Strange Can't Begin to Describe It

Fulani and Buchanan See an Upside to Political Marriage

New York Times/November 26, 1999
By Amy Waldman

One day soon, if all goes as planned, a woman who has campaigned time and again in Harlem for political office will do so again. But this time, Lenora Fulani, two-time presidential candidate, former standard-bearer of the now-defunct New Alliance Party, and perpetual thorn in the Democratic Party's side, will have company.

Ms. Fulani, long known as a far-left espouser of Marxist-Leninist politics, has promised to help Patrick J. Buchanan, a Reaganite and cold warrior known for his far-right politics, in his quest for the Reform Party nomination for president. In endorsing him earlier this month, she promised to take him to Harlem.

The reaction of Representative Charles Rangel, whose district includes Harlem, was typical. ''Only in America,'' he said. ''I just wish I had been the fly on the wall when they made that alliance.''

Everyone agrees the alliance is unusual; some would call it unholy. Either way, Ms. Fulani, one of the more colorful, perennial figures in New York politics, has once again formed a relationship that allows her to keep a toehold in American politics.

By working within the Reform Party, where Ms. Fulani has a significant base of support and is its most prominent black member, she may be on the verge of gaining a national foothold for the first time -- much to the dismay of her critics, who are legion. Ms. Fulani and her close associate, Fred Newman, the founder of the New Alliance Party, have been accused repeatedly of anti-Semitism, entwining group therapy and politics in a cult-like way, and of enriching personal enterprises through public monies in the form of federal election funds.

Roger J. Stone, the director of the presidential exploratory committee of Donald J. Trump, a potential Reform Party rival of Mr. Buchanan, wasted no time calling Ms. Fulani a ''con artist'' and a ''huckster.''

Speaking of Mr. Trump's recent criticism of Fidel Castro, Mr. Stone said: ''We find it ironic that on the same day Donald Trump was in Miami condemning a Marxist, Pat Buchanan was climbing into bed with one.''

While Ms. Fulani and Mr. Buchanan have tried to stress their common economic populism, and particularly their antipathy for free trade, neither has made a real attempt to pretend they had, or would, reach agreement on the issues.

''He and I have never had an issue-oriented dialogue because there's nothing to talk about,'' Ms. Fulani said.

Mr. Newman, who has been Ms. Fulani's political Pygmalion, shaping her career, her image, her decisions, said: ''He has positions that are antithetical to everything Fulani has said for years and everything I have stood for for years. Some of his rhetoric on immigration I find repulsive -- I can use no other word.''

What brought Mr. Buchanan and Ms. Fulani together, they said at a news conference, was the banner that Ms. Fulani has carried since the early 1980's, and that Mr. Buchanan has suddenly hoisted: breaking the ''iron grip'' of the two-party system on American politics.

Ms. Fulani's driving issues are things like same-day voter registration, which she believes could give independent parties a fairer shot at the polls. She has arrived at a politics about process, bleached, for the time being, of issues and ideology.

''Issue politics were not given to us by Moses,'' she said.

Mr. Stone and other critics say that the real reason the two have pooled their efforts is to pursue the millions of dollars in federal matching funds that will go to the Reform Party nominee.

How much minority support Ms. Fulani can deliver is hard to gauge. Where she can help Mr. Buchanan is in complying with Reform Party rules that require him to gain enough signatures to qualify for the ballot in the 29 states -- and the District of Columbia -- where the party does not have an automatic slot.

It is a daunting task, requiring 700,000 to 800,000 signatures in total. Mr. Buchanan has said he does not have the personnel to do it. Ms. Fulani -- who collected 1.5 million signatures to get on the ballots in 1988 -- has both the foot soldiers and expertise (she has waged numerous court battles over ballot access).

In return, she gets, if not legitimacy, publicity. Eleven years ago, this self-described ''poor black woman from Chester, Pa.'' waged a largely unheralded candidacy for president. She managed to get on the ballot in all 50 states, the first woman and the first black to do so, and received more than 200,000 votes.

The process was exhilarating to her; the lack of recognition -- by the media and political establishment -- embittering. So Ms. Fulani's endorsement of Mr. Buchanan seemed as much about drawing the spotlight to her as bolstering his campaign.

It worked. The endorsement quickly became grist for the talk show mill. It provoked agitated commentary everywhere from the Rush Limbaugh show to callers on WLIB. Ms. Fulani, on the margins for her entire political career, was suddenly in an eddy of the mainstream.

''She's now getting media attention she's never gotten and she can speak for these issues,'' Mr. Newman said, referring to her political reform agenda.

Mr. Newman and Ms. Fulani are also banking that Mr. Buchanan can earn enough votes to ensure that the Reform Party retains its federal matching funds.

The cost has been some blistering criticism. ''I know politics makes strange bedfellows, but there has to be principles involved, and there are no principles here,'' said Michael A. Hardy, a former Fulani associate -- and admirer -- who serves as the lawyer for the Rev. Al Sharpton. ''This is worse than Hitler-Stalin: this destroys a movement,'' he said, referring to a third party's potential to benefit African-Americans.

