"[The Republicans] are voting for Buchanan to send a message," Chapman says, "We need to use our vote as muscle as well."

For now, the NAP is using their muscle in another way.

Officials from the New Alliance Party have challenged presidential candidate Paul E. Tsongas' petition to participate in the New York primary by citing several technical violations. The New York election law is considered one of the most exclusionary in the country.

Sniping at the political establishment and running upstart political campaigns are not new to Fulani. Fulani, whose political allies have included the Reverend Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan, ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor of New York, mayor of New York City, and governor of New York, mayor in the last decade.

In 1988, she ran for president and was the only candidate besides George Bush and Michael Dukakis to be on the ballot in all 50 states.

Fulani's message incorporates many familiar liberal themes. President Fulani would establish national health care insurance, maintain abortion rights and raise the minimum wage.

She talks about developing a "truly populist economic recovery" which would redistribute the nation's wealth through a restructured tax code that would include an increase in taxes on the rich.

Fulani is severely critical of the major Democratic candidates, whom she has called "professional murderes" for their "complicity" in building an economy that is based on military production at the expense of social programs.

"The government has become the permanent sugar daddy of the defense industry," she says.

The lack of action on such issues as health care is a further indication that the government does not represent ordinary people, Fulani says.

"If you sat down a Black woman from Harlem and a guy who works in a shoe store in Cambridge, we'd have national health insurance," says Chapman.

Fulani's message has enabled her to garner significant financial support. With the efforts of a staff of 200 and ten offices across the country, the Fulani campaign has raised $1 million in campaign dollars, thus making her eligible for federal matching funds.

Those funds have been raised by canvassing door-to-door and soliciting donations on street corners in New York City neighborhoods.

"We knock, knock, knock on people's door's" says Chapman. She adds that their average donation is $21.

Many Fulani critics say, however, that raising money, not the consciousness of American voters, is the main motive behind her campaign.