Ross Perot

Henry Ross Perot ( pə-ROH; June 27, 1930 – July 9, 2019) was an American businessman, politician, and philanthropist. He was the founder and chief executive officer of Electronic Data Systems and Perot Systems. He ran an independent campaign in the 1992 U.S. presidential election and a third-party campaign in the 1996 U.S. presidential election as the nominee of the Reform Party, which was formed by grassroots supporters of Perot's 1992 campaign. Although he failed to carry a single state in either election, both campaigns were among the stronger presidential showings by a third party or independent candidate in U.S. history.

Born and raised in Texarkana, Texas, Perot became a salesman for IBM after serving in the United States Navy. In 1962, he founded Electronic Data Systems, a data processing service company. In 1984, General Motors bought a controlling interest in the company for $2.4 billion ($6.1 billion in 2024). Perot established Perot Systems in 1988 and was an angel investor for NeXT, a computer company founded by Steve Jobs after he left Apple. Perot also became heavily involved in the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue, arguing that hundreds of American servicemen were left behind in Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War. During the presidency of George H. W. Bush, Perot became increasingly active in politics and strongly opposed both the Gulf War and the ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

In 1992, Perot announced his intention to run for president and advocated a balanced budget, an end to the outsourcing of jobs, and the enactment of electronic direct democracy. A June 1992 Gallup poll showed Perot leading a three-way race against President Bush and presumptive Democratic nominee Bill Clinton. Perot withdrew from the race in July, but re-entered the race in early October after he qualified for all 50 state ballots. He chose Admiral James Stockdale as his running mate and appeared in the 1992 debates with Bush and Clinton. In the election, Perot did not win any electoral votes, but won over 19.7 million votes for an 18.9% share of the popular vote. He won support from across the ideological and partisan spectrum, but performed best among self-described moderates. Perot ran for president again in 1996, establishing the Reform Party as a vehicle for his campaign. He won 8.4 percent of the popular vote against President Clinton and Republican nominee Bob Dole.

Perot did not seek public office again after 1996. He endorsed Republican George W. Bush over Reform nominee Pat Buchanan in the 2000 election and supported Republican Mitt Romney in 2008 and 2012. In 2009, Dell acquired Perot Systems for $3.9 billion ($5.5 billion in 2024). According to Forbes, Perot was the 167th richest person in the United States as of 2016. He died from leukemia at the age of 89 in Dallas, Texas, in July 2019.

Henry Ross Perot was born in Texarkana, Texas, on June 27, 1930, the son of Lula May (née Ray) and Gabriel Ross Perot, a commodity broker specializing in cotton contracts. He had an older brother, Gabriel Perot Jr., who died as a toddler. His patrilineal line traces back to a French-Canadian immigrant to the colony of Louisiana in the 1740s.

Perot attended a local private school, Patty Hill, before graduating from Texas High School in Texarkana in 1947. His first job, at eight years old, was helping to distribute the Texarkana Gazette as a paperboy. He joined the Boy Scouts of America and made Eagle Scout in 1942, after 13 months in the program, and was a recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award. One of Perot's childhood friends was Hayes McClerkin, who later became the speaker of the Arkansas House of Representatives and a prominent lawyer in Texarkana, Arkansas.

From 1947 to 1949, he attended Texarkana Junior College, then entered the United States Naval Academy in 1949 and helped establish its honor system. Perot claimed his appointment notice to the academy—sent by telegram—was sent by W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel, Texas's 34th governor and former senator. Perot served as a junior officer on a destroyer, and later, an aircraft carrier from 1953 to 1957. Perot, who had only ever owned one pair of shoes at a time, was shocked to find that he was issued multiple pairs of shoes in the navy, which he would later point to as "possibly my first example of government waste". Perot then went to the Naval Reserve, which he left on June 30, 1961, with the rank of lieutenant. His father died when Perot was 25 years old.

In 1956, Perot married Margot Birmingham, whom he met on a blind date as a midshipman docked in Baltimore.

