Happily or not, the GOP contenders are planning for the extraordinary panderthon, each hoping to become the new champion of Perot’s potent populist message. One audience will be the Perot voters. The Dole camp will mail audiocassettes to United We Stand activists. Lamar Alexander will be holding private sessions with Perotians who’ve contacted him through the Internet. At least one opposing camp claims that Phil Gramm plans to turn his appearance into a rally by packing the 8,500-seat Dallas Convention Center with home-state supporters (a Gramm spokesman scoffed at the charge). The reaching out is important, but most of these voters are likely to be tilting Republican anyway in 1996.
The real target is Perot himself. Republicans would like nothing better than to make him disappear–and since that’s unlikely, they want to charm him into staying out of the ‘96 race. Gramm consultant and former Perot pollster Frank Luntz estimates that another bid by the Texas billionaire could cost Republicans 2 to 3 percentage points in a general election. That’s why all the GOP contenders schmooze with him whenever they can. Dole talks to him periodically on the phone, and most of them bellied up to the microphone on his now canceled radio show. But to the extent Ross Perot can be handled, the GOP will have to do it gingerly. “What we don’t want to do,” says one cautious GOP operative, “is see anyone tell him he can’t run.”
For all the reasons the GOP wants Perot out, the White House wants him in. That may be one reason–the possibility of irritating Perot with a presidential slight–Bill Clinton will be a no-show next week. “He said he didn’t need to go down there and kowtow to Perot,” says one senior aide. Instead, he’s dispatching Democratic National Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd to kowtow for him. Some aides want the president to send adviser Mack McLarty, whose soothing style and Arkansas roots (Perot is from Texarkana) have made him Pe-rot’s favorite Clinton surrogate. Whoever goes will face a tough sell: polls show only a third of Perot voters–a perpetually disenchanted group–approve of Clinton’s job performance.
The question is whether they’re that much happier with the Republican field. While Perot followers voted overwhelmingly for GOP congressional candidates in 1994, they are deeply skeptical about the party’s ability to deliver on the “Contract With America” – including a balanced budget and welfare and campaign-finance reform. Many Perot activists are coming to Dallas to discuss forming a national third party.
Perot has clearly scheduled the conference for maximum exposure. Except for Clinton, he’s got all the stars lined up. It fits snugly into a dead spot on the political calendar–during the Congress’s summer recess and a week in advance of the Iowa presidential straw poll. He will be at his favorite electronic fireside, “Larry King Live,” twice in the next two weeks. Former campaign press secretary Jim Squires, who visited with Perot several weeks ago, says he came away convinced that Perot was leaving his options open until early next year. “It wouldn’t surprise me if you see Ross in there,” says Squires.
Should the GOP get its way and manage to ease Perot from the race, he couldn’t possibly deliver the 20 million votes he won in his historic ‘92 campaign. Even if he was to endorse another candidate, he actually has little in the way of a political operation to pass on. Organizers for GOP contenders report that many United We Stand chapters around the country have atrophied over the past two years, hurt by intramural squabbling and declining interest. “The infrastructure is flat gone,” said one national party operative. Another Perot candidacy could change all that, of course. For the moment, Ross Perot has time, about a billion dollars and an amazing political guest list on his side.