In the end, the endorsement is more likely to hurt Mr. Buchanan, who does have a core of committed supporters, than Ms. Fulani, who for all her talk about broadening American democracy, has often been most effective marshalling a committed cadre within a political party.

''Fulani and myself have such little credibility that there's not that much to lose,'' Mr. Newman said.

Pat Choate, the co-chairman of Mr. Buchanan's campaign, rejected the criticism that Mr. Buchanan had betrayed his base. ''He's a candidate going out to win the presidency and he is building a coalition that can win it,'' he said.

For Ms. Fulani, however, there is, however, much to gain: along with a national stage, real power in New York politics -- and specifically, next year's Senate race. Over the past five years, Ms. Fulani and her supporters have gradually gained power in the state's Independence Party. The party now has the third line on the ballot; who it lends that line to in the Senate race could be crucial in a close election. (In New York State, the Independence Party is the Reform Party's outlet.)

Ms. Fulani is part of a ''Democracy Coalition'' that is trying to unseat the current chairman, Jack Essenberg, along with two-thirds of the party's executive committee, for ''disloyalty and corruption.''

''The Fulani group has basically infiltrated the party and wants to take it over and control it,'' Mr. Essenberg said.

Ms. Fulani responded by saying: ''It's a democracy war. It's magnificent.''

Laureen Oliver, the party co-founder and the leader of the Democracy Coalition, said that she has worked with Ms. Fulani because so far, she has done nothing to betray non-centrist leanings. ''She has not made any extreme leftist statements since she's been in the party,'' Ms. Oliver said. ''Lenora's what you call 'blending' now. She's blending into the party.''

If she blends effectively enough, it could lead to this improbable scenario: Rudolph W. Giuliani and Hillary Rodham Clinton both having to court Ms. Fulani's support to win the Independence Party's backing.

Mr. Newman said that Cathy Stewart, a close Fulani ally and the chairwoman of the Manhattan County Independence Party, had already had a brief discussion with Judith Hope, the chairwoman of the state Democratic Party. Ms. Hope would say only of the party generally, ''Where we can find mutual goals and cooperation, it can be helpful.''

Giuliani campaign officials would not comment on either Ms. Fulani or the Independence Party.

Of course, it is also possible that neither candidate will pass muster, and Ms. Fulani herself will run. She is coy about the prospect, but does not deny that it is a possibility.

She has already run for mayor, governor, lieutenant governor, and president, attracting columns of controversy along the way. She has embraced Muammar Qaddafi and Louis Farrakhan, and heckled Bill Clinton. She and Mr. Newman have made statements that have been denounced as anti-Semitic by Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League, even as they have repeatedly repudiated anti-Semitism.

The New Alliance Party, which was disbanded when Mr. Newman and Ms. Fulani joined forces first with the Patriot Party, then the Reform Party, was also criticized for its close links to Mr. Newman's extensive ''social therapy'' practice. The practice operated on the premise that political activism could help overcome emotional problems, and numerous therapy recipients also went into party work.

Mr. Newman also heads a complex constellation of businesses and nonprofit organizations, including a theater and publishing house, some of which benefited from the federal matching funds Ms. Fulani's 1992 presidential campaign earned. The funds went to different Newman and New Alliance Party enterprises for services like consulting and advertising, to buy -- at an elevated rate -- copies of the party newspaper, to rent office space from the party, and so on. The Federal Election Commission ordered the party to repay the government $117,000 for not doing arms-length transactions.

Ms. Fulani and Mr. Newman say (and Congressman Rangel, for one, agrees) that their practices were no different from the Democratic Party's, which they said also gives business and contracts to patrons and supporters. She has accused the Democratic Party of ''postmodern political apartheid.'' Black leaders, she says, have sold out by insisting on support for a party that has repeatedly ignored black interests.

But even those who agree with that assessment wonder if Mr. Buchanan is the answer. Ms. Fulani's flirtation with him dates back at least to 1996, when she wrote that, like Ross Perot and Mr. Farrakhan, he had been demonized by the media: ''He has tapped into the anti-government, anti-big-business, pro-people sentiments of a significant portion of the American people.''

Now Ms. Fulani is forging ahead with her plan to bring Mr. Buchanan to Harlem, and specifically to the National Action Network, the headquarters of her erstwhile ally, the Rev. Al Sharpton.

The two worked closely together in the late 1980's and early 1990's, when ''Rev.,'' as she calls him, was just venturing into electoral politics.

But Ms. Fulani says she felt betrayed when Mr. Sharpton ran for Senate as a Democrat in 1992, rather than under the New Alliance Party, after she had collected tens of thousands of signatures to help get him on the ballot. The break, she said, affected their friendship. Mr. Sharpton now plays down that friendship, saying they were never as close as the media projected.

He has yet to hear an explanation of the endorsement, he said. ''Their concern is how do you build another party,'' he said of Ms. Fulani and her allies. ''My view is, if the issues aren't more important than the party, then what are we in it for?''