Pros Hijacking Perot Campaign, Volunteers Say

In a complaint that may presage serious problems for Ross Perot’s presidential drive, supporters in Colorado are saying bitterly that political professionals from Dallas have “hijacked” the campaign from thousands of grass-roots volunteers.

Citizens who gave hundreds of hours of their time and thousands of dollars in donations toward getting their candidate’s name on the ballot have accused Perot’s Dallas headquarters of staging a “coup d’etat” that has pushed aside dedicated volunteers in favor of paid young organizers.

These alienated Perot supporters say that the campaign is rapidly becoming politics as usual, directed from the top down by a handful of self-aggrandizing political hacks.

Some of these early volunteers even suggest that the Perot movement is being deliberately sabotaged by Republicans hoping to splinter the embryonic movement. In fact, many GOP loyalists who worked for former President Ronald Reagan are joining the Perot campaign in senior positions in Dallas and in key regional offices--including the campaign’s new co-chairman, Edward J. Rollins.

“I don’t know if Perot knows what’s going on or what the consequences could be. Many view it as sabotage because so many old-line staunch Republicans have been invited in,” said Bob McCarthy of Denver, who joined the Perot petition drive in March. “A lot of people like me are moving to the sidelines and taking another look. We thought this was a chance to bypass all the b---s---. Now it appears to be politics as usual, and we’re ticked off.”

Another Colorado volunteer, Deborah Zekany, fired off a stinging letter to Perot on June 11 warning him of the turmoil.

“Basically a coup d’etat was staged on the entire organization that had coordinated our statewide petition drive,” she wrote. “You stated that you would serve the American people, not owing political favors. . . . How will you deliver if surrounded by politically ambitious, greed-motivated, rude and ruthless ‘Wanna-bes?’ ”

The Perot campaign in both Colorado and Dallas discounted the problems. But McCarthy said he’d heard similar gripes from Perot volunteers in other states, including the billionaire’s home state of Texas.

The turmoil is mirrored in other states, including Missouri, Illinois, Oklahoma and Virginia.

In Missouri, state Perot coordinator Sandy McClure said earlier this month that she was forced to throw out the first 100,000 petition signatures collected in that state and begin again because the first drive had been mishandled, according to newspaper accounts.

In Illinois, all the Perot petitions have been recalled because of doubts in Dallas about the loyalty of some of the electors pledged to vote for Perot in the Electoral College, said state coordinator Ted Pincus. The drive essentially is starting from scratch, he said.

In Oklahoma, one petition-gatherer, fearing a takeover by emissaries from Dallas, reportedly stashed 35,000 petition signatures in a bank vault so that he could deliver them personally to state election officials.

And in Virginia, thousands of signatures were thrown out because of technical errors. Election law specialists have been dispatched from Dallas to iron out Virginia’s problems, Perot campaign officials said.

In California, a Perot campaign official said there have been many organizational “growing pains” that he attributed to volunteers’ inexperience. Bill Myers, Perot’s Southern California vice chairman, said a signature-gathering drive to place Perot’s name on the ballot was delayed for about 12 days because volunteers initially did not understand state rules for choosing electors to the Electoral College.

John Schenk, a Glenwood Springs, Colo., lawyer who is Perot’s still-loyal Colorado coordinator, dismissed the state volunteers’ complaints as the grumblings of a handful of ambitious people who didn’t get their way.

“They couldn’t get their place in the sun and now they’re stirring up trouble,” Schenk said. “I can tell you from conversations with staff (in Dallas) and with Mr. Perot that they’re not at all interested in squashing this new movement by professional manipulation and the political games of the past.”

James Squires, Perot’s chief spokesman in Dallas, acknowledged that there have been disputes in several states about the running of the local campaign. He said that in those cases, the central office will step in to mediate the quarrel, but that ultimate decisions about the state efforts are still made at the local level.

Some of the friction can be attributed to the growing pains of a campaign that is still being invented even as it hurtles full-tilt toward November. And in spite of everything, the petition drive has been phenomenally successful. In 90 days, organizers have either placed Perot’s name on the ballot or collected enough signatures to meet ballot requirements in more than half the states.

But the campaign is moving into a sensitive phase. The energy and enthusiasm required to collect signatures is giving way to the necessity of putting together a sophisticated campaign to challenge the established political parties. In the process, some old-line volunteers are becoming antagonized.

In Colorado, Zekany--who wrote Perot the letter--said in a telephone interview that her warning about a coup concerned, in particular, David Rhodes, a 31-year-old real estate salesman from Austin, Tex. Rhodes was sent to Colorado by the Dallas headquarters to oversee the petition drive. Zekany, a 65-year-old retired real estate executive from Denver, accused Rhodes of shoving aside several volunteers, insulting dozens of others and seeking to reap all the glory of their labor.

She said that Rhodes told her that many of the first wave of volunteers were bound to drop out but that the second wave would be “higher quality.”

“You’re not talking about expendable items,” she said. “You’re talking about voters.”

Zekany said she was no longer certain that she would even vote for Perot, who has not replied to her letter. “Maybe I’ve joined a cult and don’t know it,” she said.

Rhodes, reached by car phone near Farmington, N.M., where he is helping to organize that state’s petition drive, said Zekany was “one person out of 1,500 in Denver that’s had her feelings hurt, so she decided to go to the press. What you’ve got here is one disgruntled employee.

“God bless her, she’s welcome back in the fold any time she wants,” he added.

He said that he had no orders to take over the Colorado campaign. His role is merely to audit compliance with Federal Election Commission requirements to assure Perot’s spot on the November general election ballot.

Times staff writer Jack Cheevers contributed to this story.