Perot Backers Hold a Victory Party in O.C.

Ross Perot and his followers claimed Tuesday they have cleared the first major hurdle in their bid to shake up the American political system, saying they have met the requirement for creating a new political party in California.

The California secretary of state’s office said it will be several days before it can officially determine whether the party had qualified for the state’s 1996 ballot by enlisting at least 89,007 registrants.

But a state Democratic Party official who has been monitoring the blitz that began earlier this month on behalf of the new party said it appeared that the Perot forces had submitted far more than the required number by the Tuesday night deadline.

Members of Perot’s United We Stand America organization had turned in 95,000 voter registration cards to the secretary of state by Tuesday morning, with more on the way, said Platt Thompson, the group’s California executive director.

Asked if he was confident the party had qualified, Thompson declared: “Done deal!”

Perot, in a telephone call from Dallas on Tuesday night to about 75 supporters gathered at a Garden Grove hotel, said: “You made history in California, you hear. All the experts said we couldn’t do it. You did it in 18 days. You have shaken the Earth.”

Leaders of the traditional two-party system that Perot’s movement seeks to upend were impressed with the push to create the new party, directed by paid staff aides but with field work carried out mostly by volunteers.

“I think they should be commended for a huge success,” said Bob Mulholland, political director of the California Democratic Party. “No one else I know of has done that in such a short period of time.”

Still, the potential impact of the neophyte party--assuming it qualifies for the ballot not only in California but elsewhere in the country--remains murky.

Bruce Cain, a political scientist at UC Berkeley, said that at the least, the party would likely serve as “a way station for the disgruntled.” And recent polls have indicated that number could be substantial. A survey released this summer found that three of four Americans distrust government.

But Cain added that whether the new party could ultimately command substantial support is uncertain, in part because so much is unclear about the direction of the Perot-led effort.

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For instance, while Perot has said the party’s principles would include balancing the federal budget and campaign finance reform, few details for achieving these goals have emerged. Also, the party’s stance on such divisive issues as abortion is unknown.

State Republican Chairman John S. Herrington spotlighted perhaps the key question surrounding the new party: “Who’s [its] candidate? That’s the No. 1 question.”

Herrington scoffed at Perot’s contention that he merely wants to gear up the party and then will let its members dictate its course.

Even if the party does not choose Perot as its standard-bearer in next year’s presidential race, the candidate will be “a front” for him, predicted Herrington, who was a member of the Cabinet in the Ronald Reagan Administration.

“You get Ross Perot no matter which way you cut it,” he said.

Democratic State Chairman Bill Press said that he assumes Perot would emerge as the party’s nominee, and that his presence on the ballot would make it easier for President Clinton to carry California’s 54 electoral votes, which currently are viewed as essential to his reelection.

Running as an independent candidate in 1992, Perot drew more than 20% of the California vote. Republicans claimed that, as in several other states, Perot’s support cut deeply into the vote for then-President George Bush, enabling Clinton to carry the state.

But Marty Wilson, who was the co-chairman of the Bush campaign in California, said a post-election study concluded that the Perot candidacy was not a significant drag on the GOP campaign and was not the reason Clinton carried California by 13 percentage points.

Perot announced his plans to create a new national Independence Party during a television interview Sept. 28, and then financed the qualification effort in California from his own fortune.

His followers originally sought to qualify the party by collecting the signatures of nearly 900,000 currently registered voters on petitions.

But several days into that campaign, Secretary of State Bill Jones, the state’s top election official, advised Perot that the effective deadline for qualifying a party by petition already had passed. The Perot team then shifted to the second method--registering voters in the new party.

The switch may have aided the Perot drive. Unlike petition drives, in which a large percentage of signatures are invalidated because the signers are not registered voters, the margin of error in a registration drive is fairly small, experts in the field say.

“Eighteen days!” declared Sharon Holman, a Perot aide in Dallas, referring to the time elapsed since the registration drive began. “Isn’t that something?”

Joan Vinson, executive director of United We Stand America in Maryland, who came to Orange County to direct the area’s registration drive, called the effort “a political miracle” during a celebration at the Hyatt Regency Alicante in Garden Grove, where Perot called.

“It’s really phenomenal, and had we had more lead time, who knows what number we would’ve had?” she said.

Mark Sturdevant, a 45-year-old La Habra resident who has been working at malls, post offices and shopping centers along with other volunteers to sign up voters, said the registration was a “people empowerment.”

“People are just electric right now,” he said. “We can now be kingmakers.”

No one has ever qualified a political party in California on such a crash basis. Most such efforts in the past have taken a year or more.

In Los Angeles, Perot officials and volunteers celebrated at a victory party at the Santa Monica Air Museum on Tuesday night.

Jones planned a press briefing today in Sacramento to report the latest official tally of new voters in the Perot party. But the secretary of state’s count has been running as much as a week behind Perot’s own tally.

It may be another week before the state has a final official count, Jones’ office said. The deadline for certifying a new party for the 1996 balloting is Nov. 13.

Perot and his aides declined to say how much he has spent on the campaign, but state GOP Chairman Herrington estimated it was several million dollars. The cost included two rounds of full-page ads in major state newspapers, including one in which registration cards were delivered with the papers.

Perot picked California to launch his third party drive because this state had the earliest deadline for qualifying for the 1996 ballot.

Perot has insisted he did not create the party to be a vehicle for himself to seek the White House again. If he wanted to run himself, it would have been much easier to qualify again as an independent candidate, he said.

But so far, no other prospective candidate has emerged and Perot has declined to flatly rule himself out. There was some speculation that former Gen. Colin L. Powell might head the new ticket, but Powell has indicated that if he decides to run for President, it would only be as a Republican.

With the efforts for a new party in California ending, Perot forces now will shift to the two other states that have 1995 deadlines for establishing parties for the 1996 election: Ohio, with 33,463 party members required by Nov. 20, and Maine, requiring 25,565 by Dec. 14.

While Perot set out to establish a 50-state Independence Party as a third national party, the official name of the group in California is the Reform Party. The use of the name Independence was ruled out because it was too similar to the American Independent Party, which has been on the California ballot since 1968.

Times staff writer Lily Dizon contributed to this report.