Southland Rally Draws 200 for H. Ross Perot

Nearly 200 people gathered at a mid-morning rally in Sherman Oaks on Wednesday to boost H. Ross Perot for President.

The Texas billionaire’s nationwide bid for the presidency was compared to the campaign that carried Prop. 13 in California in 1978. Perot has said he will run if volunteers get his name on the ballot in all 50 states.

“We need a change. And if this guy is elected, it might change the whole way candidates are selected, a kind of revolution,” said Jon Glabman, 26, an insurance agent from Encino.

Organizers of the first street rally for Perot in California said they have signed up more than 3,500 volunteers to work at collecting the 135,000 registered voters’ signatures needed to qualify Perot for the California ballot.

“Five weeks ago, there were 18 of us in Los Angeles and Orange counties meeting in a hotel near LAX,” said Mike Norris, a Studio City retail consultant who is coordinator of the Perot ballot drive in Los Angeles County. “At the time, I thought, ‘If we could only get 400 volunteers to collect 200 signatures each, that would be 80,000, and along with San Diego and Northern California, that would be enough.’ ”

Now, Norris and others say they hope to collect 1 million signatures, enough to show that Perot has a chance of winning the election.

Meanwhile in Alaska, about 7,000 people signed petitions circulated for Perot--more than three times as many as were needed to make the ballot. Tennessee has already granted Perot a spot.