We could flip the race in either direction in Tennessee, said Richard S. Pearl of Murfreesboro, chairman of the Libertarian Party of Tennessee.

Pearl said he personally thinks Democrat Al Gore has more to lose than Republican George W. Bush should a surge occur in state votes for the so-called third parties.

The Libertarians seem to be the best organized alternative party in Tennessee, fielding candidates in five of the state's nine U.S. House districts this year, along with two for state Senate seats and seven for state House seats.

Pearl said about 1,000 Tennesseans pay $25 in dues to be card-carrying members of the party, and five times that number are active.

Further, the Libertarian presidential nominee, Harry Browne, lives in Franklin, Tenn. Pearl concedes, however, that Browne has lower name recognition than Green Party nominee Ralph Nader or Reform Party candidate Patrick Buchanan.

Thanks to a law enacted by the Legislature earlier this year, candidates of the Green, Libertarian and Reform parties will be identified by party label on Tennessee's ballot for Tuesday, Nov. 7. Representatives of all three parties cooperated in lobbying for the bill.

Previously, only Democrats and Republicans were identified by party; all others were labeled simply as independents. Two other presidential candidates on the Tennessee ballot, Howard Phillips and Randall Venson, are so listed this year, along with five candidates identified by party label. Phillips, who is slated to visit Knoxville this week, is the Constitution Party's nominee.

The same law, known as the Fair Ballot Access Act, also sets a new standard for third parties. If a party's presidential candidate can get 5 percent of the vote in Tennessee this year, the party's future candidates will also have the right to be identified by party. If not, they will be relegated to the status of independent once again.

So the alternative party leaders see the 2000 elections as a step toward future growth and name identification. None predicts a win this year, though all hope to gain 5 percent of the vote.

There's another 5 percent standard at the national level. Parties getting 5 percent of the presidential vote nationwide will be eligible for federal campaign funds in the 2004 presidential race. Because of the Reform Party's 1996 showing with Ross Perot as its nominee, Buchanan got $12.5 million in federal funds this year.

Our focus is not on electing Ralph Nader, though we would be thrilled if that happened, said Gary Wolf, a Middle Tennessee State University journalism professor who heads the Green Party of Tennessee. Our focus is on starting a Green Party in Tennessee.

Wolf said at the beginning of the year there was no Green Party in Tennessee. Anticipating Nader's candidacy, he and a handful of other people began making contacts through the Internet, and now there are Green organizations in the state's major cities.

The Greens have had an array of atypical events, such as registering 100 homeless people to vote in Nashville, then hosting a picnic for them in a city park.

They have also have had demonstrations, including one in which party members dressed as chickens and clucked, the point being that Gore and Bush were too chicken to include Nader in their debates.

The Reform Party was torn by strife in Tennessee, as it was nationally, when both Buchanan and John Hagelin claimed to be the party's nominee. In Tennessee, state officials decided to put both men on the ballot, with both identified as Reform Party candidates.

John T. Fey of Greenbrier, chairman of the Reform Party of Tennessee and a Buchanan backer, predicts that Hagelin will not be a factor in the state. Conceivably, he said, the two-candidate situation could in a weird way be beneficial if the two men's totals are combined to reach the 5 percent figure.

State Election Coordinator Brook Thompson said there has been no decision on whether to combine the Buchanan and Hagelin totals to determine whether the Reform Party hits 5 percent.

Fey, a salesman with a heating and air conditioning firm, was formerly a Republican. He admits that Buchanan has ignored Tennessee so far and says that's a sore spot with us.

The Reform Party risks losing ground from its showing in 1992 and 1996. Some Tennesseans think Perot siphoned enough votes from the GOP to allow Clinton and Gore to win.

At this point, our biggest challenge is convincing people that a vote for Pat Buchanan is not wasted ... because it puts us closer to 5 percent, Fey said.

He argues that the Reform Party and Perot prodded Democrats and Republicans into major policy changes.

Our message is give us 5 percent, and we'll continue to fight, Fey said.

The three biggest alternative parties have considerable differences in political outlook, but they share common ground in ridiculing the two major parties.

Fey notes that the Green's Nader and the Reform's Buchanan have been hanging around together for the national media on occasion. He said that could benefit both in overcoming the conventional wisdom that a vote for Buchanan will hurt Bush while a vote for Nader will hurt Gore.

I don't know that it's really a plan -- maybe more of a thought process, Fey said. The Green votes shrink the Democrats, and the Reform votes shrink the Republicans. So you balance out and deflate both major parties.

The Green Party's Wolf, who was once a loyal Democrat, said the alternative parties compete to a minor degree, but he acknowledged there's no way all three of us are going to get 5 percent.

Nader's signature issues have been criticism of the government's catering to corporate interests and inadequate environmental protection. Libertarian Pearl denounces the Greens as socialists.

Libertarians crusade for a drastic reduction of government, including doing away with the federal income tax and ending the war on drugs by legalizing controlled substances.

Wolf said Libertarians would give corporations free rein to pollute the Earth. Fey said the Reformers are somewhere in between. Buchanan's focus has been on conservative moral issues and opposition to free trade and corporate welfare.

All the alternative party spokesmen say they will be distributing yard signs, bumper stickers and other campaign materials in the waning weeks of the campaign.

Pearl said the Libertarians have funds available for some radio and television commercials in Tennessee. Whether the Greens and Reformers will broadcast commercials in the state will apparently depend on national decisions by Nader and Buchanan.

All three of the state's alternative party leaders said that a substantial portion of their support comes from citizens who traditionally do not vote because they dislike the two major parties. They said the polls understate the strength of their support because pollsters survey registered voters or likely voters. Tennessee polls have been showing each of the three major alternative candidates at around 1 percent or 2 percent support.

State Sen. Roy Herron, Gore's Tennessee campaign manager, and David Kustoff, who manages Bush's state campaign, both said they see little impact from third parties.

At the same time, however, polls indicate the Gore-Bush race is so close in Tennessee that even a shift of a percentage point or two from a major candidate to an alternative one could determine the election's outcome.