Perot Aide Says Bush Is No Longer a Factor in the Race

A top figure in the Ross Perot campaign said Wednesday that he believed the presidential race was now down to two candidates--Perot and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton--and that he expected President Bush would fall even farther from favor before Election Day.

Clay Mulford, a lawyer for the campaign who is also Perot’s son-in-law, said at a briefing here that Bush had been virtually eliminated from the race and that Clinton’s support was so soft that he could be overtaken.

“We think Bush is down so far he will never recover,” said Mulford. “We anticipate a two-man race and think we are going to win.”

The confident pronouncement flies in the face of recent polls, which put Perot in third behind Bush and Clinton. But Mulford also pointed to the fact that Perot is now holding or gaining in popularity, unlike other third-party candidates of the past at this point in the campaign.

“Instead of going down in September and October, we’re going up,” he said.

The Perot camp was clearly buoyed by Monday’s final debate among the three candidates, in which Perot issued his sharpest attacks to date against Bush. Specifically, Perot questioned the President’s role in the 1980s in not heading off the savings and loan debacle and his supporting the regimes of Panama’s Manuel A. Noriega and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Perot’s campaign officials kept up that attack Wednesday.

“It all comes back to the guys who are in charge, and you have to live with that whether you like it or not,” said Orson Swindle, the director of Perot’s political organization.

Regarding Perot’s chances, Swindle said the “experts have been proven wrong every step of the way since February. Just stand by. We’ve got two more weeks of surprises.”

The Dallas computer tycoon was not at the briefing and his campaign officials played a cat-and-mouse game about whether the independent candidate would hit the trail in the final days of the campaign, as has been rumored.

There have been reports that Perot planned to visit several states considered key to his campaign. But Swindle would only say that he “thinks” Perot will be going on the road and that if he does, it will be to a number of places.

Perot press spokeswoman Sharon Holman, meanwhile, added to Mulford’s rosy assessment with a report that the number of calls to the Perot phone bank had increased to at least 1,000 an hour.

Also shown at the briefing were four new one-minute television spots that will be aired in dozens of major markets around the country.

The commercials are aimed at voters who might shun Perot on Election Day because they view his chance of winning as slim. The four separate ads focus on “trickle-down” economics, health care reform, urban problems and government waste.

Each ends by saying: “This is no time to waste our votes on politics as usual. It is time for a candidate who will get down to business.”

Perot will broadcast the second part of a biography program tonight on ABC. In an excerpt released Wednesday, Perot recalled his involvement in Vietnam POW issues and said: “This is going to be dealt with as a head-on priority. We’re not going to duck it.”

Perot has also bought half-hour time slots on Friday and Saturday on other networks to air his programs.