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INTERVIEW WITH JOHN HAGELIN
Janice Stensrude, Interviewer
December 13, 1995

An asterisk (*) in the text means that a word or words were omitted because they were not understood well enough on the tape to make a guess. Words in brackets ( [ ] ) are guesses or phonetic spellings of an unfamiliar or poorly understood word.

Interviewer: Well I'm excited we're going to have a third party. Apparently a lot of people are.

JH: A lot of people are. Two thirds, at least, say they would like to see a major third party alternative. In fact that went up to about three quarters when the government shut down a few weeks ago.

Wow.

There are a lot of discontents with politics as usual. Maybe even a higher percentage of the Americans say they distrust the two main parties. And then even a higher percentage say that they don't think they really have solutions to problems like crime and declining educational outcome, spiraling health costs. And in such a case then I would agree pretty much with that sentiment. People need to try something else. Definitely new solutions are needed--environmentally, socially, in terms of health care, of course, crime prevention, education, foreign policy, the works! We really need to have more effective and, I would say also, life-supporting, prevention-oriented solutions, and they exist. That's what excites me about the full Natural Law Party. That's why I got involved with it really is because I knew and have since learned much more that there are good solutions to problems that the government has ignored so far, either through their ignorance or for political reasons to do with special interests and how legislation gets written in Washington. So anyway things are going well. Since you spoke to Mike, we have about fifty candidates in Texas who are planning to run, and hopefully that will be closer to a hundred or even more.

That's good! You ought to elect all of them in Austin. Im not sure about the other cities, but they should do well in Austin.

Well, uh, Houston -- Last May we had a meeting and probably 35 or 40 in a living room, many of them were hearing about the party for the first time. And many of those -- everybody was very interested, many of those think they might want to run.

Good.

So really, it's been -- You know, I just came from California. There we beat Perot to the ballot. We're known as the party that keeps beating Perot to the ballot in all of these states; they were doing it without money just because our message is *. And because in California there is only a two-week deadline between getting on the ballot and submitting your candidates, Perot only has three and we have ninety-two. Uh, the people really have stepped forward to run and uh really a wide diverse background of people who are not politicians but successful people, with creative ideas that are working in their classrooms, through their businesses, their clinics. Even on the farms, sustainable agricultural practices that are working to produce abundant yields without the erosion and without the poisonous insecticides and fertilizers. So its very exciting to me. And in Texas I think we will probably end up having as many or more candidates by the time the deadline has come. We'll be on the ballot in fifty states; we're on track. And we're on track to have possibly a thousand candidates nationwide, and no third party has ever done that. And we've done it quickly. You know we were just an idea, gosh, in May of '92, three years ago. And of course, even then, in '92 we were able to get on the ballot in 32 states and run 128 candidates, qualify for federal matching funds and achieve what's called national party committee status, which we still have. In fact we're the only political party to have both matching funds and national party committee status. And in that, in other measures, we've quickly become America's third largest party. So it's exciting.

Well are you finding though that this is essentially a white middle class party? * seems to be attracted to?

Actually--

I don't mean as white middle class people, but it's just what the faces look like that come to meetings.

Not so much actually, because in California where we just finished our ballot access drive which will start here in March. Between March and the end of May we have to gather 45,000 ballot signatures, I think about 65 or 70 thousand total signatures. In California we had to register voters, that's how you do it there. We registered 137,000 new party members--registered Natural Law Party voters--and looking at those demographics they are as diverse as they could be. A third former democrats, a third former republicans, a third people who had never registered to vote for any party before, so they hadn't been inspired to participate in the political process that they didn't feel was representative of them. And many students. Students are concerned about the future. I think they feel the future's being mortgaged economically through the debt, and environmentally through environmental programs that are eroding the soil base and so forth. So it was a very diverse group. We had a very high percentage of women candidates--about half. It was a little more than half in '94; that's pretty unique. And culturally quite diverse. Uh, I was just telling a lady the other day-- Do you know the name of the radio station?

