Perot Forces Push Agenda in a Summer of Discontent

It is 9 a.m. on a warm Saturday in northern Maine, and about 60 people are gathered in a dingy motel meeting room to plot their strategy for saving America.

Under most circumstances, these people would never be found in the same room. They are an odd mix of young and old, men and women, rich and poor, liberals and conservatives, Democrats, Republicans and independents, high school dropouts and college grads. Some wear T-shirts, some silk ties.

Yet despite their differences, the room is filled with a sense of common purpose. The participants clearly are convinced that unless they work together to influence American politics, the nation’s democratic system of government and its standard of living may be lost.

“We’re losing our government,” Michael Xirinachs, an impeccably dressed elderly man, warns the group in an impassioned speech that elicits loud applause. “We don’t have any time to waste. This is urgent.”

The meeting is just one of hundreds of gatherings taking place in towns and cities across the country this summer as followers of Texas billionaire Ross Perot strive to bring order and purpose to a loosely knit volunteer organization known as United We Stand America. The group was organized initially around Perot’s 1992 presidential candidacy.

In Michigan, Connecticut, Arkansas, Florida, California, Virginia and many other states, groups of Perot followers are adopting by-laws, electing officers and plotting strategy. Their goal is to form a self-commissioned citizens’ army dedicated to ridding American politics of what they see as the seeds of its destruction: the arrogance of incumbency, partisan gridlock and tolerance of the federal deficit.

Perot and United We Stand America have been embarrassed by recent reports of turmoil within the organization. Several former members have gone on national television to accuse Perot of being dictatorial and trying to control all aspects of the organization from his office in Dallas. Indeed, internal bickering has sapped the group’s strength in several states, such as Wisconsin and Illinois.

In addition, Perot has stubbornly refused to disclose how many people have responded to his $15-per-family nationwide membership drive, fueling speculation that the organization is not growing fast enough to suit him.

Yet, despite the many problems inherent in building a nationwide grass-roots organization with diverse membership, there is ample evidence that United We Stand is growing steadily and becoming better organized under the supervision of Perot-paid directors in 38 states.

In fact, the group is so strong in some places that political analysts are predicting it could assist in unseating a few incumbent members of Congress in the 1994 elections or undermining President Clinton’s bid to win congressional approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Already, members are claiming credit for helping to elect Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Tex.) by a wide margin. Recognizing the organization’s potential impact, many members of Congress are meeting regularly with hometown chapters in an effort to mollify them.

Democratic pollster Stanley B. Greenberg has advised the President that he, likewise, must appeal to members of Perot’s organization if he hopes to be reelected in 1996.

Perot frequently has been accused of nurturing this group simply to have an organizational base from which to run for President again in three years. He denies it, but he does not rule out another presidential bid.

Yet if he expects to transform United We Stand into a personal presidential juggernaut, Perot may be in for a big disappointment. Dozens of members of the group around the country who were interviewed by The Times said that they are more interested in carrying out Perot’s call for government reform than they are in electing Perot to run the country.

In fact, some members, such as Glenn MacNaughton of Greenville, Me., said that they think a Perot presidency might work against their goals. “Perot, if he became President, wouldn’t be as effective as he is now,” MacNaughton said.

Bob Davidson, United We Stand’s Connecticut director, thinks the sentiment has changed since members supported Perot last year. “Initially, maybe, Mr. Perot struck a nerve,” he said. “But as people get more involved, they become more focused on issues. United We Stand is growing past Perotism.”

Many members seem uncomfortable with Perot’s personal quirks, especially his penchant for secrecy. Immediately after he appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Aug. 1, a number of members attending a meeting in southern Maine said that they were upset that he had not adequately answered questions put to him about his budget proposal.

Yet these same people continue to revere Perot for his independence and recognize that, without him, their views on the budget and other issues would not be getting as much attention in Washington. As Ty Hartman of Stockton, Me., put it: “Although his character may be flawed, he doesn’t owe anything to anyone and he can be an effective spokesman for us.”

Former Perot pollster Frank Luntz said that, for Perot’s followers, “it’s not that they think he is God, they think his message is heavenly. They recognize his faults, see his weaknesses but they like what he’s saying. No one else can say it like Ross Perot.”

