Perot Rejects Dole’s ‘Weird’ Request to Quit

Declaring that he is in the race for the “long haul,” Ross Perot on Thursday brushed off as “weird and inconsequential” Bob Dole’s request that the Texas billionaire quit the presidential race and endorse the GOP nominee.

Aides said Dole had hoped that his proposal could be kept secret. The fact that it immediately leaked--apparently from Perot’s organization as well as the Republican camp--and was splashed all over the headlines and the TV network news, clearly flummoxed him. At a campaign appearance in Pensacola, Fla., he allowed his frustrations to spill over, criticizing both the press and the voters.

“I wonder sometimes what people are thinking about--or if people are thinking at all” about President Clinton’s flaws, Dole said, adding that he was “frustrated” with the campaign.

“Wake up, America. You’re about to do yourself an injustice if you vote for Bill Clinton,” he declared, asking if voters had “really watched this administration, watched what’s happened in the White House, watched what’s happened in some of their policies, watched what’s happened when the president tells one thing and does precisely the other--time after time after time.”

At a later rally on the steps of the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Dole repeated his criticism of Clinton and the Democrats, particularly for having accepted a $20,000 contribution--later returned--from a convicted drug dealer.

“Is there no honor in this administration or in this White House?” he demanded.

Wednesday’s meeting between Dole’s campaign manager, Scott Reed, and Perot left other Republican strategists baffled. Linda DiVall, a GOP pollster, called the Dole campaign’s decision to approach Perot “strange.”

“I just don’t think that Ross Perot is a significant player in this election,” DiVall said. “It’s a curious strategy to me.

“They may artificially pump up [Perot’s] position by treating him seriously,” DiVall said. “There may be some adverse impact here and serve to boost his vote.”

Meanwhile, as if to accentuate Dole’s difficulties, Clinton campaigned through the heart of Republican territory, shadowing the GOP nominee through Alabama--a state where voters usually have a better chance of seeing a snowstorm two weeks before election day than a visit from a Democratic presidential candidate. Until Thursday, in fact, Clinton as president had never set foot in Alabama.

But under brilliant fall sunshine, Clinton attracted about 10,000 people to a rally at Birmingham Southern College. The sprawling, enthusiastic crowd testified to Clinton’s brightening prospects in a state that has voted for a Democratic presidential candidate only once in the past 32 years.

“It’s such a beautiful day, and the crowd is so large, maybe Alabama is going to come along with me,” Clinton said.

Polls show Dole holding a narrow lead in the state, though tracking surveys conducted for the Alabama Education Assn. showed the two men running even as of Tuesday night, said Joe Cottle, the union’s director of government relations.

Clinton and Dole have followed almost identical itineraries in recent days. But while the schedules are similar, “we have different objectives,” said Doug Sosnik, the White House political director. “We are trying to move in as deep as we can into traditional Republican territory. They’re coming in after us, trying to hold onto what they’ve had for a generation.”

On a day when both Dole and Perot delivered stormy speeches, Clinton was a study in practiced equanimity. Both in Alabama and at a later rally in Lake Charles, La., his speeches were optimistic, virtually nonpartisan and almost entirely devoid of sharp edges.

That certainly was not the case with Perot, who seized gratefully on the platform provided by Dole’s botched attempt to woo him.

Perot, then an independent candidate, received 19% of the popular vote in the 1992 presidential race, but national polls have shown him with only 5% to 7% of the vote this time, and his second bid for the White House, as standard-bearer for the Reform Party he founded, had received diminishing media attention--until Thursday.

“We’ve been pretty well frozen out this time around, but every now and then a blind hog finds an acorn,” Perot said as he spoke to the National Press Club here, obviously delighted to be in front of the television cameras again. In sharp contrast to his other recent speeches, this one was covered live by both the CNN and MSNBC cable TV networks.

Perot used his hour in the limelight to attack the two major political parties for campaign-finance abuses, to denounce Clinton and to criticize the GOP-led Congress.

He also warned Americans that despite the optimistic news about the economy, America is still heading for an economic “meltdown” because the government has failed to tackle the problems posed by the huge national debt, the Social Security system and foreign trade imbalances.

“Don’t throw away your vote,” Perot said. “Vote for the only group that will make these changes.”

Typically, Perot waited until the end to comment on the question on everyone’s mind. And he refused to comment either on the content of his conversation with Reed or on how the meeting had come about.

But Russ Verney, Perot’s top aide, said the Dole campaign had initiated the discussion as an act of “desperation.”

During the discussion, Perot told Reed privately what he has been saying publicly for a year: If the Democrats and Republicans had addressed seriously the federal budget deficit, campaign-finance reform and government ethics, Perot never would have entered the race, Verney said in a telephone interview from Detroit.

“Instead, they gave us gridlock and shut down the government,” Verney said. “To come at the eleventh hour in a political campaign and ask us to get out of the race is absurd. We never would have gotten into the race if they simply had performed.”

Verney said that as far as the Perot campaign is concerned, the subject is closed.

“Now, if they want to discuss Dole dropping out and supporting Perot to ensure victory this year, that would be a great conversation to have,” he added.

John Buckley, Dole’s communications director, confirmed that Dole’s campaign had initiated the meeting and that Dole personally had authorized approaching Perot. But he added that the campaign “absolutely, absolutely” had wanted to keep the meeting between Reed and Perot quiet.

“Once again, somebody had to be a big shot and shoot off their mouth,” Buckley said.

Buckley tried to put a positive face on the blunder, saying that the renewed attention on Perot was going to help defeat Clinton.

“The intention was to try to get Ross Perot’s support for Bob Dole,” Buckley said. “We didn’t get that, but we got the next best thing--a blistering attack on Bill Clinton’s ethics and a reminder to voters of what the stakes are in the election should Bill Clinton be reelected.”

To be sure, Perot’s criticism of Clinton during his address here was extremely harsh.

He accused the president of entertaining a drug dealer in the White House, selling nights in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House for $100,000 donations and giving foreign interests influence over U.S. trade policies.

“We are headed toward a second Watergate with all this stuff going on and a constitutional crisis in 1997, just remember where you heard it and put it in the bank,” Perot said.

“If you love this country and your children, how could you even consider voting for a candidate that has huge moral, ethical and criminal problems facing him, as our country has problems to solve?” Perot asked.

The White House countered Perot’s charges but did not seem very upset by them.

“That is not fair, not correct and not an accurate characterization of a president who has done exactly what he said he would do when it comes to pushing for campaign-finance reform, political reform, balancing the budget, giving America a brighter future,” said White House spokesman Mike McCurry.

Asked more specifically about Perot’s prediction of an avalanche of scandals in a second Clinton term, McCurry added blandly: “That is certainly not the president’s view of the future, and Ross Perot will have to speak for himself on that.”

Clinton’s advisors said they were as puzzled as everyone else by the news of Dole’s overture to Perot.

McCurry said his reaction to Dole’s gambit was “mystification” because “there was no apparent reason to believe” that Perot would leave the race.

Likewise, Sosnik said that “this is just another in a series of difficult to explain moves they have done.”

Both McCurry and Sosnik said they were unaware of any contact between the Clinton campaign and the Perot camp since the news broke.

Chen reported from Pensacola and Shogren from Washington. Times staff writers Ronald Brownstein in Lake Charles, La., John Broder and Janet Hook in Washington and Maria L. La Ganga in Los Angeles contributed to this story.