The party said it had no direct connection to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi or to TM. Hagelin said, "It's not a transcendental meditation party", and denied any connection between the Maharishi University of Management and his campaign. Tompkins said that more than half of its founders were connected to the TM movement. One critic said that it was "just another front group for the TM movement". By one report, almost all of the 92 candidates who ran on the NLP slate in California in 1996 were TM practitioners.