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Reform Party perseveres as some candidates spout hateful views

Response to KC Star article of 07/27/00

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Reform Party perseveres as some candidates spout hateful views
By RICK MONTGOMERY - The Kansas City Star
Date: 07/26/00 22:15

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Among three men seeking the Reform Party nomination for the U.S. Senate in Missouri is a truck driver who openly ridicules African-Americans and Jews in a campaign to save "white Christian America."

And in the Missouri governor's race, the fractured party is offering up a St. Louis area ophthalmologist whose ideas include repealing voting rights for women.

Both the Senate candidate -- Martin Lindstedt of Granby, Mo. -- and gubernatorial hopeful Joseph C. Keller will be atop the Reform Party ballot in their respective races when voters narrow the field in the Aug. 8 Missouri primary.

State party officials for now are saying little against the two primary contenders.

"It's a real dilemma," said Missouri Reform Chairman Bill Lewin. "We're caught between our respect for freedom of speech and our respect for (the party's) ethics."

Reform leaders at the national level, however, are publicly repudiating Lindstedt and similar candidates in other states for promoting causes contrary to the party's principles, which once were rooted in mainstream issues such as campaign-finance reform and the national debt.

Keller declined to be interviewed. But Lindstedt said in an interview that he liked his chances of winning the Senate primary.

"I know my audience. You have a few out there who whine, whine, whine, `It's racist,' " he said. "But when I'm talking to elderly whites who grew up liking segregation, I generally do pretty well."

Although Lindstedt, 42, describes himself as a "Buchananite," his statements have been denounced by Pat Buchanan, the party's apparent front-runner for president. In a letter, Buchanan called Lindstedt's ideas "crude, obscene, vile and bigoted in the extreme."

Buchanan's opponent for the presidential nomination, quantum physicist John Hagelin, has issued similar statements attacking Lindstedt and other "hate candidates."

Hagelin this week told The Kansas City Star that Buchanan's far-right stance on social issues may be interpreted by bigots as "an open invitation" to join the traditionally centrist party.

In Idaho, the Reform slate of legislative candidates includes Richard Masker, running on an anti-Semitic, white supremacist platform.

In North Carolina, a leader of the National Alliance -- a white nationalist organization -- has urged in a letter to followers that they support "a much more radicalized, white-friendly Reform arty come November," The Washington Post reported this week.

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Seeking distance

The Missouri flap has spurred the Jackson County branch of the Reform Party to pass an anti-bigotry resolution.

Referring to no candidates by name, the resolution states the county organization will not support anyone "who calls for discrimination or for violent action based on color, race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, handicap, age or sex."

In the Senate primary, Lindstedt is running against two centrist Reform Party members -- St. Louis businessman Hugh Foley and ex-contractor James M. Hall of Republic, Mo. -- for the chance to fill the seat occupied by Sen. John Ashcroft, a Republican.

The gubernatorial primary will pit Keller, 43, against Kent A. Benson of Camdenton, Mo., and Richard A. Kline, a retired military officer from Gipsy, Mo.

At a June debate in Kansas City, Keller held the stage with the ultra-conservative Kline, who labeled former President Richard Nixon "a commie" for launching federal revenue-sharing programs to help U.S. cities.

Russell Verney, the party's founding national chairman, said the infiltration of "wacky ideas" has historically dogged third-party efforts.

"Malcontents will attach themselves to any vehicle that will give them a political platform," said Verney, who resigned his chairmanship last year. "With the national stature of the Reform Party, we're an easier way for an unknown candidate to enter the big leagues as opposed to venturing into one of the major two parties and being completely overlooked."

On the Missouri Reform ballot, both Lindstedt and Keller will appear at the top of their races because they were first to file their candidacies with the Missouri secretary of state's office.

"When a Lindstedt shows up on the ballot with a bunch of other unknown candidates, in all likelihood most Reform voters wouldn't have any idea whom they're voting for," said Verney. "Being first on that ballot will be an advantage."

A Lindstedt campaign brochure refers to immigrants as "immigrunts" and states he would push a "nationalist, pro-white, America First!" agenda.

