Buchanan stakes claim to Reform leadership after split convention

LONG BEACH, California (CNN) -- Both wings of the divided Reform Party pulled out of Long Beach on Sunday after a bruising weekend of rival conventions, with each calling itself the legitimate heir of founder Ross Perot.

The conventions broke up with both sides -- those supporting conservative commentator Pat Buchanan and others supporting Iowa physicist John Hagelin -- laying down separate claims to leadership of the largest third party in U.S. politics, and the $12.6 million in federal matching funds Perot earned during his 1996 run for president. Buchanan told reporters Sunday afternoon in Los Angeles, "We are the candidate. We're going to get the money."

Buchanan accepted the presidential nomination of his wing of the party Saturday night and went on the talk-show circuit Sunday, saying he wants to rebuild the Reform Party into a political movement that is "populist, traditionalist, America-first."

Buchanan is pulling in 2 percent or less support in the latest polls.

Perot has taken no public position in the battle that has wracked the party he founded after his 1992 independent presidential bid. In his acceptance speech Saturday night, Buchanan invited Perot -- and his supporters -- to "do battle together" in November.

"We want to build and grow the Reform Party," said Buchanan, who left the GOP last October. "Ross, instead of fighting us and opposing us, come on and help us."

Hagelin supporters, a group that includes many party leaders who backed Perot in 1992 and 1996, have asked the Federal Election Commission to recognize Hagelin as the rightful nominee. Buchanan said Sunday that he has a stronger claim to legitimacy, since he has the backing of high-profile party leaders such as acting chairman Gerry Moan, treasurer Tom McLaughlin and Pat Choate, Perot's 1996 running mate.

Buchanan has chosen Ezola Foster, a longtime Buchanan supporter, former Los Angeles educator and anti-immigration activist -- as his running mate. Sunday, he said "it doesn't bother me" that Foster and her husband, Chuck Foster, are members of the John Birch Society, an organization that once claimed communists had infiltrated the highest levels of government.

Foster, who is black, said she and her husband joined the group in 1996 after they convinced themselves the organization was not made up of "bigoted, racist white supremacists" as its detractors claimed.

Hagelin, a professor at Iowa's Maharishi University, has run for president twice before as a Natural Law Party candidate. He will continue to run under that standard as well as that of the anti-Buchanan faction of the Reform Party.

Saturday, that wing of the party ratified Hagelin's choice for vice president, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Nat Goldhaber. Goldhaber founded Cybergold, an Internet marketing service that was acquired Tuesday by MyPoints.com.

"My whole goal in this important campaign is to forge a powerful coalition of America's leading third parties, the Reform Party and the Natural Law Party, to credibly challenge the two parties' stranglehold on our political process," Hagelin told CNN on Saturday.

In accepting his nomination, Buchanan avoided much of the conservative rhetoric on social issues that alienated some of Perot's followers, focusing instead on issues such as trade, American sovereignty and immigration -- issues on which he has more common ground with other Reformers.

He promised to reject "one-sided" trade agreements with China and other nations; to cut taxes, eliminate the Internal Revenue Service and kick the United Nations out of the United States -- with the Marines, if needed.

"We will no longer squander the blood of our soldiers fighting other countries' wars or the wealth of our people paying other countries' bills," Buchanan said.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.