Reform Party and 1996 Presidential Run
Perot tried to keep his movement alive through the mid-1990s, continuing to speak about the increasing national debt. He was a prominent campaigner against the North American Free Trade Agreement, and even debated with Al Gore on the issue on Larry King Live. Perot's behavior during the debate was a source of mirth thereafter, including his repeated pleas to "let me finish" in his southern drawl. The debate was seen by many as effectively ending Perot’s political career. Support for NAFTA went from 34% to 57%(citation needed).
In 1995, he founded the Reform Party and won their nomination for the 1996 election. His running mate was Pat Choate. Because of the ballot access laws, he had to run as an Independent on many state ballots. Perot received eight percent of the popular vote in 1996, much less than in the 1992 race but still an unusually successful third-party showing by U.S. standards. He spent much less of his own money in this race than he had four years before, and also allowed other people to contribute to his campaign, unlike his prior race. One common explanation for the decline was Perot's exclusion from the presidential debates, based on the preferences of the Democratic and Republican party candidates. Jamin B. Raskin of Open Debates filed a lawsuit on Perot's behalf on this assumption.
Read more about this topic: Ross Perot
Famous quotes containing the words reform, party, presidential and/or run:
“Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)
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—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“Because of these convictions, I made a personal decision in the 1964 Presidential campaign to make education a fundamental issue and to put it high on the nation’s agenda. I proposed to act on my belief that regardless of a family’s financial condition, education should be available to every child in the United States—as much education as he could absorb.”
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“All Presidents start out to run a crusade but after a couple of years they find they are running something less heroic and much more intractable: namely the presidency. The people are well cured by then of election fever, during which they think they are choosing Moses. In the third year, they look on the man as a sinner and a bumbler and begin to poke around for rumours of another Messiah.”
—Alistair Cooke (b. 1908)