| Pat Buchanan 2000 presidential campaign | |
|---|---|
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| Campaign | 2000 United States presidential election |
| Candidate | Pat Buchanan White House Director of Communications (1985–1987) Ezola Foster Political activist |
| Affiliation | Republican Party (March—October 1999) Reform Party of the United States (October 1999–November 2000) |
| Key people | Bay Buchanan (campaign manager) Pat Choate (campaign co-chair) Lenora Fulani (campaign co-chair) |
| Slogan | America First! |
| Website | |
| Buchanan for President (archived October 19, 2000) | |
The 2000 presidential campaign of Pat Buchanan, conservative pundit and advisor to both President Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, was formally launched on March 2, 1999, as Buchanan announced his intention to seek the Republican Party nomination for the presidency of the United States in the 2000 presidential election. It marked Buchanan's third primary campaign for the presidency, following his bids in 1992 and 1996. Although he had not attained the nomination either time, he had been regarded as a consequential party figure. Early primary surveys found Buchanan polling in the single digits and following the publication of his book A Republic, Not an Empire, which generally advocated for noninterventionist and "America first" foreign policy, some within the Republican Party condemned Buchanan's foreign policy views. There began to be speculation that Buchanan would leave the Republican Party in favor of the Reform Party, a third party qualified for matching federal campaign funds.
On October 25, 1999, Buchanan formally announced that he was departing the GOP and would instead seek the Reform nomination. In the primary campaign, he briefly faced as an opponent future president Donald Trump; however, in February 2000, Trump ended his campaign and left the party, objecting to its extremist elements and questioning whether the party could win.[1] The other serious contender for the nomination was Natural Law Party politician and physician John Hagelin, who campaigned on a continuation of Perot's approach and allegedly planned to combine the Reform and Natural Law parties. Buchanan won the national mail-in primary by a wide margin, but Hagelin supporters contended that some of the ballots were fraudulently cast and filed multiple complaints with the FEC. Hagelin supporters ultimately hosted an alternative convention concurrent with the official Reform Party. Buchanan secured the Reform Party nomination at the August 2000 convention, and selected educator and conservative activist Ezola B. Foster as his running-mate.
A number of lawsuits arose from the campaign and the transfer of power within the national party. In February, party officials voted to remove the party chair, a Buchanan critic, and to replace him with Buchanan's campaign chair, economist and Perot's 1996 running mate Pat Choate. The former chairman filed a suit alleging that the meeting at which officials cast their votes was illegally convened, but a judge ruled that Choate was the rightful chair. Concurrently, the chair of the New Hampshire Reform Party threatened legal action against Buchanan's campaign for misleading mailers sent to Reform voters within the state, and Buchanan filed a suit against the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) after the body declined to act on a petition to be included in the nationally televised presidential debates. A federal judge ruled in favor of the FEC. Another suit, filed by Hagelin, alleged that he was the rightful nominee, and thus entitled to the matching federal campaign funds; the funds were, following a legal battle, awarded to the Buchanan campaign.
Buchanan launched his general election campaign on September 18 with a rally at Bob Jones University. He ran on an anti-NAFTA, pro-life, anti-war, non-interventionist platform similar to that of his two previous presidential campaigns. In the general election, the campaign attracted attention with a series of television commercials which dealt with issues such as immigration, gay rights, and campaign finance, and drew some criticism for the support which it attracted from the far right. The Buchanan—Foster ticket went on to win 449,895 votes in the November election, the fourth-highest total. The ticket was also speculated to indirectly have influenced the result of the election, due to the design of a Palm Beach, Florida, ballot which led many Gore supporters to accidentally cast a vote for Buchanan. The Bush campaign contended that Palm Beach County was a Buchanan "stronghold", but both the candidate and his Florida campaign staff disputed that characterization. Following the election, Buchanan briefly maintained ties with the party, but formally left it shortly thereafter and became a political independent.