Ross Perot, Texas billionaire and third-party presidential candidate, dead at 89

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Ross Perot, the diminutive billionaire Texas businessman who made the deficit an issue of national concern when he ran as an independent presidential candidate in 1992 and 1996, has died at 89.

He had been suffering from leukemia for the past five months. His family said that secondary infection nearly killed him in March but he rallied, continuing to go to his office most days wearing a dark suit and an American flag pin. In his final months, he hosted well-wishers at Perot headquarters on Turtle Creek Boulevard in Dallas and spent Easter with his family at their compound in Bermuda.

H. Ross Perot
Billionaire businessman and former presidential candidate H. Ross Perot on Sept. 5, 2014.

His death was fisrt reported by the Dallas Morning News, which quoted his son Ross Perot Jr., CEO of the Perot Group, as saying: “Describe my father? Obviously a great family man, wonderful father. But at the end of the day, he was a wonderful humanitarian. Every day he came to work trying to figure out how he could help somebody.”

Perot claimed 19% of the vote in his 1992 race against President George H.W. Bush, the Republican, and his Democratic challenger, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton. Republicans said for years after Perot’s strong performance as an independent tilted the race toward Clinton, though political scientists disagreed with that assessment.

Eccentric and irascible, he stood at just 5ft 6in but could dominate a room. Some Bush aides still believe he cost their man reelection, ushering in eight years of the Clinton administration.

In the late 1980’s, Perot established himself on the political stage by voicing his belief that troops had been left in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. He opened a dialogue with Vietnamese officials, reaching an agreement with Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry in 1990 to act as its business agent should diplomatic tensions normalize. He had been sent to Laos by President Richard Nixon in 1969 to discuss U.S. prisoners.

In 1992, Perot announced his decision to run as an independent candidate in the upcoming election as long as his supporters could get his name on the ballot in all 50 states. His platform was one of balanced budgets, smaller government, and opposition to the establishment parties.

Debates Bush Perot Clinton
Independent candidate Ross Perot during a debate Oct. 15, 1992.

By the end of the primaries, Perot was polling evenly with the other two parties. In June, he led the Gallup poll with 39% of the vote. But he later fell below 20% and announced his decision to withdraw from the race. But Perot qualified for voting in all 50 states, causing him to reenter the race, buying half-hour time blocks of infomercial time for campaign ads. One attracted 10.5 million viewers.

Perot continued his opposition against the establishment parties, founding and being elected president of the Reform Party for his 1996 campaign. He ran against Clinton again but this time achieved only 8.4%.

After his presidential bids, Perot focused on his business and largely stepped out of the public eye.

Henry Ross Perot was born to Lula May Perot and Gabriel Ross Perot on June 27, 1930, in Texarkana, Texas, where his father ran a cotton mill. He attended Texarkana Junior College before entering the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis in 1949. While there, he helped to establish its honor system, the Navy’s formalized requirement for midshipmen to act with integrity, refusing to lie, cheat, or steal.

He left the Navy in 1957 and became a top salesman for IBM. He married Margot Birmingham in 1956. He founded Electronic Data Systems in Dallas, Texas in 1962. Within days of signing a enormous governmental contract to computerize Medicare records, stock prices of EDS stock prices jumped 1000%. Fortune called him the “fastest, richest Texan” in a 1968 cover story. General Motors bought controlling share of EDS for $2.4 billion in 1984.

Perot is survived by his wife Margot and five children Ross Jr, Nancy, Suzanne, Carolyn, and Katherine, as well as 16 grandchildren.

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