KCOH.

KCOH. It's definitely, to a large extent, an African-American and minorities listener audience. And I made a strong appeal to them to consider running as candidates for our party, be representative of their communities. And so we're really attracting a broad base, and I'm surprised that Newt Gingrich, conservative, obviously very fiscally conservative Republican, liberal congressman, Senator Tom Harkin, a very diverse group of people have been very supportive of the Natural Law Party's programs and ideas because they do, by solving problems at their bases, allow everyone to fulfill their goals. Like our preventive health care language, which would provide coverage for any prevention-oriented approach that works, according to research, in preventing disease, promoting health and paying for itself in reduced medical costs. Gingrich is for that because it cuts costs and saves money. Liberal Senator Tom Harkin embraced our language because it improved the quality of health in the country. And that language made it into the Senate and House health reform bills, and if and when any bill passes we will suddenly have coverage for preventive health care which is currently excluded in America, specifically for Medicare, Medicaid, et cetera.

Do you * to see a problem with the language that says "proven by a research." Who's going to judge whether or not this research is proven?

Well I'm a research scientist and I know that when it comes to serious scientific journals the scientific method works. The independent, anonymous, peer-review process is capable of weeding out what is hyped and what is fact. It's when you start getting into trade journals like, you know, let's say medical associations and the chiropractic associations somewhat tend to have their own trade journals which are very supportive of their methods. And then you can start to get research which is a little lightweight. But when it comes to the more serious sides of their publications, there is fairly well established criteria for truth and falsehood. And if you stick to research that has survived those strict standards of efficacy you're fairly confident that what you're getting works.

I agree with that but we're back to who is going to say "yes, this passes muster"?

Well, our language that we've inserted into the health debate says, especially the following is pretty much word for word, "coverage will be extended to prevention-oriented health care programs including but not limited to, diet, exercise, stress management, smoking cessation, provided such program has been shown in published scientific research in peer-reviewed journals to prevent disease, to promote health and to pay for itself to reduce medical costs." So it's not at that point really up to the congress any more or any committee within Medicare or Medicaid to say yes or no, except when it's up to the scientific community--

to the peer -- so the only politics involved in this would be for a journal to establish itself as peer reviewed.

Right. And there are fairly, you know, fairly strict guidelines for what publications, peer-reviewed journals need. So I have more confidence in that objective standard than in a congressional, a committee of congress, that may be heavily absorbed by PAC money. Particularly influenced against preventive or alternative medicine.

But you see what's going into the peer-reviewed journal is research supported by drug companies because they're the ones with the funds.

That is largely true, that's largely true. But with this new language, which would provide reimbursement for a prevention-oriented approach that works, even pharmaceutical companies will start to get into the business of keeping people healthy. And then leaving aside the pharmaceutical companies, there is a lot of NIH funding research, Uh, I'm closely associated with some NIH-funded research on transcendental meditation in the African-American population, particularly the elderly African-Americans who are at very high risk for high blood pressure and high blood pressure-induced heart disease. And this NIH research has been, it was just actually published, and it was also picked up by the Washington Post and newspapers across the country, and the headlines said that meditation found to be more effective than exercise and diet at reducing hypertension. And it turned out to be seven times more effective than exercise and diet. That was not a drug funded-study, but it was published and, uh, it would therefore be an example of the type of program that would fall under the coverage clause of preventive health care language. But why I'm excited about that one solution is that it was the only paragraph in this 10,000-page health bill that had to do with the substance of health care, the content of health care. The rest had to do with finances. The National Law Party likes to transcend the surface bickering over who will pay for whose disease, and solve the health care crisis at its basis, which is poor health. We have the most expensive health care system but among the poorest health of any industrialized country, and it's because prevention-oriented health services are specifically excluded by Medicare, Medicaid and most private insurance companies as well. So by shifting the content of health care from disease to health, the Natural Law Party will have probably a bigger effect on the direction of the health of the country than any of these coverage-related issues or finance-related issues. That's a very typical Natural Law Party solution. But things are going well and uh the coverage for the press, although a little bit skimpy, has been warm and very * receptive. And I don't know if you've seen some of that coverage, and I'd be happy to leave you some of the latest and greatest, but we've had good front-page feature stories in California of course, where we just got on the ballot * 92 candidate, in the Chronicle, the Times, [Contra Costa] Times, the San Diego paper, the Orange County Register. It's been very good. It's just that it's a drop in the bucket and we need much more.

