3 Key Aides Help Perot Navigate Uncharted Waters : He recently hired political pros, but two longtime associates and a former editor are at the controls.

Ross Perot is depending heavily on a troika of advisers who helped his political fortunes get off to a booming start and who, like the prospective candidate, have never been on the inside of a presidential campaign.

The lead man among the three is Dallas lawyer Tom Luce. His partners are longtime Perot business associate Mort H. Meyerson and former journalist James Squires.

Even the recently announced hiring of veteran political professionals Edward J. Rollins, a Republican, and Hamilton Jordan, a Democrat, is not expected to significantly erode the trio’s influence in overseeing the shift in Perot’s campaign from a grass-roots movement to a structured organization.

Luce and Meyerson earned Perot’s trust and confidence over many years. Either “can speak for Perot,” Squires said. “They can make a commitment and deliver on that commitment. I doubt if there is anyone else in the campaign who can do that.”

Here is a brief look at Perot’s three principal advisers:

* Luce, 51, has served as the Texan’s chief trouble-shooter for nearly 20 years.

He engineered Perot’s escape from an attempted bailout of a Wall Street brokerage firm in 1974. He helped steer through the Texas Legislature Perot’s ambitious program for education reform, which included the controversial “no-pass, no-play” rule for high school athletics. And he negotiated the settlement of the billionaire’s bitter dispute with General Motors in the mid-1980s after the automotive giant purchased the computer firm that Perot had founded, Electronic Data Systems.

Along the way, the boyish-looking Luce managed a flourishing law practice and developed an interest in politics, running for governor of Texas in 1990. Although he lost in the GOP primary, his serious approach to the issues won him wide respect in state political circles.

“He was the thinking person’s candidate,” said George Christian, an Austin-based political consultant who served as press secretary to former President Lyndon B. Johnson.

His low-key, patrician demeanor nicely complements Perot’s rough-and-ready style.

Still, he says he has adopted a fatalistic outlook about the future course of Perot’s campaign. “What allows me to sleep at night is the knowledge that no 30-second commercial we will run is going to determine the election,” Luce said. “Either this is a unique time in American history and Ross Perot will be President, or it isn’t and he won’t be.”

* Meyerson, 54, has had a close collaboration with Perot in business that started in the 1960s when he signed on with EDS, eventually becoming its president. He went off on his own in 1986 after Perot sold the firm to GM and was a key member of the group that helped Texas land the superconducting super collider. Recently, he agreed to run Perot’s current computer business while his friend focuses on the campaign.

As a result of these links, Meyerson may be the one person in the campaign whom Perot can consider a peer. This gives his words great weight in the campaign’s councils, although it did not prevent Perot from rejecting his first piece of political advice, which was not to run.

“I went to him and said, ‘I know this is important. But are you sure you want to pay the price?’ ” Meyerson said.

He recalled that, after Perot said he intended to run if it was clear that the public wanted him to, “I said, ‘Fine.’ End of conversation.” Since then, the blunt-spoken Meyerson has become a high-level jack-of-all trades. “I do the necessary,” he said. “If Ross asks me for ideas on the environment or women’s issues or whatever, I go out and find people who are smart and let him meet them.”

Meyerson is a hiker, a vegetarian and a connoisseur of the fine arts for whom Dallas’ music center is named. He said he has “no interest” in politics. But, he said: “I have a great deal of interest in America.”

* Squires, 49, made his mark as a hard-nosed reporter in Washington for the Nashville Tennessean and the Chicago Tribune. He became editor of the Orlando Sentinel in 1977 and then of the Tribune in 1981, a post he held for most of the decade.

After leaving journalism to teach and write, Squires met Luce at a fellowship program at Harvard University and was brought into the Perot campaign in its early stages, when it became clear that someone was needed to oversee contacts with the press.

“What I really do is kind of explain the system of running for President to Perot and explain Perot to the system,” Squires said. “The one thing he has not done before is run for President.”

Friends say the gruff Squires enjoys working for Perot because the two men are temperamentally attuned to each other.

“In the past, most campaigns have people who powder and paint and coach the candidate on how to slip through the system,” Squires said. “But Perot would never have that. There are other ways of negotiating the system in order to get the message through. That’s what my role is.”