Perot Launches Drive for Third National Party

Ross Perot on Monday launched a drive to create a new national political party as the vehicle for a reform-minded candidate to challenge Establishment Republicans and Democrats for the presidency next year.

The drive has begun in California, but the state’s election laws will provide an early and tough test of the effort’s viability.

Perot, appearing on the “Larry King Live” interview program on the CNN cable television network, said that he has no plans to be the third-party candidate himself, but he also declined to rule himself out as the nominee of the proposed Independence Party.

Perot also refused to endorse anyone else, such as Democratic Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey, who recently said he would not seek reelection to his Senate seat but indicated an interest in an independent run for the presidency, or Colin L. Powell, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“Every outstanding person who could be a great President would be welcome,” said Perot, who received about 19% of the popular vote running as a non-party independent candidate for the White House in 1992.

When King, on whose show Perot first signaled his eventual candidacy in 1992, asked if Powell was the sort of candidate the party would want, Perot responded: “Certainly. We want people of that stature and quality. . . . We want world-class people.”

But he added: “I don’t want to run down the list.”

Powell, in recent interviews with The Times and other news outlets, has not ruled out running for President, but he has downplayed the option of doing so outside the traditional two-party system. Powell is scheduled to appear today at Brentano’s, a Century City bookstore, as part of a nationwide tour promoting his autobiography, a tour that has fueled public interest in his possible candidacy.

Perot said that the proposed party would plan a presidential nominating convention next spring, possibly after both Democratic and Republican presidential contenders are known. Satellite television would be used “so that everybody participates,” he said.

Perot said that the new party would seek members from the vast number of Americans who do not now belong to one of the two major political organizations or who are--according to opinion polls--dissatisfied with the political system.

How the third party would be financed, however, remained unanswered by Perot.

The campaign began in California on Monday with the filing of papers at the secretary of state’s office seeking to qualify the party for the 1996 ballot within the coming month.

Under California law, a party can be created either by petition or by registration of voters. An official of Perot’s United We Stand America Inc. organization in California said that both paths would be pursued.

The law requires signatures of 890,064 registered voters, or the enlisting of 89,007 party registrants, by the deadline of Oct. 24. To achieve either would be “an incredible feat,” observed Shirley Washington, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state’s office.

Petition-gathering begins today, said Leonard Crunelle, California operations coordinator for United We Stand. He acknowledged that it will be “very difficult” to qualify the party for the 1996 ballot but said: “We’re going to get it done.”

Perot will attend five workshops in California this weekend to brief petition-gatherers in San Diego, Anaheim, Palo Alto, Sacramento and Marin County, Crunelle said. Many of the attendees will be people who helped Perot qualify for the California ballot in 1992, he said.

Crunelle likened the process to “laying the hull of the ship.” The captain--the party’s presidential nominee--will be chosen later, he said.

For technical reasons in California, the party for the time being will be known as the Reform Party. The new political organization will be called the Independence Party if and when it is qualified nationally, Perot said.

California, along with Ohio and Maine, are critical to the process because they all have 1995 deadlines for qualifying new parties. Perot, who periodically appears on the King talk show to make his political pronouncements, said that he had wanted to wait until the end of the year before launching the third-party qualifying effort, but the laws of those three states make that impossible. Perot flew from his Dallas home to appear with King in Los Angeles.

Perot said that he still hopes the new Republican majorities in Congress would enact some of the political reforms that he and his followers are demanding in the political system. Failing that, the party-formation process would proceed, he added.

Anyone who aspires to be the Independence Party candidate would have to get the signatures of 10% of the new party’s members to be considered.

Perot said there is no plan for the new party to field candidates for Congress, but party members could endorse Republican or Democratic candidates for House and Senate seats if they were so inclined.