Perot’s Volunteers Feeling They Were Left at the Altar : Reaction: California backers say the hurt is especially deep because he rekindled their interest in politics.

The true believers in Ross Perot, the ones who felt that the independent presidential candidate was the only answer to what ails America, reacted to the shocking announcement that he was ending his upstart campaign Thursday like jilted lovers left at the altar: with shock, bitterness, fury and tears.

At a Perot headquarters near downtown Los Angeles, volunteers trashed their campaign office. To the north, in Ventura County, an 8-foot, 350-pound sculpture of the diminutive Texas billionaire came to an undignified end: It was forklifted into a dumpster. In Sherman Oaks, one distraught supporter, tears streaming down his face, had to be escorted into a back room to deal with his grief.

Everywhere there was shock.

“The party is over,” said Ed Haas of Reseda as he sat dejected at the back of the Sherman Oaks storefront headquarters. “Now the hero, the man in the white hat, turns out to be just another (expletive deleted) rat.”

In Visalia, home-builder Sam Johnson, a nephew of former President Lyndon B. Johnson and one of the earliest Perot organizers in California, said, “We’re all sobbing in our handkerchiefs as the groom is fleeing in his car.”

Perot said he would not be a candidate because he realized he could not win, and that his presence in the race would only guarantee that the House of Representatives would pick the next President.

Just as survivors of an earthquake or riot find their ways to hospitals or rescue centers, Perot volunteers found their way to local storefront campaign operations, searching for comfort, hugs, and, perhaps, a sign that the campaign would go on.

To these men and women, it wasn’t supposed to end like this--in July, with the race for President nearing its final stage. Now the three-man race is a two-man race, George Bush against Bill Clinton.

The hurt for the Perot volunteers was especially deep because before the Texan had burst onto the political scene, they said, they had been burned out by politics. They were brought to life by the take-charge, get-it-done promise of the plain-talking Texan.

If there were any true believers in politics this year, a year when most Americans are said to be turned off by politics, they were among the legions of volunteers who seemed to come out of nowhere, catch the Perot fever, and set up shop in offices and storefronts across the country. Perot campaign officials said that in California alone Perot had been able to attract between 30,000 and 50,000 volunteers.

Many had left jobs, most put in long hours, sacrificing family responsibilities in their devoted attention to the Perot campaign.

The Perot volunteers included people such as Jose Rios, a 23-year-old from East Los Angeles, a former infantry team leader who got out of the Army four months ago. Since then, he had worked long hours for the Perot campaign at the office near downtown Los Angeles, called Ft. Perot.

So enraged that Perot had given up the fight, Rios faxed a note to the Texan’s Dallas headquarters that said: “My parents taught me respect for my elders, but under this situation, if I was in a room with you, I would kick your ass.” Rios said in the note that he would move to Mexico unless Perot changed his mind within “72 hours.”

Other volunteers at Ft. Perot reacted even more angrily. They systematically removed from the office anything with Perot’s picture or name on it, stripping the campaign headquarters bare. They even took a bank of about two dozen phones.

Armando Soto Mayor, who managed Perot’s Latino outreach efforts in Los Angeles, said most of the office-trashing stemmed from anger over Perot’s withdrawal--along with some souvenir hunting. The volunteers were so angry, he said, “I thought it best not to intervene.”

Soto Mayor said Perot held particular promise to inner-city poor who turned out to work for him because they believed that he was their last chance to be represented on the national political scene. They had felt special because Ft. Perot was the only California campaign office that the Texan visited last month when he was in Los Angeles, he said.

In Century City, a bitterly disappointed Terri E. Cohn planned to mail Perot a letter. “I sent you a hundred dollars to get yourself elected. . . . “ Cohn wrote. “If you’re quitting now, you can jolly well send it back.”

Elsewhere in California, Perot volunteers reacted with similar intensity.

At a storefront operation in Long Beach, one woman, who asked not to be identified, expressed bitterness at the sudden end of the campaign. “I feel as though I have been seduced and betrayed,” she said, rubbing her tear-swollen eyes. “For the last three months, there hasn’t been a part of the day that my husband and I haven’t given to this campaign.”

Nearby, Peter T. Schlagel, on sabbatical from a job as a computer software salesman, was kept busy selling Perot pins to a nonstop parade of souvenir seekers.

Another volunteer, Bill Sexton, a Downey High School teacher, said, “Jeez, I can’t believe he would walk away like that.” Sexton said he had heard rumors that Perot would quit. “I said to them, ‘No way, he’ll never stop.’ ”

At the Los Angeles County Perot headquarters in Sherman Oaks, Tom Burpee, a father of five who runs a duct-cleaning company, said, “I feel physically sick.”

Until Thursday’s news broke, the Los Angeles volunteers had been organizing a precinct-walking operation, even though some said that there had been a noticeable drop-off in direction from the Dallas headquarters for about three weeks.

Perot has promised to pay rent and phone bills, but some were wondering whether volunteers would be reimbursed for their costs, and there was grumbling by at least one man that a class-action suit might be filed to recoup some of the money spent by volunteers.

In Ventura County, Oxnard sculptor Michael Racine had painstakingly fashioned an eight-foot sculpture of the Texan and set it up outside his art gallery. But after hearing the news Thursday, he said he never wanted to look at it again. Using a forklift, he dropped the sculpture into a dumpster behind his gallery, knocking off its head in the process.

In Orange County, reflecting comments heard around the state, many Perot campaign workers said they were not going to give up. The volunteers spent much of Thursday firing off telegrams, letters and fax messages to Perot’s Dallas headquarters, urging their candidate to reconsider.

“I’ll still vote for him; I’ll write in Perot’s name if I have to,” vowed Peggy De Bernardi of Huntington Beach.

There were reports that some volunteers were on their way to Dallas to try to persuade Perot to change his mind.

Ernie Green of Modesto, Perot’s central California coordinator, said: “People are getting in their cars as we speak. They are driving to Dallas. They are at airports. We want Mr. Perot to reconsider.”

But for most, the reality of Perot’s withdrawal was setting in.

In San Diego County, where supporters had seen the volunteer army mushroom from four people in March to an estimated 9,000, Mark Ames, 30, a plumber, said: “I feel he was the last hope for reform in government. I’m grieving. I feel like it was a death in the family.”

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Douglas P. Shuit, Nina J. Easton and Aaron Curtiss in Los Angeles, Bill Billiter in Orange County, Tina Griego in Long Beach, Ron Soble in Ventura County and Lee Romney in San Diego.