After he left the Navy in 1957, Perot became a salesman for IBM. He quickly became a top employee (one year, he fulfilled his annual sales quota in two weeks) and tried to pitch his ideas to supervisors, who largely ignored him. He left IBM in 1962 to found Electronic Data Systems (EDS) in Dallas, Texas, and courted large corporations for his data processing services. Perot was denied bids for contracts 77 times before receiving his first contract. EDS received lucrative contracts from the US government in the 1960s, computerizing Medicare records. EDS went public in 1968, and the stock price rose from $16 a share to $160 within days. Fortune called Perot the "fastest, richest Texan" in a 1968 cover story. In December 1969, his shares in EDS were briefly worth $1 billion. Perot gained some press attention for being "the biggest individual loser ever on the New York Stock Exchange" when his EDS shares dropped $445 million ($2.8 billion in today's money) in value in a single day in April 1970. While EDS boasted strong earnings in 1970, its exceptionally high price-to-earnings ratio, reaching 118 times earnings at its initial public offering in 1968, made it a prime target for a bear raid. The stock's vulnerability was compounded by the fact that a significant portion of the publicly traded shares were "weakly held" by fast-performance mutual funds prone to rapid selling at the first sign of trouble.

When the stock price began to decline on April 22, likely due to large-scale short selling, these institutional investors quickly unloaded their holdings, triggering a panic sell-off and a precipitous drop in the share price. This dramatic single-day decline in EDS stock was part of a broader collapse in the technology sector during the second quarter of 1970. The average computer stock plummeted 80% from its peak in late 1968. University Computing, for instance, suffered a devastating 93% loss in value. The overall market downturn, reflected in a 19% drop in the S&P 500 during that quarter, was further fueled by a recessionary environment, growing sociopolitical unrest related to the Vietnam War and events like the Kent State shootings, and a general loss of confidence in the market after a period of exuberant speculation. Coincidentally, the EDS crash occurred on the first Earth Day, adding to the symbolic significance of the event. In 1973, the Perot Affair with New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller questioned the awarding of contracts by the state to EDS. Perot had previously led the bailout of Dupont in 1970 through David Rockefeller and Chase Manhattan, with some accusing Perot's pact with the Rockefellers as questionable.

In 1984, General Motors bought a controlling interest in EDS for $2.4 billion ($6.1 billion). In 1985, Perot sold EDS to General Motors with the idea that he and EDS would have a leadership role within the company. However, Perot's plan was ignored by the management of General Motors, prompting Perot to leave and later found Perot Systems. Perot's experience with GM contributed to him becoming an outspoken critic of corporate America.

In the same year, Perot became the second-richest man in the United States, only behind Sam Moore Walton, with a fortune estimated at $1.8 billion ($4.4 billion), according to the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest people in the United States.

Just before the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the government of Iran imprisoned two EDS employees in a contract dispute. Perot organized and sponsored their rescue. The rescue team was led by retired United States Army Special Forces Colonel Arthur D. "Bull" Simons. When the team was unable to find a way to extract the two prisoners, they decided to wait for a group of revolutionaries to storm the jail and free all 10,000 inmates, many of whom were political prisoners. The two prisoners then connected with the rescue team, which led them out of Iran through a border crossing into Turkey. The exploit was recounted in the book On Wings of Eagles by Ken Follett. In 1986 this was turned into a two-part television mini-series (alternatively titled "Teheran") with the actor Burt Lancaster playing the role of Colonel Simons and Richard Crenna as Perot.

After a visit to Laos in 1969, made at the request of the White House, in which he met with senior North Vietnamese officials, Perot became heavily involved in the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue. He believed that hundreds of American servicemen were left behind in Southeast Asia at the end of the U.S. involvement in the war, and that government officials were covering up POW/MIA investigations to avoid revealing a drug-smuggling operation used to finance a secret war in Laos. Perot engaged in unauthorized back-channel discussions with Vietnamese officials in the late 1980s, which led to fractured relations between Perot and the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations. In 1990, Perot reached an agreement with Vietnam's Foreign Ministry to become its business agent if diplomatic relations were normalized. Perot also launched private investigations of, and attacks upon, United States Department of Defense official Richard Armitage.

In Florida in 1990, retired financial planner Jack Gargan, employing a famous quotation from the 1976 movie Network, funded a series of "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" newspaper advertisements denouncing Congress for voting to give legislators pay raises at a time when average wages nationwide were not increasing. Gargan later founded "Throw the Hypocritical Rascals Out" (THRO), which Perot supported.

