered by Perot's, and both sides arrived in the conference room at the Nashville Airport Marriott poised for a squabble. Gargan got a few steps inside the ropes marking the meeting zone when he was surrounded by Perot loyalists who objected to Gargan's two attorneys accompanying him.

Finally taking the podium, Gargan was able to find two areas of common ground when he asked participants to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, and remain standing for a moment of silence in memory of those killed in the Alaska Airlines crash last week.

That was the last moment of peaceful assembly.

From the podium, Gargan began making his case that the meeting was illegally called because members were given fewer than the required 30 days of notice.

He was immediately shouted down by Perot's allies.

From microphones scattered throughout the audience, motions were made to oust Gargan from chairing the meeting. He refused to leave the podium and continued trying to make his case.

One of his supporters, Dale Barlow of Oklahoma, grabbed Gargan's microphone at one point and hollered: "I am ashamed of this party!"

"Shut up, Dale!" someone yelled.

Meanwhile, about eight Nashville police officers who had responded to an anonymous 911 call gathered outside the conference room, according to Kathryn Seibel of Tennessee, who organized much of the meeting.

"They said they would shut it down if we didn't get it under control," Seibel said. "I said this was a temporary blip."

Indeed, Gargan agreed to step aside after the members voted 95-14 to install Tom McLaughlin of Pennsylvania as the new chairman of the meeting. Gargan agreed to sit at the edge of the stage while McLaughlin and party secretary Jim Mangia reviewed the challenges to delegates representing 11 states.

Like most of Perot's supporters, Seibel vowed to heal the party. But she recalled wistfully the previous night, when she had dinner with other members and discussed public policy.

"You would have been impressed; we were talking about light rail, campaign finance reform," Seibel said.

Asked how she felt about the developments, she said, "I'm mortified."