ELECTION A losing cause.

Pat Buchanan's poor performance in this year's presidential race will prove damaging to his future antigay crusades

As the 2000 presidential campaign dwindled down to its final days with polls showing the race neck and neck between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore, pundits said the contest was too close to call. But one thing they were sure of: Pat Buchanan was a loser. The right-wing commentator had survived a bruising battle within the Reform Party that challenged his presidential nomination, but that was just about the last victory Buchanan won. By the beginning of November, he was limping to a poor finish. In national opinion polls, the onetime Republican had consistently registered at 1% or less, far below the 5% of the vote the Reform Party needs to win matching federal funds.

Does Buchanan's electoral demise mean that the antigay cultural politics that Buchanan has come to represent is dead? "Antigay appeals, on the national level at least, seem to have lost a lot of oomph," says Hastings Wyman, editor of the Southern Political Report. "People are tired of bigoted appeals of any sort. By leaving the GOP, Buchanan marginalized himself from the mainstream of American politics. Voters now see him as something of a sideshow."

If Buchanan was deterred by how badly his message played in the campaign, he didn't show it. In the weeks leading up to Election Day, Buchanan barnstormed the country, railing against gay rights. During a visit to a Vermont farm in mid October, for instance, he declared that the state's civil union debate is a "major skirmish" in a "cultural war going on for the soul of this country," adding that homosexuality is an "unnatural and immoral lifestyle." During a stop at Bob Jones University in South Carolina, which until March of this year maintained a policy banning interracial dating, Buchanan denounced Hollywood and insisted that homosexuality "has always been associated with social decadence and national decline." Buchanan even unveiled a television ad supporting the Boy Scouts for barring gay members. "It's time to take our country back from those who are tearing it down," the ad's narrator said. "George W. Bush and Al Gore will do nothing. One candidate isn't afraid to fight back: Pat Buchanan." To Buchanan's chagrin, no one seemed to care.