Ross Perot

Ross Perot is headed back to Maryland this weekend. The question is why.Is the flamboyant Texas billionaire already running for president of the United States, albeit a bit early? Or is he, as his critics believe, merely suffering from an insatiable appetite for attention?What is clear is that the volunteers who helped him win 14 percent of the Maryland vote (and 19 percent nationally) in last year's presidential election believe his visit will boost membership in the Maryland chapter of his national organization, United We Stand, America.

ROSS PEROT says the time has come for a third party in America. He predicts that the loyalists of his 1992 campaign, plus converts to the point of view of his United We Stand, America organization, will get a new party on the ballot in all 50 states, then select a presidential ticket that will be competitive with the Republican and Democratic tickets. He himself may head the ticket, but he urges others, of "the caliber" of Colin Powell, to seek it.Mr. Perot, who got 19 percent of the vote in a three-way race in 1992, says he expects his party will eventually supplant either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party.

ROSS PEROT vows he will stay in the race for president "to the bitter end." And for him, that's the end it is likely to be. Once a fresh political voice who electrified America, threatened the reigning major parties and won more votes (19 percent) than any third-force candidate since 1912, he now is scrambling just to make the 5 percent mark that would qualify his Reform Party for federal funds in the next election.Given his love of the limelight, the Texas billionaire was accurate in dismissing Bob Dole's plea that he pull out as "weird and inconsequential."

Signaling dissatisfaction with the choices in the presidential contest, one-fifth of registered voters say they would support Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot in a three-way race for the White House with President Bush and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, a new Los Angeles Times Poll has found.In a hypothetical three-way election, Mr. Perot drew 21 percent, compared with 37 percent for Mr. Bush, and 35 percent for Mr. Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, the poll found. What makes Mr. Perot's strength even more striking is that only one-third of registered voters now know enough about the industrialist to have an opinion of him.Mr.

WASHINGTON -- The fact that he didn't win the presidency wasn't enough to stop Ross Perot from keeping a campaign pledge.Last night, the Texas billionaire held his first "electronic town hall meeting" on network TV, railing against government waste and mismanagement and asking viewers to express their views on such issues by mailing in a ballot he designed.In what he called "The First National Referendum -- Government Reform," Mr. Perot pulled out the familiar pointer and flip charts -- and $500,000 for the prime time spot on NBC -- and gave rapid-fire lectures on 16 points, all of them refrains from his deficit- and reform-minded campaign.

Vienna. -- The cameras are rolling and the pens are scribbling, all because the --ing man who aspires to be chancellor of Austria, Joerg Haider, has at last moved onto his most popular subject.It's time to bash some foreigners."A Lebanese man convicted 50 times for breaking and entering and other offenses wasn't supposed to re-enter Austria until the year 2047," Mr. Haider says, "but he keeps coming back. There was a Bulgarian caught red-handed, and yet he still receives social benefits. . . . A Romanian who was convicted gets a computer and 40,000 Austrian schillings [about $3,600]

WILL ROSS PEROT's new Reform Party outlast the billionaire candidate whose money was its midwife? Will the party do well enough to qualify for federal election funds in 1998 and 2000? Is a genuine third party really on the scene, ready to shake-up political arithmetic or supplant one of the existing major parties?Such questions resonate after the Reform Party's two-part convention captured some prime time from the Republicans this past weekend and will do so again when it confirms Mr. Perot's nomination next weekend.

PHILADELPHIA - A late 13th-century copy of the Magna Carta, the foundation for the U.S. Constitution, will pay its second visit to Philadelphia in almost 15 years. Housed now in the National Archives in Washington, the document will be displayed at the new Independence Visitor Center, formerly known as the Gateway Visitor Center, at Sixth Street between Market and Arch. Now under construction, the $30 million building is expected to open in late fall and display the Magna Carta until March 2003.

BUENA PARK, Calif. -- Beginning a weekend -- across California aimed at winning a line on the California ballot for his proposed Reform Party, Ross Perot yesterday offered the first concrete evidence that he will provide the sort of money needed to make that idea real.Mr. Perot spoke in Orange and Santa Clara counties, pushing his theme that several thousand California volunteers could "change the history of this country" by gathering signatures and registering voters in the new political party in time to meet the state-imposed deadline of Oct. 24.California has the earliest qualifying date in the country for parties seeking a place on the November 1996 election ballot.

WASHINGTON - Even if he finishes a distant third, packs up his pie charts and retreats to the comfort of his billions, independent presidential candidate Ross Perot will have made a vital contribution to the world of politics.Great one-liners.In this year of RoboCandidates and vice presidential attack dogs, Americans owe the tart-tongued Texan a debt of gratitude for enlivening the political discourse.Often, campaigns have been built around a single catch-phrase: Walter Mondale tossed around "Where's the beef?"