Dr. Ross Z. Pierpont, a general surgeon and a perennial candidate who ran and lost 16 times for offices including Baltimore mayor and U.S. senator, died Friday at his home in Homeland. He was 88.
The cause of death was not immediately known, said his daughter, Christine Von Klencke. Her father died shortly after waking up in the morning, she said.
Dr. Pierpont was former chief of surgery at Maryland General Hospital and also operated at Harford Memorial Hospital in Havre de Grace. Holding office would have cost him a fortune in lost income from his medical practice and real estate and consulting businesses, he said.
"Don't get me wrong," he told a Sun reporter in 2002. "I always ran to win. But I'm better off out than in."
Over a span of 36 years that ended with his failed bid for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 2002, Dr. Pierpont could be counted on to run for one office or another. More than once, reporters found him at the state elections office in Annapolis hours before the filing deadline. He would declare that he was definitely going to run for something but wasn't sure what.
"Sometimes, he entered just to push other people to a state of confusion, and he did," said former U.S. Rep. Helen Delich Bentley, who counts herself as a friend and admirer even though the better-funded Dr. Pierpont caused her to stay out of a U.S. senatorial race in 1974.
"He kept people on their toes," she said. "He felt he could say things that other Republican candidates could not."
Comptroller William Donald Schaefer, a former Baltimore mayor and Maryland governor, said he admired Dr. Pierpont's tenacity and good humor.
"He always ran," said Mr. Schaefer. "He liked running against me.
"I don't think he ever expected to win, but I think he had more fun than anybody. I really liked the guy. Every now and then he'd be a pain in the neck, but we always remained friends."
Dr. Pierpont took pride in personally financing all of his campaigns.
Ross Zimmerman Pierpont was born and raised in Woodlawn and graduated from Catonsville High School. His father died when he was 3, leaving his mother, a schoolteacher, to raise her four boys.
Dr. Pierpont sold vegetables on the streets of Baltimore and worked in a pool parlor to help out, and he made money by selling a cow he had won at a raffle.
