Perot Network Unravels : Supporters Vow to Keep Working for Him in Smaller Groups

One week after Ross Perot’s decision to pull out of the presidential race left San Diego County supporters planning a third-party movement without him, their dream has unraveled.

An estimated 10,000 county residents had pledged their support for the Texas billionaire’s grass-roots message, and in the past week new volunteers have flocked to the local office to try to keep the message alive, Perot Petition Committee chairman Jack Flowers said.

But too many people have too many ideas of just how to go about that.

On Thursday, organizers at petition committee headquarters on Aero Drive unplugged the phones, locked the doors and vowed to work in smaller groups to tap the interest the Perot campaign sparked.

The decision, made final at a 25-member Steering Committee meeting Wednesday, grew out of a Monday meeting of more than 300 former Perot supporters who gathered to plot their next steps.

“It became rather obvious that it wasn’t going to coalesce,” Flowers said. “Without the head, the body is going in too many different directions. There was a focus on the message, but too many ideas to determine just how that message gets into the political process.”

Flowers described Thursday’s announcement as a “clean exodus,” and said supporters were expecting the group to dissolve.

Thursday afternoon a new Mercedes-Benz sat next to a metallic orange Harley Davidson in the nearly empty front lot of the Aero Drive headquarters. The contrast highlights a diversity that made the Perot movement unique, but may have hastened its downfall once Perot pulled out.

“You do have this diverse group, from liberals to conservatives and all ages,” Flowers said.

At Monday’s meeting, suggestions for the next course of action ranged just as widely.

One man suggested a class-action lawsuit against Ross Perot, former committee spokesman John Baker said. There were, however, four main ideas that garnered the most support, he said.

Those were formation of a third party, creation of a political action committee that would lobby Washington with Perot’s message, a large-scale, non-partisan voter registration drive, and a plan to influence the November elections by endorsing local candidates for the Senate and House of Representatives, Baker said.

Former supporters, however, will organize separately to pursue their chosen tactic.

“There was no way we could arrive at a single unified course of action, so (Flowers) said, ‘OK. You’re free to go. Godspeed,’ ” Baker said of Wednesday’s committee meeting.

Although a few supporters continue to hold out hope that Perot will rejoin the race, Flowers said most were more attached to his fierce independence, grass-roots message and what they viewed as commitment and honesty. Now that image has been tarnished. “I think there has been a loss of credibility,” he said.

“My initial reaction was to read everything into his resigning except the fact that he was a quitter,” Flowers said. “Now I think that it could have been a personal and business decision.”

The petition committee had rented the Aero Drive offices since June 1, Flowers said. Although the time put in was a purely volunteer effort, the rent, phone lines, utilities and liability insurance were paid by the state Perot organization. That support has been cut off.

The county Perot operation took in about $50,000, Baker said, and about $35,000 of that has been spent. But the group doesn’t expect to have any money left over when all the bills are paid, he added.

The breakup of the Perot camp here in San Diego is characteristic of what is happening nationwide, Flowers said.

“I think this is very reflective. Across the country we’re having offices close down, people wanting to join into a third party, people who don’t really know what they want,” he said.

The lack of direction from national headquarters in Dallas, however, as well as on the state level, set the stage for this week’s disintegration, he said. “Had there been a structure, maybe this thing could have held together.”

But some ex-Perot volunteers have already begun planning their work to register voters and support local candidates for the House and Senate, they said.

“We’ll do it by telephone. We’ll meet in people’s homes, in condominium meeting rooms, in libraries and schools,” said Dana Wyrick, whose father was Ross Perot’s company officer at the Naval Academy. Wyrick came away from Monday’s meeting inspired to continue spreading the basics of Perot’s message, lobbying politicians and registering voters.

Eventually, that commitment may evolve into a third party, she said. “The consensus is being built. We’re still dealing with a death in the family,” she said.

Wyrick and Baker and their fellow supporters have decided to name their effort “Grassroots San Diego,” she said.

A new downtown office at 1495 C St., which Perot supporters were calling the Town Hall Center, will stay open in some capacity, possibly as a headquarters for what Flowers calls a massive “non-partisan, non-issue-based” voter registration drive.

A hot-line number will continue to function for a short while, for volunteers who want to find out what other volunteers are up to, Baker said.

“Maybe the reward will come sometime later on,” Flowers said.