NAFTA Leads to Nasty McKeon-Perot Divorce : Politics: Santa Clarita congressman’s vote seen as a betrayal by tycoon’s backers. Lawmaker decries threats.

Few members of Congress admired Ross Perot more than Howard P. (Buck) McKeon.

The Santa Clarita Republican, himself a successful businessman and self-styled government reformer, compared himself to Perot at one point early in his 1992 congressional campaign.

As president of the GOP freshman class, McKeon rebuffed party leaders to huddle with the Texas tycoon and other first-term Republicans on Capitol Hill. Basking in the afterglow of the meeting, McKeon even refused to rule out endorsing Perot for President in 1996.

But all that changed when McKeon broke a campaign pledge and voted for the bitterly debated North American Free Trade Agreement last week. Like many divorces, this one is nasty.

Amid what he calls “intimidation and threats” from Perot loyalists, McKeon said he would not meet with Perot again--never mind supporting him for President. He said Perot has lost his respect by making war on those who may agree with him on nearly every other issue.

The disillusionment is double-edged.

Outraged Perot followers in McKeon’s district say they expect to back efforts to unseat the congressman in 1994. Moreover, leaflets urging a boycott of one of the Western clothing stores owned by McKeon’s family have been distributed in the district.

Perot “had a lot to do with generating this kind of hatred,” McKeon said. “He can’t control everything his people do, but he ultimately has to bear the responsibility.”

McKeon’s change of heart toward Perot is a case study of how the former presidential candidate antagonized lawmakers in his no-holds-barred campaign to defeat NAFTA. Some say they did not appreciate Perot’s threat that voters would “remember in November” if they voted to lift tariffs, quotas and trade barriers among the United States, Mexico and Canada.

McKeon, in turn, is one of many House members who face a hornet’s nest of independent-minded voters determined to sting pro-NAFTA legislators next November--if not earlier. Leaders of Perot’s United We Stand, America organization in McKeon’s district were poring through the lawmaker’s campaign finance reports last week in search of ammunition. And they say they’re planning to picket his district office in Santa Clarita next month.

McKeon may be among those who will put to the test the notion that Perot’s movement is largely a spent force, as some analysts suggest.

To some, McKeon and Perot’s shared philosophy on term limits, the balanced budget amendment and political reform no longer matter after NAFTA.

“I consider it treason,” fumed Brian Ages, a Valencia businessman and membership coordinator for the more than 4,000 members of United We Stand in McKeon’s 25th Congressional District. “I don’t feel he’s fit for office because he’s not representing a majority of the people.”

Ages and others say their sense of betrayal is particularly acute because McKeon led them to believe he would oppose NAFTA until shortly before he announced his support. Some refuse to accept McKeon’s word that he found the evidence “overwhelming” that the pact will create jobs in the United States and help stem illegal immigration from Mexico.

For months, McKeon and his aides gave the United We Stand forces reason to expect him to take their side. During his congressional campaign last year, McKeon initially told a voter at a public forum that he was against NAFTA and later repeated that stand. He reiterated to reporters and others on several occasions this fall that he was still inclined to vote against it.

On Sept. 28, spokesman Armando Azarloza said McKeon “is leaning against and would probably vote against it if the vote were tomorrow. His concerns are the amount of jobs that would probably leave the Southern California economy. Over the long run, he sees the benefit of it, but the way the California economy is now, there’s no way he could support it.”

McKeon now says that when he first voiced his opposition to the pact, “I didn’t even know what it was. . . . I was not a politician. I did not understand that if you made a statement that you were bound to your death on that statement.” He said he was initially motivated by a voter’s declaration that jobs in the 25th District would move to Mexico if NAFTA was passed.

In recent weeks, McKeon said he explored the issue in depth with others. A Santa Clarita manufacturer told him that he had moved a plant back from Mexico because of labor and regulatory problems but might return to Mexico if NAFTA was defeated because of Mexico’s current 20% tariff on imported products. McKeon said friends who met with Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari warned that Germany and Japan were poised to replace America as major exporters to Mexico if the free-trade treaty went down.

“I went from a position of being against NAFTA with no information because of the job loss to a position of supporting NAFTA because of the job loss if it didn’t go through, based on a lot of information,” McKeon said.