Well, it's gonna reach that point where they just have to because you're there.

That's right.

And I think that is apparently very near.

I think so. There's some big shows--Larry King's producer, Meet The Press producer--who are getting warm to the idea of having us on. And we looked at it with Larry King who launched Perot's candidacy, and clearly the man or woman in the street didn't know Ross Perot or who he was until he got the coverage.

Right, but he also was a grand character that they all knew of.

Well maybe in Texas people did, but really most people on the street--

No I mean, Larry King did.

Oh yeah, that made it easier. That's right.

Because he was the hero who took his money and went over and tried to save the American soldiers overseas and that kind of thing.

That helped him get on.

Yeah, so that I don't think he had to have as much going for him politically as you do--

That's right.

--to get on there.

You're right, we need a lot. And fortunately we're getting it. We're getting it. To be the first third party to have this type of coverage, in terms of candidates in so many states, on the ballot in every state, that's never been achieved before. And to do it at a time when most Americans want a third-party alternative makes it newsworthy. Perot pulled 20 million votes in '92 at a time when about one third of Americans said they would express interest in third-party alternatives. That's now over two thirds. If Perot had gotten twice the votes that he got at the time he would have won. So it's really a time where a third-party candidate, or candidates, can win. And we will win seats. I'm confident that at the local level and at the state level we're going to win a lot of races. And when it comes to the federal level--congress, senate, presidency--we'll have to see. I really think it's just a matter of how much exposure we get.

I think you ought to be able to get it with one seat in the house of representatives out in California.

Yeah, yeah. That's right. And hopefully more. But even one person in congress could be a gadfly and really have an effect on--

I just watched an Eddie Murphy movie on television--

Oh wasn't it--

It was the first time I'd seen it.

It was called the--

The Distinguished Gentleman.

Yes, yes.

And then after-- one of my favorites is Dave and I haven't seen the new one about the American president.

I just saw it, The American President. It's more a clever romance than a realistic movie about politics. It was an engaging movie and I enjoyed it.

But it didn't do as much for politics as Dave did?

Uh, maybe about the same. It didn't do as much with politics as the Eddie Murphy movie did, Distinguished Gentleman, which really brought to life the role of special interests in government. And frankly, and we feel very strongly about this in the Natural Law Party, we won't see a big shift in the quality of legislation that makes it through congress until we pull the rug out from underneath the special interest groups, through campaign finance reform, to prevent PAC contributions to the re-election campaign of our congressmen. Right now if your congressmen and you want to conduct a successful re-election campaign, you don't look back home to the voters for your support, you look to Washington where the money is. Ninety percent of that PAC money goes to the incumbents. The challengers don't get that money; they do have to rely on local support. But until we can prevent the financial contributions from PACs, government will never be as accountable to the people nor the representative government of the people that it was intended to be. So the Natural Law Party is strongly for campaign finance reform; so is Perot. And it may take a Ross Perot or a John Hagelin of the Natural Law Party to ram that legislation through. Republicans--they got elected in '94 partly on the basis of the promise to go in as outsiders and clean up the place.

I thought it was just a *. Not even the promise--it's just well, let's try them for awhile.

