LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Ross Perot: Reform Party
built 239 days ago
KWAME HOLMAN: A month ago, Ross Perot accepted the presidential nomination of the political party he founded and primarily funds. The Reform Party endorsed Perot at its convention in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, after a nominal challenge from another candidate. The Reform Party has organized nationally and now is on the
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In the 2000 presidential election, Perot refused to become openly involved in the dispute inside the Reform Party between supporters of Pat Buchanan and of John Hagelin. Perot was reportedly unhappy with how the party was disintegrating, and how he was being portrayed in the press, and chose to remain quiet on the election at that time. He appeared on Larry King Live four days before the election, and endorsed George W. Bush for President. Despite his earlier opposition to NAFTA, Perot remained largely silent about expanded use of guest worker visas in the United States, with Buchanan supporters attributing this silence to his corporate reliance on foreign workers. Eventually, Perot ended all ties between himself and the Reform Party, which was largely defunct in most states and has filed a RICO lawsuit against another branch of the Reform Party. (Some state parties have affiliated with the new (Buchananite) America First Party; others gave Ralph Nader their ballot lines in the 2004 presidential election.)
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Perot campaigned in only 16 states but spent an estimated $65.4 million of his own money in his start-stop-start campaign. He ended his quest for the presidency dancing with his wife Margot on a stage in Dallas. The music was the Patsy Cline song, "Crazy." When election results were tallied on the evening of November 3, Perot failed to carry a single state. (He finished second in both Utah and Maine.) The Guide to U.S. Elections lists Perot's overall vote total as 19,741,657, or 18.9% of the total popular vote. It was the strongest showing by a third party candidate since Theodore Roosevelt ran on the Bull Moose Party ticket in 1912.
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As Perot's new Reform Party gathers to ratify its nominee on Aug. 18 in Valley Forge, Pa., some of its members say Perot is not the right man to take their third party to the next level. They'll find plenty of ammo in Posner's account. But diehard Perotistas, too, will find much here to bolster the case of Boss Ross. Posner doesn't forecast the fate of a second Perot Presidential candidacy. But his well-written biography proves that the quirky Dallas billionaire is the most unpredictable candidate in the 1996 Presidential field.
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Reform Party candidate Ross Perot is suing the Commission on the Presidential Debates for excluding him and his running mate Pat Choate, from the October square-offs between Republican and Democratic Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates. In an exclusive Newsmaker interview, Perot discusses the law suit, supply-side economics, and drug abuse.
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Perot once described himself as an ""albino monkey'' who could draw crowds to the circus. His theme song in 1992 had been Patsy Cline's ""Crazy.'' The Dole and Clinton campaigns weren't quite sure what to make of the diminutive Texas billionaire. Dole's advisers worried that Perot would siphon more votes from their candidate, and some of Clinton's advisers welcomed Perot into the race for precisely that reason. The week after Perot announced, Dick Morris called Perot's adviser, pollster Gordon Black, and asked if Perot needed any help gathering petitions in order to get onto state ballots. But both sides were wary of an unpredictable, stubborn and extremely rich man who had fantasies of rescuing America from a political process he described as ""sick.'' The real question was whether Perot's megalomania would lift his new Reform Party or sink it.
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