Perot did not support President George H. W. Bush, and vigorously opposed the United States' involvement in the 1990–1991 Persian Gulf War. He unsuccessfully urged Senators to vote against the war resolution, and began to consider a presidential run.

On February 20, 1992, Perot appeared on CNN's Larry King Live and announced his intention to run as an independent if his supporters could get his name on the ballot in all 50 states. With such declared policies as balancing the federal budget, favoring certain types of gun control, ending the outsourcing of jobs and enacting electronic direct democracy via "electronic town halls", he became a potential candidate and soon polled roughly even with the two major-party candidates.

Perot denounced Congress for its inaction in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on March 18, 1992; he said:

Perot did not fit the usual political stereotypes; his views were seen as either pragmatic or populist, depending on the observer, and usually focused on his economic policy, such as balancing the budget, to gain support from both Democratic and Republican voters. He is often considered a radical centrist due to his populism and lack of clear left or right-wing views. Perot supported stricter gun control such as an assault weapons ban and supported increased research on AIDS. Perot was hesitant on covering the issue of gay rights during his 1992 campaign, but openly supported gay rights in 1996.

Perot spoke in favor of a "comprehensive national health care plan — one that would be akin to Medicare but for all Americans, not just the needy". He also became known for his opposition to NAFTA; Perot believed that the power of corporations must be curbed, and saw the transfer of jobs to other countries as a symbol of corruption and inequality. He argued that such trade agreements only benefited the companies while robbing the U.S. of its tax base and blue-collar jobs. Perot famously stated during the October 15 debate that NAFTA would create a "giant sucking sound" on American jobs.

The populism of Ross Perot is hard to define and is a contested topic amongst political scientists. Perot was described as a "classical populist", liberal populist, "telepopulist" and also a "third way" populist. Neal Allen and Brian J. Brox argue that Perot was neither left nor right-wing ideologically, and focused first and foremost on promoting reforms of the political process and grassroots democracy; despite this, they also found some notable similarities between Perot and the left-wing populism of Ralph Nader, and the average Perot voter had liberal leanings.

Anton Pelinka described Perot's ideology as the "populism of the centre", presenting a distinct form of populism that significantly differed from left-wing and right-wing populist movements that appeared in the USA. Matthijs Rooduijn argues that Perot was an example of a liberal populist with centre-left leanings, noting his hostility to Reaganomics - in the 1992 election, Perot stated that U.S. was in crisis caused by "the decade of greed, the era of trickle-down economics". In his famous The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics publication, John Judis wrote that "Perot represented a left and center-left populism", in the tradition of the Populist Party and Huey Long. According to Judis, Perot "represented the first clear repudiation of the neoliberal agenda."

Regarding foreign policy, Perot was an outspoken opponent of the Gulf War and condemned Bush for the military intervention against Iraq. He instead promoted a more isolationist foreign policy, arguing that USA should focus on rebuilding its economy. In his 1992 presidential campaign, Perot stated that his "highest foreign policy priority is to get our house in order and make America work again". He attacked Bush for his ties to Saddam Hussein prior to the invasion of Kuwait - according to Perot, the Bush administration covertly aided Hussein's chemical weapons programs and turned a blind eye to Iraqi plans against Kuwait, instructing April Glaspie to greenlight Hussein's invasion on assumption that he would only seize Kuwait's northern oil fields. Perot claimed that Bush invaded Iraq because its actions threatened Bush's "manhood", and stated: "off we go into the wild blue yonder with the lives of our servicemen at risk because of 10 years of stupid mistakes".

Perot and his wife Margot (née Birmingham; born November 15, 1933), a graduate of Goucher College, had five children including Ross Jr., and 19 grandchildren.

Perot was raised in the Methodist faith. However, he converted to Presbyterianism and became a member of the Highland Park Presbyterian Church in the late 1960s. Perot was described as very faithful in church attendance.

In 1970, he was the recipient of the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.

In 1985, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.

In 1986, Perot became the third American to receive the Winston Churchill Award for his efforts on behalf of American POWs in Vietnam in the 1960s and for organizing the rescue of two EDS employees from a prison in Iran.

In 1980, he received the Oak Cliff Lions Clubs' "Humanitarian Award".

In 1986, Perot received the S. Roger Horchow Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards.