Ezola B. Foster

Ezola Broussard Foster (August 9, 1938 – May 22, 2018) was an American conservative political activist, writer, and politician. She was president of the interest group Black Americans for Family Values, author of the book What's Right for All Americans, and the Reform Party candidate for vice president in the 2000 U.S. presidential election with presidential nominee Pat Buchanan. In April 2002, Foster left the Reform Party for the Constitution Party.

Early life and career Foster was born in 1938 and reared in Maurice in Vermilion Parish in southwestern Louisiana. In 1960, she moved to Los Angeles, California, where she was employed as a public high school teacher for thirty-three years—teaching typing, business courses, and sometimes English classes.

In 1994, while teaching at Bell High School in Bell, California, Foster was a public advocate of Proposition 187, a California ballot initiative to deny government programs of social services, health care, and public education to illegal immigrants. Her position was extremely unpopular at the school where she taught, which was 90% Hispanic.

2000 election

Pat Buchanan, noting Foster's conservative media credentials and public speaking ability, asked her to be his running mate after Jim Traficant of Ohio, Teamsters Union president James P. Hoffa, and others declined his request. His critics claimed Foster, who had never held political office, was chosen because she was African American; they likened it to affirmative action, a diversity-increasing policy that Buchanan had always opposed.

Congressional run Foster ran for Congress in the June 5, 2001, special election in California's 32nd district to replace deceased representative Julian Dixon as the Reform Party candidate and garnered 1.5% of the vote.

Personal life Foster was Catholic. Her first marriage ended in annulment, she said, when she found out that her husband was a convicted felon. In 1977 she married Chuck Foster, a truck driver.

Electoral history

Published works