Word: perotisms
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...Dole or Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, protest votes will flow to the third-party candidate and deliver the White House to Clinton in "a rerun of 1992." Meanwhile, Charles Black, chairman of the Gramm campaign, sipped a Diet Coke and tried to do his bill paying while watching Perot's announcement, but had to put the checkbook aside and take notes. "By the end of the show," he said, "I'd written down a dozen potential election-law violations" in Perot's announced plans...
...center of these questions is this: Can Perot spend his personal fortune on the start-up costs of a political party, or must he abide by the contribution limits that apply to existing parties? As yet the Federal Election Commission has no answer to this and other thorny questions, which will probably get hashed out in various state courts. Black holds that Perot should comply with the $25,000 cap on contributions from a single individual to candidates in an election cycle. Perot's advisers retort that Perot should be allowed unlimited spending on "party building" activities, just as wealthy...
These legal tangles are matched by the logistical difficulties and internecine fights involved in establishing the party in every state and on every ballot. The first and harshest test will come in California, where Perot supporters must collect 890,000 signatures, or enroll 89,000 party members, by Oct. 24. It was that deadline--and restlessness in the California chapter of Perot's existing political network, United We Stand America--that forced Perot to move last week. And move he did. Perot's new party flew paid organizers into California, bought full-page ads in newspapers and set up petition...
Platt Thompson, United We Stand's executive director in California, claims that since Perot launched the new party, "volunteers are calling in from everywhere." He adds, "They realize this time that it's not just about Ross Perot." Even some activists disenchanted with Perot agree. "This is a redeeming act on his part," says Phil Madsen, an ex-Perot worker and a founder of the thriving Minnesota Independence Party who runs a draft-Powell cell in that state...
Some political operatives believe Perot's new party could work successfully as a vehicle for Powell or another independent, but only if Perot convincingly removes himself once the party is up and running so the candidate does not look like his puppy. And that has never been Perot's style. Says Dennis Weyl, former chairman of the United We Stand chapter in Colorado: "Despite the rhetoric, it's still Perot's agenda. It has nothing to do with the members." Says Anne Saucier, secretary of the group's Ohio chapter: "He woke us up and made us a force...