California Perot Movement Shows Signs of Losing Steam : Politics: Volunteers are drifting away, and infighting has begun among those who remain. Some still hope to create a third party.

On an afternoon last week, scores of Ross Perot partisans gathered around a mock coffin inside a cavernous office in Redwood City, a Bay Area suburb. Some were crying, others had fallen to their knees. In the coffin lay a large cardboard likeness of Perot, grinning impishly.

Only days before, the Texan had abruptly announced that he would not launch his much-anticipated independent run for President, disappointing and angering thousands of volunteer campaigners in California and other states. Still grieving, his Bay Area supporters held a symbolic funeral for his candidacy.

As soon as it was over, though, they resurrected Perot. To cheers and applause, someone took another cardboard image of him and propped it against a wall.

“We stood up the cardboard cutout of Ross Perot as the spokesman for a national coalition of citizen political activists who are going to take this country back,” said John Gooding, a Perot campaign coordinator in San Francisco.

But with Perot having removed himself from the national stage, keeping his 30,000-strong California volunteer corps together and forging it into a new political movement may prove as difficult as raising the dead, political analysts say. Even some Perot partisans agree.

After declaring that he would not run, Perot urged his volunteers around the country to stay together as a “third force” and continue efforts to place his name on all 50 state ballots this November.

Many Perot supporters in California have spent the last week and a half engaged in heated, virtually nonstop debate over the best way to carry on their “movement.”

Some are optimistic about forming a third party.

But already there are signs that, unhitched from the locomotive of Perot’s personality, the movement’s momentum is flagging.

In recent days, some Perot campaign offices--including the one in San Diego--have closed; others are losing many of their volunteer staff members. Among those who remain, infighting and personal sniping are rife. A meeting of 300 Perot organizers in Los Angeles last week degenerated into what participant called “total bedlam.”

There have been accusations of dirty tricks and angry questions about how campaign funds were spent. Some Perot partisans elsewhere in the state felt undercut by a group of Orange County loyalists who announced last week they had already formed their own splinter group--Owners of America.

In the once-bustling Sherman Oaks storefront that served as Perot’s California headquarters, there was so little to do one day last week that one volunteer glumly made copies of his resume. Others talked of playing cards to pass the time.

“Some people are hanging on, thinking something’s going to happen, but I think they’re just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” said Mike Ruppert, a former Perot press spokesman. Ruppert said about half of the volunteers in the Sherman Oaks office have stopped showing up.

Some observers said that in the absence of Perot’s galvanizing personality or a single, gut-level issue to unify them, his volunteer groups are likely to unravel within weeks.

“I just see them as fading into the woodwork,” said Bruce Cain, associate director of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies. With Perot out of the presidential race, Cain said, his erstwhile volunteers have only his political views, such as economic revitalization, to rally around. But such issues, he said, are too dry and technical to imbue followers with the emotional fervor needed to inspire a new political movement.

Some Perot volunteers, however, remain optimistic.

A few Perot offices actually report having signed up additional volunteers after he withdrew. In San Francisco, for example, at least 85 additional campaign workers have come on board since Perot’s July 16 announcement, said Gooding, the Bay Area Perot leader.

Across the state, Perot loyalists are discussing plans to hold a convention at which to chart a political future for themselves.

Some plan to lobby former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas, whose presidential bid briefly flourished in the Democratic primaries this year, and Sen. Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.), who is retiring from office, to replace Perot as their champions. The two have discussed leading an effort to focus attention on the nation’s economic woes, but their plans remain undefined.

Die-hard loyalists dispute the contention that economic issues are not enough to continue galvanizing Perot’s followers.

“There’s no future if you don’t address these issues,” said Lois Rozet, a real estate consultant and Perot campaign coordinator in Los Angeles County. “You’ve got a loss of jobs, a loss of tax revenues and mounting debt. We’ve borrowed to the hilt. Those things all have to be addressed simultaneously.”

Perot followers said political pundits and other doubters misunderstand the depth of public anger toward government-as-usual that propelled Perot into the presidential limelight in the first place.

“The problems have not gone away,” Gooding said. “The economy is still as bad as it was five months ago when Perot started his campaign. There is still a lack of leadership at every level of government. The volunteers are determined to make a change.”

But serious obstacles remain to keeping the Perot legions in action, not the least of which is the anger and betrayal many still feel in the aftermath of his sudden decision not to become a candidate.

Some Perot supporters who left jobs and shelled out their own money to help get him on the California ballot now complain they are nearly broke and that the wealthy industrialist has shown little willingness to help them.

“I’ve got about $60 to my name. I couldn’t stay (with the movement) even if I wanted to,” said Ruppert, the Los Angeles spokesman, who spent so much time on the Perot campaign that he was fired from his job as marketing director for a security-guard firm.

A handful of Perot backers--still inspired by the idea that they can make a difference--have said they may run for local office under his banner in future elections.

But one former Perot advocate now running for a congressional seat in northern Los Angeles County is disavowing his past support of the Texan.

Rick Pamplin, a Palmdale screenwriter and teacher, launched his campaign in the 25th Congressional District with the support of other Perot fans. But he said he has dropped his allegiance to Perot after reading the harsh economic proposals the industrialist planned to campaign on--including a gas tax increase--and seeing they were highly unpopular with local voters.

“I’m rescinding my endorsement of Perot,” Pamplin said. “Ross Perot was sort of the hula hoop of the ’92 election. He came. He went.”