Though it was convened by Golisano and Black's embryonic federation, the meeting was actually dominated by a platoon of Perotists from Pennsylvania working in tandem with Fulani's New Alliance Party followers, who numbered nearly half the delegates. Golisano's New York group walked out of that meeting, as did representatives of Connecticut Governor Lowell Weicker's independent party and several other state partylets, because they refused to have anything to do with Fulani. But she succeeded in placing herself and many of her followers on the Patriot Party's executive committee, while the New Alliance Party quietly went out of business. Round two went to the Golisano forces, mostly. In September of that year, after maverick Republican Richard Rosenbaum reneged on a promise to campaign as an independent for governor of New York, Black turned to his friend Golisano to run to establish the Independence Party's ballot status.
Accounts differ as to what happened next.
According to Fulani spokeswoman Salit, Black reached an agreement with Fulani, who had twice earlier ran for governor, each time inching closer to the 50,000 vote needed to qualify her party for a permanent line on the ballot. Fulani would not run her own campaign, so as to not interfere with the Independence drive. Once party status was won, Salit says, Black promised an open process of defining the new party's structure and rules in which Fulani's participation would be welcome. But after the election, with a paltry showing for the Independence party from Fulani's New York City base, the party's upstate leaders began promulgating rules without consulting her. So Fulani took the new party to court and sought a Justice Department ruling that they were discriminating against minority voters.