Ross on the ropes

Today Verney says Perot had two additional reasons for suspending his campaign at the time. Perot felt he needed to get his campaign's finances in order as volunteer groups all over the country were raising money on his behalf, possibly in violation of federal election law. Perot also wanted to clean his house of Washington insiders he had brought on board, specifically GOP spinmeister Edward J. Rollins and Hamilton Jordan, the ex-chief of staff of the Carter White House. The pair wanted to steer Perot's campaign in a direction the candidate found offensive. They had recommended direct-mail and other traditional campaign advertising that Perot viewed as contrary to his ideals of running an unconventional political campaign. Rollins since has gone on record calling Perot a "kook."

Whatever Perot's reasons, kooky or not, his announcement on July 16, 1992, cost him then and still costs him today.

"The majority of Perot supporters decided on that day they would have nothing to do with him ever again," Madsen says. "They were heartbroken. It's no fun to be heartbroken."

When Madsen got home that night, a pile of envelopes sat on top of a table. They were engraved invitations to a special evening party for Perot's top 100 Minnesota volunteers that he had planned to pass out the next morning. He held the invitations in his hand and read the names on the envelopes. Madsen says he broke down and cried.

One week later Madsen called together other devastated Perot volunteers and announced he wanted to turn a negative into a positive by starting a third party in Minnesota. "Some people were concerned that I didn't ask Ross for permission," he says. "I told them that Ross didn't ask me for permission if he could quit."

Perot returned as a candidate in October 1992, but without the help of Madsen. He voted for Bill Clinton that year.

"I got angry with Ross Perot when he got back in the race," he says. "I started to see him in a different light, as someone self-serving and unreliable."

Madsen says he felt as though Perot had abandoned him. Jim Welch, who heard the news in Sugar Land, says Perot simply caved.

"If he would fold over something so small, how could you ever support someone like that?" Welch asks. "How could anyone support a quitter?"

Welch actually cast his ballot for Perot, hoping against hope that Perot's action in July was a blip instead of a pattern. Welch stayed active with United We Stand America, Perot's attempt between his two presidential campaigns to force politicians to pay attention to issues of concern to the reform movement.

While Welch kept the faith that United We Stand could persuade politicians into acting more responsibly, he was fast losing faith in Perot. Welch, the same guy who sat in the late-afternoon Texas sun gathering signatures to get Perot on the 1992 ballot, ultimately concluded that the man was a fraud.

He watched Vice President Al Gore make mincemeat of Perot during a debate on the North American Free Trade Agreement. But the final straw for Welch was hearing Perot suggest that an effective way to fight crime in Dallas would be to cordon off high-crime sections of town and have authorities do door-to-door sweeps in search of guns and drugs.

"We have a Bill of Rights, so that worried me," Welch says. "I never heard Perot really offer any concrete solution to any problem. You know, he'd say, 'Let's lift the hood and look under it, get a committee together to try to fix it, test it, and then implement it.' And that was his solution for everything. It was always that canned answer, and it got so tiring."

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The thrill and agony of Perot's 1992 presidential race a memory, Jim Welch and Phil Madsen concentrated on building a new third party in America. Both worked on that task within the organizational confines of Perot's reform movement. Frustrated with what they viewed as Perot's autocracy, they ultimately sparked uprisings within it.

United We Stand America, financed by Perot, was designed to pressure Republicans and Democrats to confront issues important to the people, such as campaign-finance reform, the national debt, and trade. Some United We Stand members, having little faith that Republicans and Democrats could be salvaged, and craving to support candidates of their own, pushed to turn the issues-advocacy group into a full-fledged political party.

The question of whether to form a party was to be discussed at the United We Stand national conference in Dallas in August 1995. Welch became chairman of a committee to draft bylaws and a platform for the prospective new party. He says it met weekly for about five months.

Then he got word from Perot operatives in Dallas that the decision already had been made not to push for a third party. Instead of debating the merits, the conference would feature prominent Republicans and Democrats addressing issues important to the group.