Reform Party of the United States of America

The Reform Party of the United States of America (RPUSA), generally known as the Reform Party USA or the Reform Party, is a political party in the United States, founded in 1995 by Ross Perot.

Perot, who had run as an Independent in the 1992 presidential election and wanted to participate also in the 1996 presidential election, thought Americans were disillusioned with the state of politics as being corrupt and unable to deal with vital issues. Perot claimed to represent a viable alternative to Republicans and Democrats.

The party has nominated several notable candidates over the years, such as Perot himself, Pat Buchanan, and Ralph Nader, but its most significant victory came when Jesse Ventura was elected Governor of Minnesota in 1998.

The Ross Perot movement

Ross Perot's 1992 presidential election campaign

The party grew out of Perot's efforts in the 1992 presidential election, where—running as an independent—he became the first non-major party candidate since 1912 to have been considered viable enough to win the presidency. Perot made a splash by bringing a focus to fiscal issues such as the federal deficit and national debt; government reform issues such as term limits, campaign finance reform, and lobbying reform; and issues on trade. A large part of his following was grounded in the belief he was addressing vital problems largely ignored by the two major parties.

Reform Party (19th-century Wisconsin)

The Reform Party, also called Liberal Reform Party or People's Reform Party was a short-lived coalition of Democrats, reform and Liberal Republicans, and Grangers formed in 1873 in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, which secured the election for two years of William Robert Taylor as Governor of Wisconsin, as well as electing a number of state legislators.

By 1875, with Taylor having lost his bid for re-election, the coalition had begun to dissolve; Greenbackers, who advocated some of the same policies, began to run their own candidates in 1876. The last edition of the Wisconsin Blue Book listing a legislator as "Reform" was that of 1878, in which Francis Steffen is described as a "Reform Democrat" (but had defeated a Greenback opponent in 1877).

References

New Zealand Reform Party

The Reform Party, formally the New Zealand Political Reform League, was New Zealand's second major political party, having been founded as a conservative response to the original Liberal Party. It was in government between 1912 and 1928, and later formed a coalition with the United Party (a remnant of the Liberals), and then merged with United to form the modern National Party.

Foundation

The Liberal Party, founded by John Ballance and fortified by Richard Seddon, was highly dominant in New Zealand politics at the beginning of the 20th century. The conservative opposition, consisting only of independents, was disorganised and demoralised. It had no cohesive plan to counter the Liberal Party's dominance, and could not agree on a single leader — it was described by one historian as resembling a disparate band of guerrillas, and presented no credible threat to continued Liberal Party rule.