That's largely true. The same thing with Clinton's victory. It was partly a reaction against 12 years of Republican rule. But when the Republicans became the majority rulers of Congress, they also became the majority beneficiaries of this inside-the-beltway money, and they dropped that item from their legislative agenda about a week after they were elected. As a matter of fact, the Republican freshman congress has already raised about twice as much in PAC contributions as the previous freshman Democratic congress has. So the situation is even worse, and the American people are quite disillusioned about that, and I think that we're going to see a voter reaction against the current Republican congress in '96. In fact Gingrich predicted in February of '93, shortly after his inauguration, that if Republicans really fail to address the major problems of the country that they too would be voted out of office in 1996, but not in favor of the Democrats. He predicted there would be some as-yet-unknown third party. And the Natural Law Party--it really is that party. I mean, our membership yet is not so huge. We're probably competitive with the Libertarians. But the difference is, we're growing--quickly. And the reason we're growing is that Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Greens alike are willing to back this party and to join this party because our approach is so comprehensive and our platform is so inclusive that it really represents the best of the Republican, the Democratic, Libertarian, Green ideas. And Perot's ideas. Perot has some good ideas. I think the balanced budget is crucial. And without him, the Republicans and Democrats would not be talking about a balanced budget today. But his platform, like the Libertarians, like the Greens, is perhaps a bit too narrow. The Natural Law Party platform is two inches thick, and the only platform I've ever read with references to published papers--published research to show that our promises are not empty campaign promises, but that our solutions do work to reduce agricultural erosion to eliminate energy dependence on foreign oil through the development of clean renewable energy resources. Educational programs that work to develop intelligence, creativity, keep kids in school. We have the highest attrition rate of any industrialized country, and it's the dropouts who are at highest risk for crime and drug abuse. And crime prevention programs that work, preventive health care programs that improve the health of the country and save money in the best possible way, by keeping people healthy. Foreign policy that makes sense. So I think that the Natural Law Party with its comprehensive platform provides an umbrella under which most Americans can really stand, and will give most Americans a loud, unified political voice. Americans who are in touch with progressive solutions to problems, people who are interested in preventive medicine, alternative medicine, sustainable agriculture, responsible investing, renewable energy, and so forth. And that's why we're growing. Without Perot's money in California, our petition gatherers were swamped, surrounded by people who just wanted to know more and ultimately to join the party. Perot with his legions of workers and tables at the malls, those tables were largely empty. Now he did an impressive thing. I take my hat off to him. He got on the ballot there in record time. But he had a $6.50 on the street to join that party, and in Ohio the same thing. He was able to do it, but in terms of the rapport with the people and support from the press, we did much better, because we're really a grassroots phenomenon. And now it turns out that Perot is not encouraging candidates, not allowing candidates on his ballot. They have three candidates in California; we have 92. As far as I know there are none in Ohio, and we'll have a full slate of candidates there.

* I mean he really doesn't want to endorse a candidate without knowing them inside out because he feels personally responsible for this entire party.

He likes to call the shots. I know that the United We Stand movement in 1992, the heads of the organization were constantly being replaced as they grew and began to hold some local sway. Because that control was meant to be from Dallas. The same thing seems to be true of the Reform Party. I know the Ohio group tried to throw Perot out of his party there, because they were a little bit frustrated about the fact that they had gone through the work of getting the party on the ballot and suddenly candidates weren't allowed to run. I don't know. It's not my business to speculate as to what, you know, Perot may be up to. But the Natural Law Party at least I can talk about, and we're very open and very much encouraging of candidates of all stripes and colors to run, because-- What we found is our platform is so universally nourishing and enriching to all that really almost anybody can find strength and support from our platform.

How do you explain to people how you founded *?

Well, I say -- Well historically, of course, there's a root. There was a Natural Law Party in England that preceded the Natural Law Party in the U.S., and now there are 40 Natural Law Parties, at least, in 40 countries, so the historical precedent to that name. But from me -- and also there's an American tradition to that name. The founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence in the second line talked about founding the country on Natural Law, on the laws of nature and nature's good, they said. But they had a healthy respect for the intelligence of nature. And I, as a physicist -- really, this is my expertise. I'm not a lawyer, you could say, but I'm a natural lawyer. My expertise is nature's government, the laws of nature. How nature coordinates and governs this immensely complex universe. In our own complex ecosystem with 6 million species mutually interacting and nourishing each other, that organizational intelligence of nature is brilliant, it's unsurpassed. The Natural Law Party would like to apply some of nature's supreme organizational confidence to the realm of human government. And that's a very American idea. The founding fathers felt that if the citizens of America, through education, could conduct their own lives better and in greater harmony with natural law, with fewer mistakes and problems leading to ill health and environmental damage and problems for society, then the role of the federal government could be small and efficient. So the theme of self government through natural law is a very American idea. How we accomplish that in the Natural Law Party is through programs like prevention-oriented health education, which empowers people to take better charge of their own health, to enjoy better health, and to cut health costs in that way. Because if somebody smokes things, drinks things, eats things that kill them or gives them lung cancer, what can the government do for that person except perhaps to provide some disease-care dollars in the end when it's too late. Unless government uplifts human behavior, that government will always be overwhelmed by problems. That's the Natural Law Party's approach, and I think the Libertarians' approach. Libertarians would like to do away with government, allow people to govern their own lives. But the problem is, if you simply dismantle the government without the tools to elevate human behavior, then -- and deregulate business, for example, I don't think there'd be a tree left standing today. If you're going to shift the onus of government responsibility to individual responsibility, you have to equip the individual to make better decisions that are in the long-term interest of both his or herself and their environment and the society in which they live. And the Natural Law Party will do that through its strongly educationally oriented approach. A lot of us candidates are teachers. I'm a university professor. I have taught at a very unique institution called Maharishi University of Management, which is a very traditional place in every respect. It's accredited at the doctoral level through the NCACS, North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. It's doctoral programs are all in the sciences, with the exception of a business Ph.D. A very traditional school, except the students are given lab time set aside for research in consciousness, for meditation programs to develop intelligence, creativity, learning ability, academics, aptitude, moral reasoning. And it's been a successful educational experiment. Research there and at other universities, using similar methods, have found that I.Q., for example, longitudinally increases in college students at an age where I.Q. is not supposed to change. And I believe that education ultimately holds the solution to all of our national problems because our nation's problems are human problems--drug abuse, crime, pollution, declining health through an epidemic of unhealthy habits. So again we need to harness the full creativity and intelligence of the American people to rise above problems. And, as an educator, I feel strongly that this is the key. Particularly, since according to research, according to Western psychologists, developmental psychologists, current educational practices develop about 5% of our mental potential. And by putting to work, to use more of our God-given potential, we can easily rise above * problems, and unless we do I think government will always be overwhelmed by problems.

I watched a program on Discover on the brain, and it was primarily talking about the criminal brain and the different wave lengths and what ADD looks like on a wave length and showing a young man through biofeedback who completely altered, permanently altered his brain wave *, but the conclusion of one of the professors at, I believe at the University of Southern California, was that-- They were saying that everybody needs to get brain wave tests and we need to re-educate all these brains. And this professor said, we need to get to the preventive. And they said, What are you talking about? He * prenatal health care *.

Prenatal care's important.

He said prenatal care would eliminate 18% of crimes.

18%? I can believe that.

He said it might not sound like much, but then he converted it to dollars and lives and that's pretty incredible.

It is incredible. There's a lot of malnutrition among newborn infants, for example, and improper development of the central nervous system due to malnutrition. Washington, DC has got one of the highest malnutrition rates of any of our nation's cities. And I've been involved with education in the inner cities there the last two years, and what we've done in some of the inner-city schools with remarkable results with a couple of simple things. One, is improved the nutritional quality of the school lunches, which can be abysmal. And since for many of the students this is the only square meal they receive during the day, the teachers have reported a very significant improvement in attention span and alertness among students who are fed better. That was a very simple thing you can do. It doesn't cost anything. We've introduced quiet time, meditation time in the school twice a day to, you know, unburden the students of some of the straps and psychological baggage they bring into the classes with them from torn families and drug-ridden neighborhoods, and introduced structured meditation to students who want to learn structured meditation, training in transcendental meditation has been available. And the school has completely turned around. This is a school where 10 percent of the students have been shot in the last three years. Now the violence has stopped. The school has just won an award last May for the most academically improved school in Washington. These are the sorts of results you can get through simple curriculum innovations. And there's much more we can do beyond that, with some attention to the problems, some innovation. And I would like to transform our department of education to a department of educational excellence, which would fund about a dozen model schools, federally funded model schools where curriculum innovations of all kinds could be implemented and studied. And that way principals, parents, teachers from across the country could pick and choose from among these successful programs those that they feel would be most appropriate and most effective in their neighborhoods.

Are you familiar with IS218 in New York and Shaw in Modesto, California?

No.

They were two models that were featured in a book called Full Service Schools. I'm helping a woman write her dissertation. That's how I came *. And the one in New York was the brainchild of the Children's Aid Society, and it is a middle school which is the central focus of a community center, and it was designed to be, so it's a brand new building. And it went very smoothly from the beginning, so it's pulled the parents in for adult education, it's given a place for everybody to go, and it's working very, very well. In California, it was the brain child of a very experienced educator. He went around the community saying, What do you want for your children? And what they wanted was a college education. They wanted their middle school children to be prepared to go to college and confident to go to college. So it was curriculum designed and a brand new gorgeous building, on the idea of getting these children into college. By the end of the year, they had pasted in all pieces of community to it, trying to make it work. And when they finally got it working after a couple of years, they didn't have someone like the Children's Aid Society who could see the community vision and had a couple of hundred years experience to do it. So they're all government agencies, and they have dozens of agencies involved and they have gotten into case management and collaboration, but they finally got it working. But what was interesting to me was that the organization that was set up to see the community as a whole unit went straight to the problem, designed it, it worked. And then this man who is accustomed to looking at it just from his angle, and schools are just for education and therefore we only focus on the students, discovered that the students didn't learn even after they gave them enough food to eat, because he had these others problems, and the parents couldn't help because they had other problems, and all the sudden they had to pull the whole community into the school.

It's interesting. Parent involvement is very, very important in getting any of these programs to work. And I know in the school that we're working, the parents get involved with these problems and they helped a great deal. There are good programs out there. There really are. And there are quite a few. And the mission of the Natural Law Party has been to gather together from across the country all of these ideas, particularly ones that, you know, have -- work, on the basis of, you know, some careful studies that have shown that they have * and they are cost effective and so forth. Anyway, anything that withstands any tests of success we've incorporated into our platform and we've given this platform to Bush, to Clinton. We're not stingy with our program. In 1992 we gave our platform to candidates Bush and Clinton, and we said, Please use these ideas. Rip us off. You're going to be in a better position to implement these solutions than I am come November 3. And these programs will let you fulfill your campaign promises about budget, lower taxes, better quality of life, better education. Clinton, at least, read our platform and started to expound and quote extensively from it beginning with the second presidential debate. As far as I could tell, Bush never read the document, because he never said anything subsequently that indicated to me that he was aware of any of our programs. But unfortunately Clinton was better at expounding than he was at implementing, and after his inauguration really none of our recommendations and proven programs were implemented, and we were somewhat disappointed. And it became clear to us that neither Republicans nor the Democrats were willing to stop and take a fresh, deep look at innovative new solutions to problems that are not yielding to the conventional approaches of more prisons, more police, et cetera, more punishment. And so our new attitude for 1996 is "If you can't join them, beat them." Grow our own political party, run a thousand candidates on the ballots in 50 states, take our ideas directly to the people, give them something or someone to vote for. And in most races throughout the United States in 1996 there will be three choices, and three choices only--a Republican, a Democratic, and a Natural Law Party candidate. And that's a great achievement by itself. And if the mood of the country, based on the polls, is any indication, we could win seats just by being on the ballot. I think it was three weeks ago today, Friday, I heard a poll that said that 35% of Americans say they will vote for a third-party candidate no matter who it is. And that's enough to win. Suppose the Republicans and Democrats split the remaining 70% of the vote -- 65% of the vote, the Natural Law Party would win by virtue of being there. But what people -- here are our candidates and are familiar with life supporting, humane, cost-effective, proven solutions. They give us their support, so we will do well. Very exciting.

