REPUBLICAN presidential hopeful Mr Robert Dole fired a top strategist and a polling firm on the eve of today's primary election for Arizona's 39 delegates.
Arizona is a Republican stronghold, and the party insurgent, Mr Pat Buchanan, a journalist and TV commentator who has already collected 37 delegates, says that if he wins the state, it will be difficult to deny him the party presidential nomination.
Commenting on Mr Dole's staff shuffle, Mr Buchanan said "It seems clear that the senator is not in charge of his own campaign.
The reason for the staff changes has to do with advice tendered to Mr Dole about labelling Mr Buchanan as an "extremist". His exstrategist cautioned that this might alienate segments of Republican voters and cost him dear in the presidential election.
The Arizona vote is expected to be close. Mr Dole appears to be ahead in two other states holding primaries today, North Dakota and South Dakota.
Mr Dole, Republican leader in the Senate, has the endorsement of a former notorious "extremist" the octogenarian ex-senator, Mr Barry Goldwater, who was the Republican Party presidential candidate in 1964 and lost over whelmingly to President Lyndon Johnson.
At the Republican convention in San Francisco that selected him, Mr Goldwater brought cheering delegates to their feet when he declared that extremism in the cause of liberty was no crime. He has mellowed considerably in the 32 years since, and when reporters asked him about Mr Buchanan, he replied "Buchanan? Buchanan? He's a good Democrat."
Mr Buchanan's platform is protectionist and for that reason worries Wall Street. He would scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) and other similar agreements. He has attacked Wall Street, defends working people and condemns their falling living standards and sounds at times like a socialist.
Mr Buchanan praised President Clinton's "bold and correct" diplomatic intervention to "try to help resolve this crisis in Northern Ireland", in a Sunday television interview.
" I think the President has done a good job," he added. I would fault some of his tactics with regard to Gerry Adams's coming to this country. He [Mr Adams] has had an invitation before this atrocity against the British people and there is evidence that he would continue the dialogue and has separated himself from the men of violence."
"If elected President, I would probably grant him a visa," he said.