Most United We Stand members clearly were drawn to the organization because they share their leader’s apocalyptic view that, without concerted citizen action, professional politicians are going to destroy America.

“We are this country’s only hope,” said Susan Esser, the Michigan director.

Virtually every activist in the organization has a poignant personal story to tell about how becoming a Perot minion changed his or her life. Among them is Debbie Kraus, 37, now the Arkansas director, who lost her job as a paralegal and survived car and plane crashes while doing volunteer work for Perot.

By and large, they do not fault individual politicians for creating the nation’s current fiscal problems, but they do blame the system for corrupting the politicians. As pollster Greenberg noted: “Perot voters are deeply alienated and cynical about nearly all leaders and institutions.”

By dedicating the organization to work on three popular, non-ideological issues--eliminating the federal deficit, reforming government and opposing the North American Free Trade Agreement--Perot has succeeded in drawing in the widest possible membership for his group. As United We Stand officials see it, the deficit issue tends to appeal to Republicans, government reform to Democrats and the trade issue to blue-collar workers.

Politically, about half of all members are believed to be independents, with Republicans and Democrats making up the remainder in about equal numbers. While most members insist that they have never been active in party politics, many have a wide range of experience in local politically oriented groups such as Common Cause and the League of Women Voters.

Although they are pledged to be nonpartisan, some partisan goals clearly bubble just beneath the surface. In Maine, for example, some Republican members dream of a day when United We Stand could unseat Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), while some Democrats in the group are bent on using their clout to defeat Rep. Olympia Snowe (R-Me.).

By the end of the year, Perot expects to have his organization functioning in every state, with a state chairman, executive board and elected officers in every congressional district. At that point, United We Stand officials say, he intends to announce how many people have joined the organization.

By some favorable estimates, there could be 10 million members by the end of the year. Clay Mulford, Perot’s son-in-law, said that the organization has received as many as 100,000 applications on a single day. California director Jim Campbell said that Californians are joining at a rate of about 1,500 a day.

Perot’s recent decision to permit members to sign up entire families for a single fee of $15 is expected to bolster the membership figures.

Of course, these numbers include some United We Stand members who dropped out earlier this year as a result of internal disputes, many caused by Perot’s decision to impose rules on the organization and hire paid directors.

Defectors such as Joyce Shepard, a clinical social worker in Bayside, N.Y., Tom Wing, a computer specialist in Chicago, and Gretchen Marszalk, a Newport Beach businesswoman, tell hair-raising tales of high-handedness by Perot’s lieutenants in Dallas and chicanery by local leaders.

Among their complaints: misappropriated funds, bills accrued by volunteers that Perot refused to pay, investigators hired by Perot to check the background of some volunteers and smear campaigns mounted by leaders against those who balked at orders coming from Texas.

Shepard said she was particularly offended by a memo sent from the Dallas headquarters ordering volunteers to be deferential to Perot if they were chosen to serve as his driver when he came to their city.

“It was just like the Messiah was coming,” she said. “This was like we are the slaves and we have to bow to him. He should be bowing to us.”

In Maine, Lloyd Wells, an eccentric 72-year-old, said he was thrown out of United We Stand after a tribunal staged by other local activists who accused him, among other things, of being the source of some embarrassing questions that were put to Perot in an appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” He said that the organization returned his $15 membership fee and a contribution he had made.

Perhaps the most prominent defector was Orson Swindle, who acted as executive director in Dallas during the 1992 election and has since returned to his home state of Hawaii to work for former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp’s citizen organization. But unlike the others, Swindle has not gone public with whatever complaints he may have.

Perot dismisses his critics within the organization as mostly those who were disappointed at not being hired as state directors. Indeed, Wing acknowledged that he is angry because he was promised a paid position but never was hired.

“Those are tiny, tiny, tiny little problems involving a small number of people,” Perot told The Times. “And when you bring millions and millions of people together in a volunteer organization, I’d say if anybody would give the tiniest bit of scrutiny to any large group, including the Democratic and Republican parties, they’d find the same problems. Look at the local PTA.”

