Perot believed Americans were disillusioned with the state of politics as being corrupt and unable to deal with vital issues.

After he received 18.9 percent of the popular vote as an independent candidate in the 1992 presidential election, he founded the Reform Party and presented it as a viable alternative to Republicans and Democrats.

[4][5] Its most significant victory came when Jesse Ventura was elected Governor of Minnesota in 1998, although he left the party shortly into his term.

Beginning with Buchanan's poor showing in the 2000 election, no Reform Party presidential nominee since 1996 has been able to gather 1 percent of the popular vote.

[6] A Gallup poll showed Perot with a slim lead; however, on July 19, he suspended his campaign, accusing Republican operatives of threatening to sabotage his daughter's wedding.

He continued being politically involved after the election, turning his campaign organization (United We Stand America) into a lobbying group.

[6] In 1995, Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, largely on the strength of the "Contract with America", which recognized and promised to deal with many of the issues Perot's voters had mobilized to support in 1992.

Dissatisfied, the grassroots organizations that had made Perot's 1992 candidacy possible began to band together to found a third party intended to rival the Republicans and Democrats.

[6] At first, when the 1996 election season arrived, Perot held off from entering the contest for the Reform Party's presidential nomination, calling for others to try for the ticket.

Eventually, Perot was nominated for president and he chose economist Pat Choate as his vice presidential running mate.

As Perot had previously done very well in debates, it was a decisive blow to the campaign when the Commission ruled that he could not participate on the basis of somewhat vague criteria — such as that a candidate was required to have already been endorsed by "a substantial number of major news organizations," with "substantial" being a number to be decided by the commission on a case-by-case basis.

[6] By October 1997, factional disputes began to emerge with the departure of a group that believed Perot had rigged the 1996 party primary to defeat Lamm.

In the 2012 presidential election, the ARP endorsed Republican Party nominee Mitt Romney against incumbent president Barack Obama.

Trump was progressive on social issues, and supported allowing openly gay soldiers in the military, saying: "it would not disturb me".

Donald Trump stated: "So the Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke, a neo-Nazi, Mr. Buchanan, and a communist, Ms. Fulani.

The dispute went to the courts and the FEC decided that Buchanan was the legitimate nominee and awarded him $12.6 million in campaign funds.

The Reform Party of Kansas nominated a slate of candidates, led by Iraq War veteran Richard Ranzau.

In Colorado's 4th congressional district, "fiscal conservative" Eric Eidsness (a former assistant U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator and Navy veteran) ran on the Reform Party ticket.

[30] He received 11.28 percent of the vote, five times the winning candidate's margin of victory;[31] he later switched his affiliation to the Democratic Party.

By March 2007, the Reform Party had ballot access for the 2008 presidential election in four states (Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi) and had already started petitioning in an additional four.

On December 4, 2009, a New York Federal judge heard MacKay v Crews on the question of who are the legal Reform Party officers.

Speaking on behalf of the Bush-Quayle campaign, to this day we firmly believe that Perot cost the Republican Party the White House.

Davis condemned the Democrats and Republicans for catering to wealthy white males, saying: "Where are the women, the Hispanics, the African-Americans, and the gay people?

We must reject their tired old thinking...."[49] On June 29, 2010, Reform Party National Committee chairman David Collison delivered Davis a cease-and-desist notice demanding that she immediately change the name under which she was seeking to run for governor.

Among those who sought the presidential nomination before dropping out several months prior to the convention were former Savannah State University football coach Robby Wells, economist Laurence Kotlikoff, historian Darcy Richardson, and former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer.

[51] On June 20, 2020, during a virtual convention, the Reform Party again nominated Rocky de la Fuente for president.

De la Fuente defeated three other recognized candidates, Max Abramson, Souraya Faas, and Ben Zion (formerly the nominee for the Transhumanist Party).

[54] The Reform Party filed paperwork for re-qualification in May 2024, which would place Kennedy and Shanahan on the ballot in Florida.

The Buchananists, in turn, were overridden by the 2002 Convention which reverted the Constitution to its 1996 version and the party's original stated goals.