Ross Perot may have quit the presidential race, but Friday night he left the door open to being a power broker in the campaign, with his legions of supporters providing a possible swing vote.
”Stay the course as a united team,” Perot told his supporters on
”Larry King Live,” the CNN interview show where he launched his campaign in February. ”. . . If we can stay together, we can force the Democrats and the Republicans to do the right thing for the country.
”We can provide the swing vote as to who gets to be the next president of the United States.”
Perot said he would meet soon with state leaders of his volunteer organization, who would make the decision whether to leave his name on at least the 24 ballots for which he already has qualified.
Later, on ABC`s ”20/20,” he also left the door slightly open to his re- entry in the race.
”I don`t see a possibility,” he responded to a question asking whether he would reverse his decision to quit, ”unless I thought it would be good for the country,” he said.
Perot`s remarks buoyed some of his supporters. ”Mr. Perot has just left the door open,” said Orville Sweet, a volunteer coordinator who was interviewed on television in Dallas. ”It sounds to me like . . . he is ready to take his cue from the grass roots.”
Perot was asked by King what he had learned about politics that he hadn`t known when he began his presidential quest. ”I didn`t realize how vicious it was,” Perot replied, ”how petty it was.”
Indeed, it may have been Perot`s confrontation with the very thing he said he detested-becoming a politician-that helped trigger his abrupt exit from the presidential race.
His stated reasons for quitting-a revitalized Democratic Party and concern that a competitive three-way race would throw the election to the House of Representatives-are given token acceptance by those who were close to him in his undeclared bid.
But Perot`s increasing awareness of the demands of a national campaign, and the pressures to accept the professionally managed ”packaging” of his candidacy, probably helped seal his decision to drop the effort.
Perot rode a high crest of popularity this spring as a grass-roots movement grew around him with incredible speed. Supporters were drawn by his unpretentious, no-nonsense style.
But after hitting 35 percent in the polls last month, a blistering scrutiny from political opponents and the press followed, much of it negative. ”I have never seen anyone face the kind of onslaught with the kind of intensity and suddenness that he had to,” said Jim Squires, who handled communications and was helping frame Perot`s never-released policy positions. The way to counteract the image left by that scrutiny was for Perot to quickly define himself by buying televison air time and running image-building ads. That was the advice of his two professional campaign managers, Ed Rollins and Hamilton Jordan.
They also urged him to act like a candidate in other ways: Hold airport news conferences; get his economic positions out; use a speechwriter; lease a press plane; start traveling with an entourage.
Highly regarded political image-maker Hal Riney was brought in by Rollins. Riney, who crafted the Bartles and Jaymes wine cooler commercials, set to work shooting footage. So did two other media specialists.
Reels of footage were captured of Perot petition rallies, interviews with volunteers, and Perot friends and neighbors in Texarkana.
But there was a question: Should the campaign proceed with traditional political advertising-short television spots that build images by giving a fleeting, suggestive glimpse of the candidate? Or would it be better to buy bigger blocks of air time, presenting Perot`s message and his economic program in straight, unadorned terms?
Perot`s instinct, Squires said, was not to spend the money on the slickly packaged image commercials, and to go with the longer format.
But as the Democratic convention drew closer, such key decisions were left unresolved. Riney wrapped up production of two or three commercials and two were viewed by a test group last week. But still no decisions were made to go ahead with airing the ads, or to do away with them. The campaign team of Rollins and Jordan was kept in a holding pattern.
Perot, who Squires said was unwavering on his tough positions on the economic issues, could not take the first step toward becoming an official candidate, apparently for fear of becoming the very thing he had been running against: a slickly packaged candidate.
”Every step of the way, he has resisted almost every other attempt to turn him into a regular politician,” Squires said. ”Perot`s instincts are such that every time advice ran counter to what he thought was the right thing to do, he didn`t follow it. Even if all five of us (Rollins, Jordan, Campaign Chairman Tom Luce, adviser Morton Meyerson and Squires) agreed.”
”He made whole speeches based on . . . being against doing what he just hired these two guys (Rollins and Jordan) to do,” Squires said.
Meanwhile, other stories surfaced that Perot rejected a direct-mail campaign as too costly and canceled cellular telephones for field workers because of a $125,000 monthly bill.
Squires, however, disputed the notion that cost was a factor in Perot`s non decision on how to proceed with advertising.
”This idea that he was too cheap to spend the money is a joke,” he said. ”Look how he was being asked to spend the money: on things that undercut his own image of himself, and the basis on which this whole movement was built.”
Then there came the critical week. It began last Friday when Perot traveled to Lansing, Mich., for a rousing petition rally.
After the rally, campaign advance man Joe Canzeri, a Reagan White House veteran, scurried about the capitol grounds, alerting reporters and television crews that Perot would be available for questions at the Lansing airport.
It was the non-candidate`s first tarmac news conference. And according to Squires, it was an unhappy experience for him. Instead of being queried on his comments about making Detroit once again ”the car capital of the world,”
Perot had to field unwanted questions by a national television correspondent on his waffling position on homosexuals serving in the government.
His prickly answer was condensed into a sound bite on the evening news that night. Perot has repeatedly railed against being forced into becoming a candidate whose ideas were minimalized into sound bites.
”That incident was a metaphor for what was going on in the whole campaign,” Squires said. ”He never said a word about it. But the next day everybody knew he hated that (campaign) stop.”
Then on Saturday came Perot`s gaffe before an NAACP audience in Nashville, where he arrived without an entourage, and read a speech he had written himself. It was his first outing away from the loving folds of his petition volunteers.
A ripe political opportunity was lost when the phrases ”you people,”
and ”your people” slipped out, offending many blacks in the audience as racially insensitive.
Things went quickly downhill. On Monday, Perot fired Riney. On Tuesday, stories surfaced about Jordan`s unhappiness with Perot`s failure to take his advice. On Wendesday, Rollins, whose praising of the departing Riney had angered Perot, announced his own departure.
And Thursday, after conferring the night before with Luce and Meyerson, his old EDS allies, Perot quit the race, leaving thousands of stunned and angry volunteers to turn out the lights.
