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Text File | 1993-04-08 | 5.7 KB | 133 lines

                                                                                COVER STORIES, Page 43

BUSH, CLINTON, PEROT

Who's in Charge Here?


Having burned his bridges with the professionals that ran his
earlier campaign, Perot now calls his own shots with the help
of hand-picked cronies

By S.C. GWYNNE/WASHINGTON -- With reporting by Julie Johnson/
Washington and Richard Woodbury/Dallas


    To look at Ross Perot's all-new campaign team, you would
not suspect that this man was girding himself for a four-week
dash at the presidency of the United States. Gone are the
professional pols and veterans of national elections who rode
in on Perot's skyrocketing polls in June only to resign or be
forced out in the campaign's spasm of self-destruction in July.
In their place today stands a collection of old friends, obscure
aides, in-laws and former military men chosen more for their
unblinking allegiance to the chief than for their political
acumen.

    Welcome to amateur hour. Indeed, amateurism is now
celebrated by Perot insiders as a boon in a season of finely
crafted political double-talk and slick negative advertising.
"This is anything but a professional organization," admits Orson
Swindle, the top Perot lieutenant, called in to refurbish the
sagging effort in the dark days following Perot's withdrawal.
"We're all amateurs, but that's not a disadvantage. We've got
the enthusiasm of the volunteers."

    With so many neophytes in such critical positions, they
will need all the enthusiasm they can muster. At the top of
Perot's new brain trust is a tiny coterie of true believers:
Swindle, running mate James B. Stockdale, legal adviser (and
son-in-law) Clayton Mulford, media chief Murphy Martin and press
secretary Sharon Holman. The 55-year-old Swindle has some
seasoning in a political campaign, having been a congressional
district chairman in his native Georgia during Ronald Reagan's
1980 race.

    Swindle, a friend of the candidate's since 1973 and the
conduit for Perot's orders to the field, is in many ways a
perfect Perot operative: competent, self-effacing, obedient and
intensely loyal. A former fighter pilot and POW like Stockdale,
who ran Reagan's 1980 California campaign, Swindle served as an
Assistant Secretary of Commerce.

    In spite of his ostensible position as Perot's main
adviser, Swindle has not been given the title of either campaign
manager or political director. The rest of the inner circle are
more like conventional field operatives, jumping when they
receive Perot's frequent calls from his 17th-floor office in a
Dallas high-rise, 2 1/2 miles from campaign headquarters.
Clayton Mulford's main job since February has been to help get
Perot on the ballot in 50 states and make sure the campaign
complies with federal election rules and reporting requirements.
Press secretary Sharon Holman, 45, has worked for Perot since
1969 and most recently worked for his son Ross Jr. producing
videos and brochures for the family's big Alliance Airport
project. The last of the key players, former Dallas TV anchorman
Murphy Martin, 67, a longtime Perot crony, has played a key role
in producing the 25 television and radio ads that are now ready
to run nationwide.

    Most of the team Perot assembled last spring have
dissociated themselves from the candidate. Dallas lawyer Thomas
W. Luce III, Perot's confidant and loyal spear carrier for 20
years -- the man Perot reportedly blamed for his earlier
troubles -- has returned to corporate law. Ed Rollins, Ronald
Reagan's former campaign manager, is back in Washington working
as a political consultant. Hamilton Jordan, Jimmy Carter's
chief of staff who was hired with Rollins in June to run the
campaign, has gone back to his corporate life at Whittle
Communications in Knoxville, Tennessee. James Squires, former
editor of the Chicago Tribune and Perot's press secretary until
July, has returned home to Kentucky to raise horses. Mort
Meyerson, Perot's chief business aide, who once played a major
role in the campaign, is busy running Perot's computer-services
company. John White, the principal architect of Perot's economic
plan, returned last week to his job with Eastman Kodak in
Rochester, New York. He has no connection with the campaign and
doesn't think Perot should run, concerned that a Perot loss
could drag the plan down with him.

    Though many of the original staff members left with some
bitterness, they continued to collect large sums of money from
the Perot campaign even after they departed. In July and August,
according to financial documents filed with the Federal Election
Commission, the Perot campaign paid Thomas Luce and his company
$402,377.47; Hamilton Jordan received $154,872.18; Ed Rollins
$97,032.34; James Squires $36,084.40; and John White $22,939.00.
Rollins said last week that in addition to the money he had
already received, Perot offered him $500,000 not to talk to the
press about the campaign. Rollins, who has written and spoken
out against his ex-boss, says he declined the offer.

    Perot's payouts have hardly been limited to his senior
staff. According to FEC records, some of the smiling souls
sporting Perot buttons and canvassing the country are workers
hired from temporary agencies. They had to be taken on,
according to a campaign spokesman, because so many of Perot's
early volunteers left in disgust after the candidate pulled out
in July. In California, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, Georgia,
Massachusetts, New Jersey, Illinois and New York, Perot has
spent at least $430,000 to keep his volunteer networks manning
the telephones and walking the streets. Which goes to show that
in politics as in business, you get what you pay for.