On his Web page, Lindstedt has warned of "racial genocide for whites at the hands of a numerically, intellectually and morally inferior racial and political minority not afraid to use its position of power to get its way."

After such literature found its way to the Buchanan campaign, Buchanan sent a June 27 letter to former chairman Verney, urging Reform leaders to "repudiate such filth."

Buchanan wrote: "I will gladly stand beside the Party Chair and renounce (Lindstedt)" should he become the Senate nominee.

Relying on voters

Keller -- more soft-spoken than Lindstedt -- articulates several proposed reforms ranging from eliminating payroll taxes to prohibiting judges from being bar association members.

Although his public remarks have tended to avoid extremist positions, Keller's Web page includes statements that fluoridated water causes infertility, that drug importers be punished by death, that fathers be granted child custody and that prisons be segregated because "white men should not be raped by black men."

Keller's platform also states: "Only taxpaying men may vote or hold office. The 19th Amendment (granting women suffrage) exceeds federal authority."

Party leaders in Missouri, working to distance themselves from Lindstedt and Keller, say both candidates have the legal right to run in the primaries even if their views are objectionable.

As such, state chairman Lewin said the party hierarchy should resist screening or censoring candidates before voters have a chance to size them up.

"I am confident that the voters who choose our ballot will select candidates that the party can endorse," he said. If not, the state party constitution allows officers to withhold endorsement or even endorse candidates from another party.

"If there's a nominee that the public finds repulsive, that's definitely a black eye for our party," Lewin said.

Both Lindstedt and Keller have unsuccessfully run for statewide office in the past -- Lindstedt as a Libertarian, Keller as a Democrat and a U.S. Taxpayers Party nominee.

The Star's Kit Wagar contributed to this article.

To reach Rick Montgomery, a national correspondent, call ( 816) 234-4410 or send e-mail to rmontgomery@kcstar.com

All content © 2000 The Kansas City Star

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A Letter to the Editor of the Kansas City Star

I praise investigative reporter Rick Mongomery’s excellent work in his July 27th article, "Reform Party perseveres as some candidates spout hateful views." In fact, until the morning of July 26th when Montgomery called me and told me what Buchanan and Hagelin and Dallas-Faction perobot sneaks were saying about me behind my back, I had only heard rumors about their intrigues.

I supported every single one of Pat Buchanan’s policies concerning ending the New World Order and non-White immigration, as such platforms are two out of four of the planks of the Missouri Reform Party. Yet because I am honest about my racial motivations in doing so, it would seem that Pat Buchanan is having a cow about honest, openly racist White Nationalist Separatist politicians holding him at his word. And Buchanan didn’t even have the honor, courage and decency to tell me about it to my face.

Buchanan did the same thing to his supporters back in ’96 when he sold out to Bob Dole. So it was a calculated risk for me that I’d be ‘ninety-sixed’ myself in openly appealing to rural and small-town working lower-middle class White Christians to vote for a Reform Party candidate dedicated to ending non-White immigration, stopping the New World Order, and eroding the political base of the racially treasonous Republican Party. I still support the Buchananite platform, am the only Reform Party candidate doing so except Keller, but Buchanan betrayed me. He is a coward and a fool to call his political supporters 'racist' to appease Dallas-Faction perobots.

This multi-racial empire is doomed to be minority White within 40 years. Sooner or later competing racial minorities will act to have their own sovereign nation-states. As an unrepentant unreconstructed racist Southern White Nationalist Separatist politician, I am not going to lift a finger nor waste a single White life fighting to keep this Evil Empire together, not when so many racial traitors sold out White America first.

Martin Lindstedt
Missouri Reform Party Candidate for U.S. Senator

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A Letter to the Editor of the Kansas City Star

Pat Buchanan's disavowal of racism means as much as John Rocker's. Though I was and am a Buchananite, I have endorsed and will continue to endorse Martin Lindstedt in the Reform primary for U. S. Senate.

Some people calling themselves the Reform Party of Jackson County, condemned calling for discrimination or identifying oneself as a racist. Apparently sneaky discrimination and hypocritical racism are acceptable to them. They condemned not Lindstedt's discrimination and racism, but his forthrightness and honesty.

Dr. Joseph Keller
Missouri Reform Party Candidate for Governor

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