Poll of Perot Activists a Charade, Ex-Backers Say : Politics: Texan runs the show, they assert, and is not just bowing to volunteers. Billionaire has spent heavily.

Since Tuesday morning, the acolytes of Ross Perot across the country have been receiving phone calls and faxes asking a simple question: Do you want your man to resume his crusade for the presidency?

Perot’s top organizer denies that the canvass is rigged, but Perot aides acknowledge that the poll is likely to permit only one result--Run, Ross, Run. Only those who have previously expressed support for the Dallas billionaire’s political ambitions are being surveyed.

Perot said again Wednesday that the answer from his “volunteers” will dictate his decision whether to rejoin the fray, an announcement expected at a Dallas news conference as early as today.

If Perot does enter the race, aides said, he plans an intensive radio and television advertising blitz in the four weeks remaining before the Nov. 3 election. About two dozen spots have been completed, and Perot is prepared to spend “tens of millions of dollars to ensure that his message is heard,” said Orson Swindle, Perot’s top aide.

But critics say the hurried, three-day poll of Perot activists is a charade designed to make it look as if the Texas businessman, if he runs, is reluctantly responding to a grass-roots “draft.”

In reality, they say, the effort is being carefully choreographed by Perot and his disciples in Dallas.

“It’s a total sham orchestrated by Perot, from the top down, with an iron fist,” said actor Tom Laughlin, star of the “Billy Jack” films. Laughlin is a onetime Perot booster turned vociferous critic.

Federal election reports filed in Washington this week indicate that the ground beneath Perot is being liberally fertilized with millions of dollars from the computer tycoon’s personal fortune.

Each state office is receiving $7,500 a month for expenses, and as many as 10 state coordinators have been on the Perot payroll at some time since July. Campaign finance reports filed with the government show that Perot, who withdrew July 16, spent $6.6 million that month. In August, he spent $4 million, much of it to pay existing bills or the contracts of campaign consultants he agreed to continue paying through November.

But Perot also continued to finance the volunteer effort to get his name on all 50 state ballots, including paying more than $100,000 for operation of his phone bank and tens of thousands of dollars more for temporary workers to collect the signatures that got his name on the ballot in New York. In Hawaii and New York, where petition drives were continuing, Perot paid for advertising.

The survey of the volunteers also raises the issue of Perot’s ability to reactivate his once-vast corps of grass-roots workers in California and other states in time for a possible run. By all accounts, many volunteers remain deeply ambivalent toward Perot after he shocked them by abruptly dropping out of the race.

“This is not a bottom-up organization, as he says,” said Pat Clancy, the former Oklahoma state coordinator for the Perot petition drive. “He’ll do what he wants to do, and what he wants to do is get back in the race.”

Another disaffected Perot supporter, Miriam Grayboff of Atlanta, said that state’s volunteer organization had been the victim of a hostile corporate takeover directed by Dallas early this summer. “The instigator and board chairman--H. Ross Perot--has neither the faith nor the trust in ordinary people to do more than follow orders,” she said.

The loyal flock, however, says that Perot still considers himself a creature of his volunteers and that the survey is a legitimate effort to see if they want him to be a candidate.

Bob Hayden, Perot’s California chairman, said the poll is the electronic equivalent of a political party nominating its presidential standard-bearer at a convention.

“He doesn’t have a party. The volunteers really are his party,” Hayden said.

Swindle, executive director of the Perot movement, now known as United We Stand, America, insisted that the poll was not “rigged in any way. We’re not twisting any arms.”

But Swindle conceded that the results are foreordained by the sample of people the Perot organizers are polling. “Mr. Perot made no pretense of who we are talking to--his supporters and volunteers. So maybe we have a built-in bias.”

Perot himself acknowledged that there was virtually no way to register a dissenting opinion. His toll-free line--which between Monday and Tuesday nights recorded 2 million calls--automatically registers each call as a signal for him to run.

“Well, they can send me a letter,” he said on the CBS “This Morning” program Wednesday. “I’m a businessman. I’m not going to pay for the phone call of some fellow who says ‘Don’t do it.’ ”

There is evidence that Perot leaders are trying to create the appearance of a second popular groundswell for a Perot candidacy.

According to memos obtained by The Times, Swindle ordered Perot’s 50 state coordinators last week to begin contacting grass-roots workers and prepare for “well-executed press conferences . . . to announce the decision of the volunteers in each state.”

A companion memo signed by Hayden said that “we all know the sentiments of our volunteers.”

The press conferences, set for last Friday, were called off after top campaign officials of President Bush and Democratic nominee Bill Clinton agreed to meet with Perot and his state leaders Monday.

At the peak of his popularity last spring, Perot boasted between 30,000 and 50,000 active volunteers in California alone, and some remain enthusiastic.

“You’d be surprised, a lot of people out there are still for Perot,” said Shirley Everett of Thousand Oaks, who continued to participate in small weekly Perot rallies even after the Texan bowed out.

But others have drifted away.

Bill Myers, a former member of Perot’s California executive committee, estimated that only 10% of Perot volunteers are still active today.

Laughlin also charged that Perot officials in Dallas tried to suppress a spontaneous draft-Perot effort that erupted after Laughlin made a fiery speech at a San Jose convention of Perot backers in mid-September and demanded that Perot enter the race. Laughlin said Perot supporters began faxing and phoning similar demands to Perot’s office in Dallas, jamming his phone lines.

But Swindle and other Perot officials ordered volunteers to stop the messages, Laughlin said.

“He didn’t want it to happen until he could play . . . the ayatollah and have the Clinton and Bush people come salivating for his blessing,” the actor said.

Swindle called Laughlin’s charges “totally irresponsible. . . . He is not a member of this organization. He holds no position.”

But he did admit that he had squelched Laughlin’s effort to bring Perot back into the race. “I told his people, ‘This is not something we want to do right now. Please stop that. You’re not coordinating with me.’ ”

And Swindle said contemptuously of Laughlin, “The man’s a legend in his own mind.”

Cheevers reported from Los Angeles and Broder from Dallas.