Ross Perot
Henry Ross Perot 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. 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. 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.
Early life, education, and military career
Henry Ross Perot was born in Texarkana, Texas on June 27, 1930, the son of Lula May 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.
Business
After he left the Navy in 1957, Perot became a salesman for IBM. He quickly became a top employee and tried to pitch his ideas to supervisors, who largely ignored him. He left IBM in 1962 to found Electronic Data Systems 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 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 22nd, 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 1984, General Motors bought a controlling interest in EDS for $2.4 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, 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 with the actor Burt Lancaster playing the role of Colonel Simons and Richard Crenna as Perot.
In 1984, Perot's Perot Foundation bought a very early copy of Magna Carta, one of only a few to leave the United Kingdom. The foundation lent it to the National Archives in Washington, D.C., where it was displayed alongside the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. In 2007, the foundation sold it to David Rubenstein, managing director of The Carlyle Group for $21.3 million to be used "for medical research, for improving public education and for assisting wounded soldiers and their families". It remains on display at the National Archives.
After Steve Jobs lost the power struggle at Apple and left to found NeXT, his angel investor was Perot, who invested over $20 million. Perot believed in Jobs and did not want to miss out, as he had with his chance to invest in Bill Gates's fledgling Microsoft.
In 1988, he founded Perot Systems in Plano, Texas. His son, Ross Perot Jr., eventually succeeded him as CEO. In September 2009, Perot Systems was acquired by Dell for $3.9 billion.
Political activities
Early political activities
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", 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.