“I made a promise in the campaign, but I also made a promise that I would do what I thought was right and exercise my best judgment without concern for the politics. I couldn’t keep both promises.”

Among those who lobbied him was Perot. The pair met in McKeon’s Washington office for half an hour earlier this month. McKeon said the session was “very congenial, professional.”

But he said he told Perot that some of the ex-presidential candidate’s followers had “been making threats” about retribution and that he’d “be better off if they didn’t do that.”

As McKeon weighed his decision, he watched a “testy” Perot debate Vice President Al Gore on television Nov. 9. In contrast to his earlier praise of Perot, McKeon has been critical of many of the Clinton Administration’s initiatives.

“He did very poorly in the debate,” McKeon said of Perot. “When Vice President Gore asked Perot, ‘What would you do to make (the treaty) better?’ and Perot did not have a response, that kind of showed me something.”

And when Gore said the vote was a choice between the politics of hope and the politics of fear, McKeon said, “I much more related to that than to what Perot was saying.”

The following day, McKeon received a call from Transportation Secretary Federico Pena, who had heard that the lawmaker was seeking Administration support for highway projects in his district. McKeon said Pena asked how he could “be helpful.” Discussions are ongoing.

McKeon insists that he would have voted for NAFTA in any case but that he saw an opportunity to get something done for his district in the bazaar-like atmosphere that characterized the Administration’s frenetic efforts to round up votes. He announced his support two days later.

Perot, meanwhile, repeatedly denounced the wheeling and dealing that helped the White House defeat him, organized labor and other NAFTA opponents.

By now, McKeon has re-evaluated more than just the treaty. He has decided he’s had enough of Perot as well.

“At this point, I certainly wouldn’t support him as presidential material,” McKeon said. “The man or woman who takes the position as head of our country has to be someone who does not polarize and split the country. He has to at least try to bring people together.”

Within days, posters with a photo of McKeon’s face with a blue line slashed through it appeared at the Valencia Town Center and outside the Newhall Signal newspaper offices. Flyers urging a boycott of Howard & Phil’s Western Wear store were slapped on cars in the Palmdale mall as well, said Joe McKeon, the congressman’s brother and president of the 53-store chain. Neither the posters nor the flyers were signed.

Jim Stroud, the United We Stand coordinator in McKeon’s district, said a boycott of the stores had been discussed, but no formal decision had been reached on whether to proceed. Both he and Ages said they did not know who distributed the flyers.

“Members have brought it up,” said Stroud, who met with McKeon to make a last-ditch case moments before the congressman announced his decision to support NAFTA at his Santa Clarita office. “They could be out there on their own accord. You’ve got a lot of angry people out there.”

Stroud said that the only threat Perot activists made to McKeon was “that we were going to try to replace him” next year. He expects Perot supporters to encourage a candidate to run in the heavily Republican district, which includes the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys and parts of the northern San Fernando Valley.

Efforts to reach Perot last week were unsuccessful. Sharon Holman, his spokeswoman, said she could not say whether Perot would condone or disavow any of the actions or proposals considered by the United We Stand chapter in McKeon’s district.

Stroud and Ages reject McKeon’s explanation that he changed his mind because he determined NAFTA’s “long-term benefits to be vitally important to California and our nation.” Rather, they said they suspect that McKeon was motivated by a desire to help one or more campaign contributors--perhaps through construction of a highway project.

“They’re totally off base,” McKeon said. The highway projects have been priorities for him dating back to his days on the Santa Clarita City Council, he said. He called Ages--whose wife worked in a bank McKeon helped found--and some of his allies “fanatical-type people.”

Perot won 57,398 votes, or a substantial 25% of the total, in the 25th District in 1992. And McKeon acknowledged that many union voters would also be angry with him, although he said: “I assume that they were against me anyway.”

Yet despite the immediate fallout, McKeon downplayed the potential long-term political damage.

“The Perot people were pretty supportive of me in the last election, and I still think a lot of them will support me,” said McKeon, the easy victor last November in a field that included a Perot candidate. But he acknowledged that for some--much like their leader, Ross Perot--the NAFTA issue has high enough voltage to short-circuit everything else.

“It’s not just the numbers, it’s the intensity,” McKeon said, hours before he cast the most controversial vote of his brief congressional career.

“People are basically so cynical now that they don’t feel someone can have a difference of opinion and arrive at it honestly.”