ABSTRACT

In the fall of 1997, Pat Choate, the party's 1996 vice presidential candidate, made an audacious promise to the press that Reform would spend $2 million running forty to fifty candidates against vulnerable Republicans in the 1998 off-year elections, to punish them for failing to pass electoral reforms and for supporting further expansion of freetrade agreements. "You broke your pledges, you broke faith with us, let's see how you like being a potted plant for two years," Choate said to the GOP. Those Reform spoiler candidates never materialized.3 And the few who did run for high-level offices in 1998 got no significant material aid from the national Reform Party, other than modest help with ballot access and being featured on its website.4