In Orange County, which has been a hotbed of discontent, Perot volunteer Marilyn Wiltsie of Huntington Beach insists the problems that drove some of her friends out of the organization have been solved. “What they were complaining about in December was justified, but now it’s a whole new organization,” she said.

Still, internal dissension is likely to continue to plague the organization, if for no other reason than that it tends to attract assertive personalities who have a deep-seated suspicion of authority.

“The people involved in this phenomenon are very outspoken--people who by definition are pretty aggressive,” said John Longmire, state director in Kentucky. “We tend to have that breed of cat.”

Perot himself may have made matters worse by hiring many retired military officers--such as Davidson in Connecticut and Frank White in Colorado--to serve as state directors or to fill positions at the Dallas headquarters. According to insiders, these people tend to take an authoritarian, top-down view that rankles some hard-working, free-spirited volunteers.

Perot’s unwillingness to freely share membership lists with state and local volunteers has added to the friction. Sharon Holman, Perot’s press spokeswoman, said that the lists are too valuable to be shared with people who might misuse them.

In addition, some members are critical of the structure that Perot has imposed, which they see as undemocratic because it does not allow the membership a voice in choosing national officers. At the Bangor meeting, some members balked at being asked to adopt bylaws dictated largely from Dallas without having an opportunity to amend them.

Perot, Mulford and a business associate comprise the three-member national board of directors, which has the power to spend money from a multimillion-dollar treasury, hire and fire a national headquarters staff of about 50 people and charter all state chapters. The board members will choose their own successors.

According to Mulford, United We Stand is seeking approval from the Internal Revenue Service to organize as a tax-exempt, citizen-action organization similar to Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition or the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition. If the IRS approves, the group will not have to pay taxes on dues income and will receive a lower bulk mail rate from the Postal Service.

Although state and local chapters are deeply involved in recruiting, prospective members are told to mail their applications and dues directly to Dallas. Most state chapters have no income other than the funds they receive from Dallas, contributions from volunteers, or money they raise by selling T-shirts.

Perot’s refusal to disclose financial records has been widely criticized as inconsistent with the group’s advocacy of campaign finance reform. Aides said that he uses dues money to pay state directors and to produce a national newsletter but pays the salaries of the headquarters staff from his own pocket.

Robert Bauer, a prominent Democratic Party lawyer, said that United We Stand is actually a political party and ought to be required to abide by the same disclosure rules and contribution limits as the Republican and Democratic parties. “Perot is being handed an enormous advantage,” Bauer said.

But Mulford countered that the organization has no intention of functioning as a political party by fielding candidates or contributing money to them. Instead, the group will only conduct candidate forums and point out which candidates agree with its views, as it did in the Hutchinson race.

In Texas, United We Stand did not formally endorse Hutchinson but instead unveiled the results of a statewide poll of its members showing that 84% favored her in the runoff for the Senate seat previously held by Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bensten.

Among professional politicians, Republicans tend to view United We Stand more favorably than Democrats. If the organization takes aim at incumbent members of Congress, Republicans reason, it can only succeed in helping the minority party.

“I think they are accomplishing a great deal of good--good for the country, good for the Republican Party,” said Rep. Bill Paxon (R-N.Y.), who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee. He added that Perot’s organization is “very strong” in his own district.

Democrats see the organization as emblematic of a political threat that already exists for them: anti-incumbency sentiment.

Charles E. Cook, a Democratic political consultant, acknowledged that United We Stand could play a role in helping to defeat some members who are already in trouble because of widespread resentment toward incumbents. But he said that he doubts it could single-handedly bring down a member of Congress.

Michael Meehan, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said that United We Stand might even help Democratic incumbents if it endorses independent or third-party candidates, as it is likely to do in some districts. A Perot-endorsed third candidate would surely take votes away from a Republican challenger, allowing a Democrat to be reelected, he said.

Even if United We Stand members fail to achieve their political objectives in the near term, they heartily agree with pollster Greenberg’s judgment that the Perot phenomenon is likely to be a long-term fixture of American politics.

As Cookie Turner, a 57-year-old volunteer from Tipton, Mich., put it: “We’re finally starting to get things done, and we’re not going back home!”

Times staff writer John M. Broder in Washington contributed to this story.