H. Ross Perot

American businessman

• Born: June 27, 1930
• Birthplace: Texarkana, Texas
• Died: July 9, 2019
• Place of death: Dallas, Texas

Perot was an immensely successful entrepreneur, but he is best remembered for his campaigns for the presidency of the United States in 1992 and 1996 as a third-party candidate, helping to popularize third-party politics. In the 1992 campaign he helped turn the focus of the campaign from character questions to the American economy, and in 1996 he forced the candidates to talk about political reform.

Early Life

H. Ross Perot (peh-ROH) was born on June 27, 1930, in Texarkana, Texas, a quiet cotton-growing town on the state line between Texas and Arkansas. His father, Gabriel, earned his living as a cotton broker in Texarkana, and his mother, Lulu May Ray, worked as a secretary for a local lumber company. Because of Gabriel's skills as a merchant, the Perot family lived comfortably during the Great Depression. He and Lulu also provided hot meals to the poor from their back door.

Perot learned the importance of relationships in business from his father, who stressed that a businessperson's good word allowed them to continue to do business. From his father, Perot also learned to love the art of buying and selling. An equal influence on Perot was his mother, a strong and spiritual woman who demanded honesty, uprightness, and perfect manners from her children. She taught Perot the importance of setting high standards for himself and of judging himself rather than waiting for others to judge him. Perot became a Boy Scout, and he was an Eagle Scout at thirteen, later winning the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award.

When he turned eighteen years old, Perot began sending letters to members of Congress, seeking an appointment to the US Naval Academy. After several rejections, Perot finally received an appointment and was sworn in on June 27, 1949. He was graduated only 454th in a class of 925 graduates, but his leadership record was impeccable; he served as class president and as head of the school's honor committee. While at the academy, he met Margot Birmingham, a student at Goucher College, on a blind date, and they were married in 1956 in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. They had a son, Ross Jr., and four daughters, Nancy, Suzanne, Carolyn, and Katherine.

Upon his graduation in June 1953, Perot was assigned to the destroyer USS Sigourney as an assistant fire-control officer, and the ship headed across the Pacific during the Korean War. On the way, however, a truce was signed, and the ship headed home by continuing west through the Suez Canal and into the Mediterranean Sea. For his second assignment, Perot served as assistant navigator aboard the aircraft carrier USS Leyte. While escorting visitors aboard ship, Perot met an International Business Machines (IBM) executive who suggested that Perot interview with the company. Following his discharge in 1957, Perot and Margot left for Dallas, Texas, where IBM accepted Perot as a trainee.

Life's Work

Perot proved extremely successful selling computer systems for IBM. He consistently achieved 100 percent of his yearly sales quota and persuaded difficult accounts to sign with IBM; however, he became irritated that his supervisors would not listen to his suggestions. In 1962, Perot formed his own company, Electronic Data Systems Corporation (EDS), with only $1,000 in initial capital. His sales pitch was simple but effective: Rather than selling customers computer systems that they did not know how to operate, he proposed to do the computing and data processing for them.

In February 1963, Perot landed his first contract, with Frito-Lay; other contracts soon followed. EDS's profits remained modest until 1965, when the passage of Medicare legislation suddenly increased the demand for computers, programmers, and data storage—all of which Perot and EDS provided. Demand for the company's services was extremely high and there was little competition. Because of the tremendous growth, Perot began selling stock to the public in September 1968. The shares sold quickly, giving the company $5 million in capital and Perot $5 million in cash; he became a millionaire nearly overnight. Only two years later, Perot's portion of the stock had risen in value to $1.4 billion.

In 1969, Perot received a call from US secretary of state Henry Kissinger asking for his assistance in getting the North Vietnamese to improve the conditions for US prisoners of war (POWs). In response, Perot formed the United We Stand (UWS) committee to collect money to buy advertising to pressure North Vietnam into improving prison conditions. A week before Christmas in 1969, Perot announced that UWS would deliver Christmas dinners to the POWs. Suspicious, the North Vietnamese refused to admit the UWS representatives, however, and the mission failed. Perot, nevertheless, remained deeply committed to the effort to locate POWs.

