"[The Fulani campaign] is a political hoax," says Chip Berlet, who published a study on Fulani's New Alliance Party in 1987. "They're running to make money through federal matching funds and attract recruits."

Berlet charges that the NAP is a "totalitarian cult organization" with ties to such political extremists as Lyndon LaRouche.

Fulani dismisses Berlet's accusations, however, as based and uninformed.

"Why is he so into me? He has never spoken to me," she says, adding that Berlet works for a major Democratic Party contributor.

Critics also challenge the Fulani campaign's Characterization of the New Alliance Party as a "grouping of progressive, multi-racial, pro-gay, pro-women" elements.

"She's an opportunist riding on gay, lesbian activism," says Robert Bray, spokesperson for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF).

"Our experience with the NAP is that they try to..obfuscate information and appear to be pro-gay and once they infiltrate [a gay rights demonstration] they'll try to disrupt it," Bray says.

Bray says that the self-styled "passionately pro-gay" party's application for membership in the International Lesbian and Gay Association was rejected in 1989.

"We believe they have little to offer the gay community," says Bray. "We believe they have little to offer the gay community," says Bray.

But Fulani says that the NGLTF's refusal to support her candidacy also seems from Democratic party politics.

She says that leaders of the NGLTF hold "partisan jobs in the Democratic Party," and therefore must attempt to discredit the NAP, which threatens to draw voters from Democratic candidates.

Criticism of Fulani and the NAP comes from Black activists as well.

Dennis L. Serrette, the NAP's presidential candidate in 1984 and currently a Black activist in Maryland, writes in a 1988 Radical America article that the NAP is "not black-led" and "not even a progressive organization as it also pretends."

Serrette also accuses the NAP of being a front for the "psychological control" experiments of Fred Newman, a co-founder of the party and Fulani's Campaign manager.

Fulani, who is chair of the NAP, responds that it is "racism and sexism" to suggest that a Black woman is being controlled by a white man.

"Fred Newman of wind me up every morning...and send me off to work 18-hour days," Fulani says.

Fulani adds that Serrette is a "disgruntled man" who had a "three-year relationship" with her in the early 1980s.

Fulani does have supporters in the African-American community, however.

"She's very attractive and intelligent and says more good things about poor people than any of the five white males who are running," Foster says.

But Berlet counters that "if [Fulani and the NAP] are really who they say they are they'd get broad political support...instead, they're ostracized by people they purport to represent."