Ex-Workers Criticize Perot’s Irvine Office : Campaign: Former staffers suspect that donations were not properly accounted for, among other concerns. Loyalists say that any mistakes were inadvertent.

Just as a flurry of criticism about Ross Perot’s political organization has begun to die down nationally, new charges of campaign irregularities have surfaced in Orange County, one of Perot’s strongholds during his unsuccessful drive for the presidency.

Former campaign workers who have grown disillusioned with the quirky Texas billionaire contend that his state and county campaign offices in Irvine were riddled with problems, so much so that they have asked the FBI and Federal Election Commission to investigate.

Among other things, the workers suspect that campaign funds were not properly accounted for, that payments for election-related work went to companies that cannot be traced and may not have existed, and that numerous contributions and expenses in California have been left off campaign disclosure statements in violation of federal law.

“Perot has been asking government to be accountable, but he is not accountable to anyone,” said Gretchen Marszalk, a Newport Beach businesswoman and a member of a loosely knit group of former Perot backers. “There were grave concerns from many volunteers who saw what they thought was the mishandling of campaign funds.”

Local loyalists and officials of United We Stand America, Perot’s Dallas-based political organization, admit that there were some problems with the grass-roots effort, a situation greatly aggravated by Perot’s decision to drop out of the campaign in July and re-enter it in October.

Whatever mistakes occurred were inadvertent, Perot backers say, and they did not hamper the Orange County and state operations, which ran relatively well considering that the volunteers had little political experience.

Perot officials also downplayed the complaints as the handiwork of a few individuals bearing grudges or who have hidden agendas to undermine Perot’s success in the political arena.

Although formal complaints have been lodged, federal authorities said they can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any investigation. United We Stand officials said they will cooperate with any inquiry; Perot has the right to correct federal campaign disclosure statements without penalty if honest mistakes are found.

Although the nationwide media have focused on criticism of United We Stand for the last several months, the recent complaints are the first to come out of Orange County, where 24% of the presidential vote went to Perot--the highest percentage for any U.S. county.

More than a dozen former Orange County Perot volunteers tell of a host of problems that began to plague his state and county campaign offices after a petition drive in early 1992 succeeded in getting Perot’s name on the November ballot.

Undermining the momentum, they said, were power struggles, frequent resignations by high-ranking officials, and a lack of simple accounting controls to track expenditures and political contributions.

Marszalk and other former Perot supporters contend that the state and county headquarters were so badly run that many thousands of dollars in donations and expenditures remain unaccounted for. Few procedures existed, they said, to log the large volume of receipts generated from sales of Perot books, T-shirts, bumper stickers and other mementos.

Specifically, Perot’s local critics charge that a vast number of contributions and expenditures were not reported on campaign disclosure statements for the months leading up to and following the election. Under federal law, candidates must publicly disclose donations and expenditures of more than $200.

Marszalk said that during the time period in question, virtually no campaign contributions and payments to only four companies--an unusually low number considering that the race was at its peak--were reported for the state of California.

Others said they were concerned about the possible misappropriation of campaign funds for a variety of expenses, including $6,500 to rent a duplex on Balboa peninsula for three salaried state campaign officials.

David Adamson, one of the state officials involved, said the beach-area duplex was rented to avoid the higher cost of hotel rooms. Adamson, a computer specialist, dismissed the complaints about the expenditure as ridiculous: “We’re professionals who were not going to live in squalor.”

Former Perot campaign workers also said the local offices had two bank accounts when the campaign was required to have only one. Canceled checks show that two bank account numbers existed for at least a short time. Activity in one of the accounts, they said, might not have been reported on campaign disclosure statements.

Mike Altman and Marshall Norris, both former co-chairmen of the county campaign office, said the charges of missing funds and poor record-keeping are spurious and motivated by people who did not get their way during the campaign.

“What a joke. The idea that there was a lot of money to pilfer is just silly,” said Altman, who estimated that only about $60,000 came into the local operation from September through the election. “Sure, we could have done things better. You bet. But we are real proud of what happened in this country. . . . If the FBI is looking into this, they will find nothing.”