The Perot petitioners in North Carolina, and the vast constituency they represented, seemed a lot more impressive than the self-righteous, selfcentered billionaire in whom they’d invested their faith. And so, as Ross Perot intensified his shameless, odious electoral tease last week, I decided to check back with Marty Henderson, Willie Phillips and some of the others to see how they’d fared and what they were thinking. I reached Willie first.
“When Mr. Perot dropped that other shoe on us, we all nearly died,” he said. Willie had been having a rough year-cancer of the kidney," a close call." It left him thinking about his legacy-which led him to the Perot movement. “I still believe in what Mr. Perot stood for. I read every page of his book. That [deficit reduction] program would cost me personally-I’m military retired-but it makes a lot of sense. We’ve got to pay up this deficit now, or our kids will pay it later … And if running now, even though he has no chance, gives Mr. Perot a chance to promote these ideas, then I’m all for it.” Would he vote for him? “Well, you have to look at who has a chance to get elected. I’m not certain right now who I’ll vote for.” George Bush? “No sir. He has lied to us every step of the way.” Bill Clinton? “I don’t see much relief from him … People feel so down and hurting. We’re yearning for someone who’ll say the things that need to be said.”
Marty Henderson, the former state chair, is “retired” from politics now. “My business and [golf] handicap needed some attention,” he explained. Before he left the campaign, Henderson had to endure “two or three of the worst days of my life, dealing with people around the state who were devastated. A lot of them were real angry, and took it out on me.” Before that, he had to deal with a “flaming a –they sent out from Dallas to be our state coordinator.” Which leads to his theory about why Ross Perot dropped out: “He had put this organization of political professionals around him that wasn’t working out. He wanted to dissolve the organization, but rather than embarrass all these people by firing them, he took the heat himself.” Oh. Marty will vote for Perot. “He said that if we put him on the ballot in all 50 states, he’d run a world-class campaign. He may just be starting later than we expected. He hasn’t broken his pledge … yet.”
Marty Henderson is proud, but he isn’t dumb. He knows he was had. As does Willie Phillips-and most of the others who pinned their hopes on Perot. “You folks in the media keep asking, Who’s Perot gonna hurt if he gets back in, Clinton or Bush?” said Tom Sanders, a leader of the petition drive in Boone, N.C. “I’ve got a different answer for you: how about the American people? He’s lost the ability to do anything useful. How could we trust him after the capricious way he up and quit?”
Perot still does “well” in many polls-but it’s probably a mirage, a reflection of the frustration and iconoclasm of people too proud to admit they’ll succumb to a choice they consider dismal. But without a credible alternative, people like Willie Phillips and Tom Sanders ultimately will do what they’ve always done: vote the lesser of two evils. “I can’t abide four more years of what we’ve had,” says Sanders, who finds-after a brief season of hope-that he will probably now vote for a man he calls “Pander Bear.”
It is difficult to listen to the North Carolina folks he scammed and not be furious with Ross Perot. His revived demicandidacy is a shameless eruption of self-indulgence. It has the ironic effect of diverting attention from the very “issues” he claims to be concerned about. It would be pleasing to think that he’s acting out of desperation and embarrassment now, struggling to salvage a piece of the reputation he squandered, experiencing some of the anguish he visited upon others this year-but that may be too much to hope for. He’s probably doing it because it’s there to be done and he just can’t help himself.