EDS broke into the international market with a $41 million contract with the Iranian social security system in November 1976. An exciting situation turned critical in December 1978, when revolutionary officials began jailing many of the Iranian officials whom EDS had worked. Partly in reaction, EDS notified the Iranian government that it was suspending operations. Soon afterward, Perot ordered all EDS workers and dependents out of Iran, except for the company's top officials. Without warning, Iranian revolutionaries arrested the EDS manager in Iran, Paul Chiapparone, and his assistant, Bill Gaylord, on charges that EDS had diverted millions from the Iranian treasury, a claim that was never proven. When diplomacy failed to get the two released, Perot sent former Green Beret colonel Arthur D. Simons and a team of EDS executives to try to free them from an Iranian prison. The executives were released by mistake before the team could implement its plan, but Perot's agents did succeed in getting them safely out of the country.

In June 1984, Perot agreed to a merger between EDS and General Motors (GM). He was given a position on the GM board of directors and was allowed to run EDS as a separate organization within GM. Soon, however, differences emerged between Perot and Roger Smith, GM's chair and chief executive. Perot disagreed with the way GM was being run, and Smith disliked the amount of independence Perot demanded. Finally, after Perot publicly criticized GM in November 1986, the board of directors agreed to buy out his interest for $742.8 million. In 1988 he founded Perot Systems, a technology consultancy firm.

In the years following his ouster from EDS, Perot began to receive pressure from various sources to run for president. On February 20, 1992, he appeared on the Larry King Live television show on CNN to state how he thought America could be "fixed." Throughout the interview, Perot claimed that the American people needed to take back the control of their government, and he hinted that if the public gave him sufficient encouragement, he would run as an independent candidate. Although he never declared himself as an official candidate, Perot funded a campaign to get himself on the ballot in all fifty states. By late June, many polls showed that Perot would win a substantial number of votes. On July 17, however, he withdrew his name, stating that the Democrats had begun to address his concerns. Following his withdrawal, his supporters formed an organization called United We Stand America (UWSA), which continued to work to get Perot's name on the ballot in every state, and he continued to fund these efforts.

Stating that he wanted the campaign to focus on economic issues, Perot reentered the race on October 1, 1992, running with retired vice admiral James Stockdale, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, as his vice presidential candidate. Perot appeared on television in paid commercial spots in which he presented his plan for saving the US economy and reforming the government. Ultimately, though, Perot was unable to regain the political strength that he had shown in the summer. Nevertheless, he finished with nearly 19 percent of the popular vote, the strongest showing by a third-party candidate since 1912, and many political analysts claimed that Perot's candidacy contributed to Bill Clinton's victory over incumbent candidate George H. W. Bush.

In January 1993, Perot announced that UWSA would continue to receive new members and become a nonprofit citizens' action group. Perot planned for the organization to pressure lawmakers on behalf of political reform and debt reduction initiatives. The group, however, failed to work together as he had hoped. Members of UWSA's volunteer staff complained that the Dallas headquarters acted in a dictatorial fashion, and the movement weakened. Also in 1993, Perot made two appearances in documentaries about politics, The War Room and The Last Party.

Over the next three years, Perot continued his gadfly tactics. In particular he argued strenuously against approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and coined the phrase "giant sucking sound" to describe the sound of jobs flowing from the United States to Mexico if NAFTA were to pass. The phrase went on to become a popular, well-known term in economics discussions. In June 1995, Perot invited President Clinton and the principal contenders for the Republican nomination to a conference in Dallas. The convention met in August with political leaders such as Jesse Jackson, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and Senator Bob Dole in attendance. The Republicans were particularly interested in convincing Perot not to run for president in 1996. Perot, however, claimed dissatisfaction with both the Democrat and the Republican platforms, and he announced in September that he would be forming a new, independent Reform Party for the 1996 election.

In the first months of 1996, Perot again hinted that he would run for president if his name could be listed on the ballots of all fifty states. On July 11, two days after former Colorado governor Richard Lamm announced that he would seek the Reform Party's presidential nomination, Perot declared his own intention to seek the party's nomination. After bitter arguments between Lamm and Perot in the months leading to the August convention, Perot handily won the nomination with 65.2 percent of the vote, and he soon launched another series of television spots. In September, however, his campaign was crippled when the Commission on Presidential Debates barred him from participating in the televised debates between Clinton and Republican nominee Bob Dole; Perot then lost a court appeal to allow him to engage in the debates.