What's going to happen if you find yourself in the White House? Are you prepared for that?

I am prepared for that. I'm putting together, at this point, a tablet of really good, and certainly very well known and well respected, thinkers in all the areas of foreign policy, defense and so forth. Yes, the Natural Law Party is prepared to govern. And I think -- I wouldn't want to discount the possibility of a Natural Law Party victory when the desire of the voter is so clearly for change. I say if the American people got their way today, we could see a Natural Law Party victory. The question is, will they hear about us? Will we gain enough exposure for people to recognize that they have an option to vote for something other than politics as usual. And at the rate things are going now, with the 11 months still ahead of us, I think we can get that exposure.

Will you play the saxophone at your inaugural ball?

No, but I'd be willing to go on MTV because a lot of the youth will be drawn to this party.

I really like him having done that, to taking the free press, go on Larry King. Why not? Go on Phil Donahue. Why not? He has done it and * ascended, and I think the people like it.

I think it's to his credit.

I think he really wanted to be a good president. I think they all get in there and are so overwhelmed with political reality. It's, Well, what can I do? What can I accomplish? So he's trying to get the FDA to outlaw cigarettes. Maybe he can accomplish that. You know, it's a very limited--

Well he was really surprised at how difficult it would be get this *, and I certainly can empathize. (interrupted by a telephone call)

I know you're real pressed today, so if there is anything you think we haven't covered that you might like to be said.

There is a thing that I wanted to share because it was very exciting. It just happened a few weeks ago. There was a presidential primary, the first of the '96 campaign season, called City Vote, and it took place simultaneously in 20 cities. You didn't hear much about it because Clinton and Dole and Graham all decided they didn't really want this to happen, and Republicans, Democrats pulled their support from it. But the cities went ahead anyway. And on this presidential ballot were 21 candidates, all of them household names--Clinton, Dole, Powell, Perot, Forbes, Alexander, Jesse Jackson, et cetera. And what we found was really heartening. Where we had exposure, where we had any coverage, we did very well. In cities where we never showed up. We didn't -- some of these cities we just couldn't get to, we didn't do very well, because John Hagelin was not a well-known name in those cities and Clinton, Powell, et cetera, they were household words. But where we had a minute on television or a minute and a half on NBC, CBS, or ABC TV on one evening news program, in those cities--Burlington, Boulder, Fayette, Missouri--we did really well. I got a call from Associated Press from Fayette, Missouri, which is the first city to report their election results on November 7, and they said, Congratulations, can we have your comment? And I said, Thank you, what am I commenting on? And they said, Well how does it feel to have beaten the Republican frontrunner Bob Dole. And I came in third in that race behind Clinton and behind Powell, but ahead of everybody else. And it just shows that you have to get a moment's exposure, we can win. That was really heartening, and it shows that people are not just willing to say they'll support a third-party alternative, but to back up those words with their precious vote. That was very heartening for all of our candidates really to know that they can win given the desire of the American people for something new. I wanted you to know that. It's quite exciting for us and it just shows what we can do if we just keep at it.

¤ ¤ ¤

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