Coy Perot Seems Poised for Candidacy

There he goes again.

Texas tycoon Ross Perot, who confounded the American political system four years ago, appears poised once again to seek the presidency, this time as the candidate of his self-created Reform Party.

As he did four years ago, Perot is not declaring his candidacy outright. Not yet, anyway.

Instead, once again, he is conducting an elaborate fan dance, offering teasing glimpses of his intentions in radio and television interviews, including an hourlong session Friday night on his favorite electronic venue, CNN’s “Larry King Live” program.

On the show, Perot repeatedly dodged direct questions about whether he would run. “It’s not about me, Larry,” he declared several times.

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Perot has repeatedly said his party is seeking the ablest candidate it can find, a man or woman uncorrupted by Washington and dedicated to fiscal stringency, ethical purity and selfless public service. Perot refers to this as-yet wholly fictional character as “George Washington II.”

But if such a candidate fails to materialize by September, Perot said, he’ll reluctantly don the mantle of leadership of the new party.

He said he will abide by the wishes of the “members” of the Reform Party when it meets in a high-tech nationwide convention on Labor Day weekend. But there are as yet no nominating procedures, and it’s difficult to discern how an outsider could persuade Perot’s acolytes to nominate someone other than the Dallas billionaire if he decides to run.

Echoes of September 1992: At that point, Perot--who had dropped out of the race two months earlier, citing GOP threats to disrupt his daughter’s wedding--said that he would rejoin the campaign if the campaign “volunteers” so desired. A not-surprising 93% of them urged him to run in a Perot-financed phone poll that made it virtually impossible to register a negative opinion.

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Perot says he has half a dozen qualified candidates in mind, but he would not name them, and no prominent American political figure has declared interest in carrying the Reform Party banner.

All of which leads most Perot-watchers--professionals and amateurs alike--to conclude that the new party exists to be the latest electoral vehicle for its creator.

“It’s hard to think of who else would run as the candidate of the Perot Party,” said John J. Pitney, professor of political science at California’s Claremont-McKenna College and an expert on third-party movements. “The party is about as democratic as an Iraqi election.”

Kirk MacKenzie, a 1992 Perot volunteer and former California chairman of Perot’s United We Stand America Inc. organization, said Perot’s current coyness is all a charade designed to mask his real intentions.

“He is obviously setting himself up to run for president unopposed on the Reform Party ticket,” said MacKenzie, a semiconductor company executive from Los Altos. “I have no doubt what it [the Reform Party] is for--it’s bought and paid for by Ross Perot.”

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MacKenzie makes no effort to hide his disillusionment with Perot. He left his job for a year to try to build the California United We Stand organization, only to see it taken over by paid Perot employees from Dallas. His experience was mirrored in many states, where early volunteers were supplanted by paid professionals beholden only to the computer magnate.

“I strongly advise the American people to watch out for this guy. His strongest supporters four years ago are now his strongest critics,” MacKenzie said in a telephone interview Friday. “So many people gave up so much of their time and their money, but it all turned out to be a hoax.”

Not so, insists Russell Verney, national coordinator of Citizens to Establish a Reform Party and a full-time Perot employee who also was instrumental in Perot’s 1992 presidential bid.

The new party is a legitimate attempt to offer the American people an alternative to the established parties, which have failed to deliver promised reforms, Verney says.

The new party has gotten on the ballot in California, Utah, North Dakota, South Carolina and Montana and currently is suing election officials in Maine and Ohio over decisions denying ballot access. Petition drives are underway elsewhere. But, as Perot showed in 1992, he can get on the ballot as an independent whether his party achieves ballot position or not.

Verney said polls show that nearly two-thirds of the American people want an alternative to the Democratic and Republican duopoly, adding that a new entity could easily capture more than the 19% of the vote that Perot garnered in 1992.

“We sense that the potential electorate is larger now,” Verney said. “The public is more frustrated and more contemptuous of inside-the-Beltway politicians who talk to other Beltway politicians about politics instead of solutions.”

Verney left little doubt about whom he was speaking: President Clinton and Sen. Bob Dole, the presumptive GOP nominee.

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Recent polls indicate that Perot would draw votes almost equally from Clinton and Dole. A Gallup poll conducted last week for USA Today and CNN showed Clinton beating Dole, 54% to 42%, in a two-way matchup. With Perot stirred into the stew, the results were Clinton 46%, Dole 35% and Perot 16%, indicating that Perot would drain eight percentage points from Clinton’s support and seven points from Dole’s. A recent Los Angeles Times poll of California voters showed a similar result.

Despite these results, people with a real stake in the race consider Perot more of a threat to Dole.

Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour stated flatly this week that “a vote for Ross Perot is a vote for Bill Clinton.” Dole himself said on ABC-TV’s “Nightline” program that a potential Perot candidacy “does concern me. . . . He helps Bill Clinton.”

But a senior Dole aide said that as much as Dole would like to keep Perot out of the race, “there’s very little you can do to materially affect the guy’s thought process.”

He said Dole’s strategy is to convince Perot and his followers that the GOP is the true party of reform and that the most effective way to reach their goals is to elect a Republican president and Congress.

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However, he added, Dole likely will have trouble attracting Perot voters after he delivered a less-than-scintillating talk at a Perot forum last fall.

Clinton’s partisans are not so certain that Perot’s appearance on the ballot will help reelect the president, but they clearly are less concerned about the prospect than are the Republicans.

“Haley Barbour seems to think this will make a difference, but every poll we’ve seen shows President Clinton beating Sen. Dole with or without Perot,” said Ann Lewis, Clinton’s deputy campaign manager. “I don’t know which way it will cut, but Perot showed in 1992 that he can make a real impact on the public agenda.”

Independent pollster Frank Luntz, who worked briefly for Perot in 1992 but has no ties to him now, said a Perot bid will make it marginally more difficult for Dole to beat Clinton, particularly in the battleground states of Ohio and Michigan.

“It makes it tougher for Dole to pull back those Republicans who voted for Clinton in 1992. There will also be others who see Perot as a stopping-off point or a protest vote. Both of these types of voters would probably end up with Dole in a two-way race,” Luntz said.

Pitney, the political scientist, said Perot’s support has a ceiling of roughly the 19% he received last time around, and potentially a lot less because of “four more years of familiarity with Ross Perot.”

“The word ‘crazy’ comes up a lot in polling on Perot, and that puts a cap on his support,” he said.