The most wishful scenario goes like this: McCain leaves the Republican Party and steals the Reform nomination–and its $12.5 million in matching funds–from Pat Buchanan. Smaller parties, like Ventura’s Independence Party and the Natural Law Party, lend their ballot slots to the reunited Reform movement. Money rolls in from disaffected donors, and McCain stages a Ventura-like coup. “McCain could be a unifying factor,” says another Ventura aide, Dean Barkley. “He might be the only one who could pull that off.”
There’s just one problem, of course: McCain insists he won’t defect. But the senator hasn’t exactly slammed the door on the idea either. “I can’t conceive of his leaving,” John Weaver, a McCain strategist, told NEWSWEEK. “Although, if the party abandons any shred of a reform issue, he might. But not now.” McCain wasn’t returning many calls until after his vacation, but he apparently plans to get back to Ventura then.
Even for an old fighter pilot, the odds against a third-party run would seem suicidal. The Minnesota group is hoping to convince McCain that if he remains a Republican he’ll be a pariah in the Senate, but if he builds a new movement he can carry on his battle for reform nationally. Meanwhile Ventura spoke this week with John Anderson, the 1980 independent candidate who has threatened to run again. And with his friend Bill Bradley out of the race, former Connecticut governor Lowell Weicker is also thinking again about a race. Either one, of course, would stand down for McCain–if only the senator would actually step up.
