Perot Campaign Has Discord That He Can Ill Afford

When Ross Perot volunteer Mike Ruppert called me last week to report trouble among the troops in Perot’s Southern California campaign, I wasn’t surprised.

I had seen the possibility of such discord on the night of the June primary election when I visited Perot’s San Fernando Valley headquarters on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks.

Several television crews had crowded into the storefront office. The workers were elated at the outcome. For, while Perot wasn’t on the California ballot, he scored so high in exit polls that the press called him a winner.

The cluttered walls gave me the first hint of conflict. They were loaded with assignment lists, sign-up sheets, tables of organization and other evidence that Perot’s military ways had reached Sherman Oaks.

Then, as the TV crews prepared to go on live for the 11 p.m. news, a campaign functionary ordered a couple of the volunteers to stand aside for the cameras. Resenting the brusqueness of the order, the unpaid workers refused.

Political volunteers are like the soldiers during the American Revolution--willing to fight fiercely for their cause but hating to take orders.

These temperamental troops are especially valuable to Perot. Democratic and Republican candidates have a pool of veterans, assembled over the years. The newborn Perot political adventure started from zero. It can’t afford to lose its workers.

Ruppert told me Los Angeles County was not represented on the Perot state executive committee. “They’re treating us as pariahs,” said Ruppert, a writer and a former L.A. cop. “Los Angeles County is the single most important county in the state and arguably the country. We’re not getting the resources we need to mobilize the county. It will hurt the state and our prospects for victory in November.”

Ruppert was especially angry at Bob Hayden, the Perot state chairman, an engineer from Ventura who started as a volunteer but now is paid to work full time on the campaign. “Not once since April has Bob Hayden come to L.A. County to ask what he can do to help,” said Ruppert.

This conversation took place on Friday. I couldn’t get hold of Hayden, but on Monday I reached Bill Myers, the campaign’s vice chairman for Southern California.

Myers, who runs an Orange County refrigeration business, was angry at Ruppert for running to the press. “We don’t need people who say they are more important than anyone else in the state,” he said.

Later in the day, he followed that up with a statement he faxed to me. “All who are not true of heart and united in action are hereby asked to leave the organization and return to the camps from which they came,” he said. “Either you are with us in our fight to elect Ross Perot, or you are against us and must leave.”

Perot favors blunt talk and strong loyalty. But Myers had gone too far for even the Perot campaign. When his words hit L.A. County, some of the volunteers were outraged.

The dispute came at absolutely the wrong time, amid growing stories of dissension among high-level advisers and discontent among volunteers.

This is one campaign that really needs its volunteers. They are expected to play a major role in the fall. They’re the ones who gathered the 1.4 million signatures that put Perot on California’s November ballot. That effective army has to be kept intact, and enlarged.

Volunteer chairs will take charge of precincts, putting together small organizations to register voters and get them to the polls. Other volunteers will run a sophisticated computer operation needed to identify key precincts. Some of the word processing, desktop publishing, accounting, advertising, press relations and other skilled work of a campaign will be done by volunteers.

And so on Tuesday, campaign Chairman Hayden met with L.A. County Chairman Mike Norris and settled the fight. After his meeting, I visited the Valley headquarters to talk to Hayden.

I’d met him on primary election night. He had seemed an intelligent, personable man who had no idea of the hard life of a campaign chairman. Tuesday afternoon, I could see he had found out.

He said he had listened to the L.A. complaint and decided “it made a lot of sense.”

He said he would recommend that the statewide board add a Los Angeles County representative.

“We won,” a couple of the L.A. volunteers told me. That’s true, if the statewide board goes along with Hayden’s request.

But maybe they won’t. With volunteers, you never can tell.