Writing a platform usually tests a candidate's ability to manage the factions in his party, and both Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore successfully enforced a high degree of unity on their platform committees.
The aim is to raise money for Hispanic Unity USA, a political-action committee.
The beneficiary was Hispanic Unity USA, the political action committee of Representative Loretta Sanchez, Democrat of California, not Gore's presidential campaign.
The son of a Sicilian magistrate and scholar, La Farina received a law degree in 1835 and soon became involved with a secret committee for Italian unity; he was forced into exile after it attempted an insurrection in 1837.
Now that Mr. Barak has again vowed to leave government, the Labor Party appears poised to approve Mr. Sharon's plans for a unity government at a central committee meeting on Monday.
But that unity crumbled Tuesday before the House committee, mirroring growing private frustration with being linked to BP.
So last week, the county committee, hoping to bring unity to the party and a halt to the infighting, selected a new county chairman, George S. Latimer.
The assemblywoman, Audrey I. Pheffer, said she reached the decision late Sunday night in the interest of party unity, just hours before the executive committee of the Queens Democratic Party was scheduled to convene and endorse City Councilwoman Helen M. Marshall for the job.
From 1982 to 1990 he was president of the Academy of Arts in East Berlin, as well as being a member of the central committee of the ruling Socialist Unity party.
Meanwhile, other party insiders speculated that one step toward restoring Democratic unity could involve Larry Aaronson, chairman of the Nassau Democratic County Committee, stepping down in favor of Jay S. Jacobs, Mr. Suozzi's campaign chairman.
