PEROT UPENDED POLITICS
Billionaire appealed to public with straight talk, folksy approach
Billionaire, who died Tuesday at 89, ran an unusually strong third-party race for president.
DALLAS — H. Ross Perot rose from a childhood of Depressionera poverty to become a selfmade billionaire who twice ran for president with a mixture of folksy sayings and simple solutions to America’s problems. His 19% of the vote in 1992 stands among the best showings by an independent candidate in the last century.
Perot died of leukemia Tuesday at his home in Dallas surrounded by his family, family spokesman James Fuller said. He was 89.
As a boy in Texarkana, Texas, Perot delivered newspapers from the back of a pony. He earned his billions in a more modern way, however. After attending the U.S. Naval Academy and becoming a salesman for IBM, he set out on his own — creating and building Electronic Data Systems Corp., which helped other companies manage their computer networks.
In 1979, Perot financed a private commando raid to free two EDS employees who were being held in a prison in Iran. The tale was turned into a book and a movie.
“I always thought of him as stepping out of a Norman Rockwell painting and living the American dream,” said Tom Luce, who was a young lawyer when Perot hired him to handle his business and personal legal work. “A newspaper boy, a midshipman, shaking Dwight Eisenhower’s hand at his graduation, and he really built the computer services industry at EDS.”
Perot’s wealth, fame and confident prescription for the nation’s economic ills propelled his 1992 campaign against President George H.W. Bush and Democratic challenger Bill Clinton. In June of that year, a Gallup poll showed Perot leading his majorparty rivals.
Perot dropped out in July, however, saying later that he did so to prevent Republicans from sabotaging his daughter’s wedding. He rejoined the race less than five weeks before the election, but his popularity had fallen. Critics said he had a penchant for embracing conspiracy theories. He finished third in the popular vote and was shut out in the Electoral College.
Still, Perot recorded the highest percentage for an independent or third-party candidate since President Theodore Roosevelt’s second-place showing in 1912. Some Republicans blamed Perot for causing Bush’s defeat by splitting the anti-Clinton vote, although exit polls were inconclusive.
During the campaign, Perot spent $63.5 million of his own money. He bought 30-minute television spots during which he used charts and graphs to make his points.
Perot’s second campaign four years later was far less successful. He got just 8% of the vote, and the Reform Party that he founded and hoped to build into a national political force began to fall apart.
However, Perot’s ideas on trade and deficit reduction remained part of the political landscape. He blamed both major parties for running up a huge federal budget deficit and supporting trade deals that allowed American jobs to be sent to other countries. The movement of U.S. jobs to Mexico, he said, would create a “giant sucking sound.”
Perot’s themes — that Washington is corrupt, wastes taxpayer money and ignores the working class — have been repeated by many other candidates since and helped Donald Trump win the presidency in 2016.