Ultimately, Perot's campaign never gained the momentum of his 1992 effort. He finished a distant third, with only 8 percent of the popular vote. Following the election, he stated that his party would continue to pressure the government, but renewed divisions within the party led to questions about its direction and leadership.

In the 2000 campaign for the presidency, Perot, disenchanted with the Reform Party, initially stayed neutral in the selection of its candidate. However, following a bitter dispute between supporters of Pat Buchanan and those of John Hagelin, he endorsed the Republican candidate, George W. Bush. He later quit the Reform Party and thereafter mostly refrained from discussing politics publicly. He did, however, testify in 2002 before a committee of the House of Representatives, urging it to improve military equipment, and in 2005 he endorsed a bill in the Texas legislature designed to upgrade the technology available to public school students. He also publicly endorsed Mitt Romney's campaigns for the US presidency in 2008 and 2012, and in 2008 started the fiscal policy blog Perot Charts.

Following his presidential campaigns, Perot largely confined his attention to business. He became chair emeritus of Perot Systems in 2004 when his son took over as chair of the board. By 2007 the company had twenty-two thousand employees and branches in Mexico and India. A year later, Forbes magazine assessed Perot's wealth at $5 billion, ninety-seventh on its list of the richest Americans. He also owned the money management company Perot Investment. In addition, Perot was an active and popular speaker at conferences, commencements, and other events in Texas. He gave opening remarks for nanoTX'06, an annual conference of nanotechnology professionals, held in Dallas in 2006, and he gave the keynote address for the dedication of the Natural Science and Engineering Research Laboratory at the University of Texas at Dallas in 2007. Perot Systems was purchased by computer manufacturer Dell in 2009 for a reported $3.9 billion. With his well-established fortune Perot remained wealthy late in life; in 2018 Forbes ranked him the 172nd richest American and in 2019 estimated his net worth at $4.1 billion.

Perot garnered numerous awards for his political causes and business achievements. For his support of the armed forces and prisoners of war he received the Raoul Wallenberg Award in 1987, the Patrick Henry Award in 1989, the Eisenhower Award in 2004, the Sylvanus Thayer Award in 2009, and the Boots on the Ground Award in 2011. Great Britain's Prince Charles, along with First Lady Nancy Reagan, presented him with the Winston Churchill Award in 1986, an award given to those who reflect the character of former British prime minister Churchill. Perot also received the Jefferson Award for Public Service the same year and the Horatio Alger Award in 1972. He was inducted into the American National Business Hall of Fame, the Texas Business Hall of Fame, and the Texas Science Hall of Fame, and was the first recipient of the ComputerWorld Smithsonian Award in 1988. He also was the first person to be granted an honorary doctorate from Texas A&M University–Texarkana in 2006. In 2004, the television network MSNBC named Perot to its list of history's ten greatest entrepreneurs. In 2010, Perot accepted the William J. Donovan Award from the OSS Society, given to individuals in recognition of a lifetime of public service. Perot also authored several books throughout his career.

Perot was diagnosed with leukemia in early 2019. He died of the disease on July 9, 2019, at the age of eighty-nine at his Dallas home.

Significance

Perot used his early business success and great wealth to bring certain issues, such as the status of American prisoners of war in Vietnam, into the national spotlight. He used the publicity generated by the Iran rescue to foster a positive public image, appearing as a national hero and a father figure determined to take care of his employees. All these factors played an important role when he became involved in presidential politics.

Perot contributed a new vitality to politics that had been lacking in previous presidential campaigns. In 1992, he helped to turn the focus of the campaign from character questions to the American economy. In 1996, he forced the candidates to discuss political reform. Although many Americans disagreed with Perot's views, he did succeed in getting many people to start talking about the issues. More important, as the most successful third-party candidate of his time, he helped to empower many people by giving them the feeling that they could reclaim their government from special interests and regular party politics. In addition, although the Reform Party did not rival the strength of the Democratic or Republican parties, his grassroots campaigns helped to strengthen and legitimize third-party politics.

Bibliography

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Perot, Ross. My Life and Principles for Success. Ft. Worth: Summit Group, 1996. Print.

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