Saturday, July 27, 1996

Candidates will be Reform Party finalists, firm counting ballots says

By LORI STAHL
Dallas Morning News

DALLAS - The company overseeing the Reform Party's mail-in balloting said Friday that two candidates - whom they didn't name publicly - have gained enough support to be finalists for the party's presidential nomination.

Officials with the accounting firm Ernst & Young had a three-way conference call Friday morning with supporters of Reform Party founder Ross Perot and former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm, said a Lamm spokesman.

"They were kind enough to give us an update as to where they saw the balloting going," said Tom D'Amore, senior adviser to the Lamm campaign. "They would only say that according to the flow of the balloting, it appeared that only two individuals would qualify."

D'Amore declined to say whether he was confident that Lamm was one of the finalists. Lamm and Perot, who are the only candidates actively seeking the nomination, have been battling over the ground rules for the party's first election ever.

Reform Party candidates must get at least 10 percent support in the preference surveys returned from party members to speak at the nominating convention Aug. 11 in Long Beach, Calif. After that, party members will vote again for the nominee, who will be announced Aug. 18.

Because of delays mailing the initial preference surveys, Reform Party national coordinator Russell Verney said the results would be released when "the mail stream has peaked."

In related developments:

-Reform Party officials said they still did not know whether Perot would accept Lamm's request for a debate. Lamm has called for three debates - in Austin, Texas; Denver and on CNN.

-The Lamm campaign, on its Internet Web page, has called on supporters to sign up for the Reform Party by contacting the party's Dallas headquarters. The campaign said that will allow Lamm backers to vote for him as the nominee.

Also, the Lamm campaign on Friday requested from Verney a state-by-state breakdown of the survey results and the total number mailed and returned. The also asked that the results be released publicly.