Perot Chooses Economist for Running Mate

Struggling to recapture some of the energy and viability of his 1992 presidential campaign, Reform Party candidate and political maverick Ross Perot turned Tuesday to a sometimes controversial economist and fellow trade protectionist to be his running mate.

Perot’s ticket mate will be Pat Choate, 55, the son of a Texas sharecropper, onetime TRW Inc. vice president and a longtime public policy advocate who wrote the controversial 1990 book “Agents of Influence.” In it, Choate detailed the efforts of Japanese industry to influence U.S. trade policy through the hiring of well-connected U.S. lobbyists.

After Perot’s 1992 campaign, he and Choate shared credit for a “Save Your Job, Save Our Country: Why NAFTA Must Be Stopped--Now!”--a book attacking the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, which was before Congress at the time.

The announcement comes at a time when Perot is foundering in the polls and facing the prospect that he may not be invited to take part in the presidential debates that are tentatively scheduled to begin this month.

Four years ago, Perot captured national attention as the quirky, blunt-talking billionaire business wizard who came out of Dallas to shake up the federal establishment by spending $60 million of his own money on his independent presidential campaign.

Perot bedeviled his opponents with his engineering-analysis approach to complex fiscal programs and dominated the campaign debate for weeks at a time--eventually collecting 19% of the vote nationwide.

But today, financed primarily by $30 million in federal funds that he claimed on the strength of his 1992 showing, and running as the head of the Reform Party he created, Perot is mired in the single digits--averaging about 6% in independent polls taken in September. He is well behind President Clinton and GOP challenger Bob Dole and only barely ahead of consumer advocate Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate who is spending virtually no money and refusing to campaign.

Perot has lost support from some leaders of his Reform Party, who were angered by what they saw as muscle tactics that he used to win the party nomination from his opponent, former Colorado Gov. Richard D. Lamm.

“I will not support Ross Perot,” said one in that camp, Mark Sturdevant of La Habra, who was the vice chairman of the Reform Party in California until he quit last month. “The novelty of Ross Perot is gone. Now he’s just another candidate.”

Most critical will be the debates. The Clinton campaign would like to see Perot in the debates, believing that he will cause more trouble for Dole than for the Democrats. Dole’s aides have suggested that if Perot is let into the debates, Nader should be also.

The co-chairmen of the 10-member Commission on Presidential Debates said Tuesday the commission will decide by Monday, at the latest, whether to recommend that Perot, Nader or any other third-party or independent candidates join Clinton and Dole.

The commission, whose decisions are not binding on the candidates but are influential, has proposed three presidential debates and one debate among the vice presidential candidates on four successive Wednesday nights, beginning Sept. 25.

In a briefing in Washington, Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., former Republican Party national chairman, and Paul G. Kirk Jr., former Democratic Party national chairman, who head the commission, outlined 11 criteria for inclusion in the debates, including poll standing and access to the ballot in enough states to mathematically collect the 270 electoral votes needed to win--a criterion that would rule Nader out but potentially allow in Perot, as well as the nominees of the Libertarian and Natural Law parties.

But they emphasized that a candidate must have “a realistic chance” of winning the presidency to be included.

“That, when all is said and done, is the bottom line,” Fahrenkopf said.

Kirk added: “This is not a launching pad or a liftoff for a particular campaign. . . . This is the Super Bowl.”

The debates were critical to Perot’s campaign in 1992--boosting his standing after he withdrew from the race and then rejoined it.

Perot’s public image has gone from highly favorable in 1992 to strongly negative this year, judging by a host of public opinion polls, said pollster Peter Hart. Recent polls have shown Perot with one of the most negative images of any well-known public figure.

“Back in 1992, there was much more of a sense that here was an entrepreneur, here was a creative thinker, here was a person who was unbought and unbossed. He may have seemed idiosyncratic, but it was an attractive kind of idiosyncrasy,” said Hart.

“In 1996, he’s gone from that to becoming a gadfly,” Hart added. “He is whiny and appears at times sort of petulant.”

Hart said, however, that it would be difficult for the debate commission to deny Perot a spot.

Perot’s supporters argue that he should be allowed into the debates regardless of his current standing. Perot may be lagging in the polls, but that “the last time there was an important poll was in 1992 and he got one-fifth of the votes,” said Michael Farris of Thousand Oaks, the California Reform Party chairman.

“I find it very hard for them to keep him out of the debates,” Farris said.

Regardless of what happens with the debates, Choate’s selection does not seem likely to give Perot’s campaign much of a boost, political experts said. Choate is well-known inside the Washington Beltway and in some academic circles but is a political unknown to most Americans.

Perot announced his choice, which he kept secret for several days, during a taped, 30-minute network television commercial in which he promised to reform the national tax system and eliminate the Internal Revenue Service “as we know it.”

Introducing Choate at the end of the infomercial, Perot called him “a person of absolute integrity who knows the facts cold.”

“My campaign for president is about ideas and solutions, about what is best for America,” Perot said. “I don’t think there’s anybody better equipped than Pat Choate to get this done.”

Choate said the “only real hope for our government and its policies” lies with the Reform Party.

“In Washington today, too many people profit too much from private gains at the public expense to permit real reform,” he said.

Several present and former members of Congress, including former senator and University of Oklahoma President David L. Boren, reportedly turned down Perot’s invitations to run with him. Perot’s 1992 running mate, retired Adm. James Stockdale, had said he was not interested.

Perot also had discussed the No. 2 spot with the leading Reform Party officeholder in California, Assemblyman Dominic L. Cortese of San Jose, but in the end did not offer it to him.

Picking Choate would indicate that Perot plans to make trade a major focus of his campaign, Cortese noted. Perot spent much of 1993 on the trade issue, but after losing the battle against NAFTA, spoke less about it--at least for a time.

Earlier this year, Perot insisted that the Reform Party was an independent political movement and not a personal political vehicle.

Former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm, seeming to believe Perot would sit out the 1996 campaign, announced his candidacy. But Perot declared the very next day that he was running. Perot subsequently easily defeated Lamm in a nomination process totally controlled by his organization. The process drew ballots from only about 5% of the Reform Party membership.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Profile: Pat Choate

Ross Perot selected trade-protection crusader Pat Choate as the Reform Party’s vice presidential candidate:

* Age: 55

* Education: Bachelor’s degree from University of Texas; doctorate in economics from the University of Oklahoma.

* Career: Former vice president for policy analysis for TRW Inc. in Cleveland. Now a Washington-based author, economist and specialist on trade. Wrote 1991 book, “Agents of Influence,” detailing lobbying activities in U.S. on behalf of foreign countries, especially Japan.

* Family: Married with two stepsons.

* Quote: “On Wall Street, they’re selling stocks and bonds, junk bonds, equity in companies. In Washington, they’re selling the national interest.”

Source: Perot campaign, wire services