Lenora Fulani, a pro-choice, homosexual rights advocate, joined Pat Buchanan's Reform Party presidential nomination campaign yesterday.
"We're going to integrate that peasant army of his," Miss Fulani, a Reform Party leader, said at a joint press conference with Mr. Buchanan at the National Press Club.
"We're going to bring black folks and Latino folks and gay folks and liberal folks into that army," said Miss Fulani, who was the presidential candidate of the New Alliance Party in 1988.
Mr. Buchanan, in welcoming her aboard, said with a warm smile, "Your pitchfork has been assigned."
An opponent of abortion and homosexual rights who two weeks ago abandoned his third consecutive run for the Republican nomination, Mr. Buchanan announced yesterday that he would seek to further expand his Reform coalition by meeting with the Rev. Al Sharpton in New York.
Mr. Sharpton, who enraged much of America by promoting the Tawana Brawley rape hoax, is at least as far from Mr. Buchanan on the ideological spectrum as Miss Fulani.
In explaining his planned call on Mr. Sharpton, Mr. Buchanan was remarkably candid. "In diplomacy, you have to do some things that are very unpleasant [in order] to get along," he said. "I will be happy to talk to Mr. Sharpton, and . . . say what I believe and hear what he believes, because I'm confident in my views."
Glancing over at his new ally, Miss Fulani, he observed: "As Lenora has said, if we're going to build a coalition in this country, we've got to talk to those we profoundly disagree with."
Mr. Sharpton is considered a political power in New York's black community. Vice President Al
By Ralph Z. Hallow, THE WASHINGTON TIMES