Perot Signature Count Enough for California : Campaign: But he won’t be legally certified for the ballot until 54 Electoral College delegates submit official declarations.

Ross Perot’s success in qualifying for the November ballot continued Thursday in California and Washington state.

In California, state officials announced that petitions submitted last month by supporters of the undeclared presidential candidate contained enough valid signatures to have his name placed on the ballot. He will be legally certified for a spot when the officials receive notices from the 54 Californians who will be his Electoral College delegates.

Melissa Warren, spokeswoman for the secretary of state’s office, said local officials across the state had verified that more than 170,000 of the signatures on Perot petitions were those of registered voters. He needed 134,781 such signatures to get on the ballot.

Perot jubilantly revealed at rallies in Irvine and Sacramento two weeks ago that his California volunteers had collected more than 1.4 million signatures. Warren said the remaining signatures will not be checked since the required number had been surpassed.

In Washington state, meanwhile, Perot headlined a noisy rally celebrating the filing of petitions on his behalf that contained more than 50,000 signatures. That virtually assures him a spot on the Washington ballot, since the state requires the signatures of only 200 registered voters for such a listing.

Before Thursday, Perot had officially qualified for the ballot in 18 states, including Florida, Texas, New Jersey and Massachusetts. His certification efforts are pending in several other states.

Even as Perot’s candidacy continued its steady march toward qualifying in all 50 states, his campaign found itself Thursday in the position of responding to the latest in a series of recent news stories that have raised questions about the prospective candidate’s background.

Thomas Luce, a longtime Perot associate and top campaign aide, told the Associated Press that a story in the Los Angeles Times on Thursday had distorted Perot’s naval record.

The story, based on government documents, reported that some of Perot’s senior officers in the Navy judged him “emotionally immature” and too immature to be a career naval officer after a 1955 incident in which he criticized the service and requested an early discharge.

“During his entire naval career, he received excellent fitness reports and was honored many times for his leadership abilities,” Luce said in a phone interview from Dallas.

Luce did not dispute The Times story, but said the negative evaluations from the senior officers stemmed from an instance in which Perot “stood on principle.”

The Times had sought a comment from Perot on the story before it was published, but through a spokeswoman he declined to respond.

Perot, at his campaign rally on the steps of the Washington Statehouse in Olympia, made a general reference to the rash of stories about his background, saying he was not worried about “all that stuff that gets thrown at you in a political campaign.”

He added: “As far as I’m concerned, those are little, insignificant spitballs that have no impact at all. The only thing that matters to me is what the American people want.”

About 5,000 people attended the rally, which was briefly disrupted by a dozen or so gay rights activists. Minutes before Perot was scheduled to speak, several of them made their way to the podium and, using an electronic megaphone, began criticizing him for what they said was his anti-gay and anti-lesbian attitudes.

It was the third time of late that gays and lesbians had made their presence felt at a Perot appearance.

At a Perot rally last week in Hartford, Conn., clusters of gays and lesbians held up signs protesting his comments, made in late May on ABC-TV, that he would not name gays or lesbians to top-level government posts, in part, because of the controversy that would ensue.

During a late-night “national town meeting” on the same network Monday night, a gay activist in the audience loudly called Perot a “bigot” and “a pint-sized bully,” apparently because of his previous comments on appointing homosexuals.

In response, Perot warned that homosexual appointees to top government jobs could be “destroyed” during their confirmation hearings.

At the Olympia rally, the gay activists backed off only after extracting a promise from Perot aides that he would meet with them in private. The meeting occurred just before Perot appeared before his supporters.

Afterward, the gay activists said they were unsatisfied. According to Stephen Michael, who identified himself as a presidential candidate for the Independent Queer Party, the activists told Perot that it should be left up to gays and lesbians whether or not to put themselves through a brutal confirmation process.

“He said he would be supportive if they were willing to take the risk,” Michael said. He added, however, that Perot backed out on a promise during the meeting that he would state that position openly at the outdoor rally.

Perot did not make himself available to comment on the meeting. He departed the rally immediately afterward for a private reception with volunteers.

Times staff writer Jack Cheevers contributed to this story.