How well known was Ross Perot to the American public before he launched what would turn about to be one of the most successful independent US presidential campaigns in 1992?

by JJVMT
caffiend98

Well, this is the kind of question I love Ask Historians for. It makes you immediately curious and the answer isn't readily accessible. I ended up going down the rabbit hole of opinion poll survey archives and the NYT archives for a few hours...

TL;DR: Before running for President in 1992, Perot was the first tech billionaire and a newsworthy businessman. He was quirky and bold, and took particular interest in prisoners of war and international hostages. He was consistently in the news from 1979 through the mid-1990s. A modern parallel in terms of public awareness might be someone like Richard Branson, Jack Dorsey, or Howard Schultz (data below).

So, let's get into the "Too Long" part of this:

First, I don't have access to the data archives that would enable me to give you as specific an answer as I would like.

  1. Back in 1992, we were still pre-internet and there were a lot fewer public opinion polls taken. And they didn't start polling the Presidential election cycle nearly as early. Nowadays, the primary polling methods are phone or online. Back then, it was in-person or by phone and a lot was still done on paper. So there's just less data.
  2. What data was collected predates the internet, so a lot of easily accessible public opinion poll archives don't go back that far.
  3. A source I wanted to pull data from, The General Social Survey, is down for upgrades until January 24. Which is unfortunate. I've been searching, but haven't found another dataset that is NOT behind some sort of academic registration/paywall, and I'm not in academia anymore.

So... I would love to be able to show you a line graph of Ross Perot's name recognition trends over the course of 1991-1992, but the fog of history and paywalls prevents that (at least for now).

BUT enough caveats... I think there's enough qualitative information out there to shed some light on things, at least until someone with access to a dataset shows up.

How much was Perot in the news, for how long?

  • Ross Perot's first widely covered appearances in the news were likely in 1968, as a business man. In September, he took his technology company, Electronic Data Systems, public. Share prices started at $16.50 and quickly surged to ten-times that amount. Time Magazine called Perot "the world's first tech billionaire. ^(1)
  • In December 1969, Perot was in the news again, but not for business reasons. He was organizing a mission to North Vietnam in an attempt to deliver two plane-loads of Christmas presents and supplies to America prisoners of war (POWs). As you might expect, the North Vietnamese government wasn't thrilled. They told Perot to send them via the established mail link, via the USSR. But Perot flew the supplies to Thailand anyway, staging them for a Christmas-day flight to North Vietnam. On Christmas, the North Vietnamese again refused, and Perot eventually tried to send the supplies via the USSR, as requested.^(1) The USSR refused his visa request to do so on January 1, 1970, and there were a few months of back-and-forth in the news.^(10) I didn't find anything conclusive about whether the supplies ever actually made it.
    • He also organized a flight of 150 family members of American POWs to Paris that month, so they could try to meet North Vietnamese negotiators there (the negotiators declined to meet).
    • In the process of doing all this, Perot did get a lot of media attention on newspaper front pages all across the country, including the New York Times. I did a quick scan of the NYT's archives, and saw:
      • The family mission covered front page above the fold with a photo, including quoting Perot, on Dec. 26, 1969 (NYT paywall source, sorry). That's about as prominent as you can get.^(2)
      • There were eleven articles about Perot's efforts between Dec. 1969 and April 1970.^(10)
  • In 1979, Perot was in the news again when he organized a mission to rescue two employees of his company, Electronic Data Systems (EDS), from prison in Iran. They'd been arrested for possible corruption regarding an Iranian government contract with EDS. Perot hired a former US Army Colonel (who had made previous attempts to free US POWs in North Vietnam) to lead a group of 15 "commandos" (all but two were EDS employees) on the rescue mission. They were unable to break into the jail, but seem to have roused a mob of thousands of Iranians to attack the jail and free *all* of the prisoners, including the two EDS employees. They were successfully smuggled out of Iran to Turkey, and then home. This was page 6 news in the NYT. ^(3)
  • Between 1/1/1968 and 12/21/1991, a little more than two decades, the New York Times mentioned "Ross Perot" 619 times. For comparison, in 1992, the year he first ran for President, he was mentioned 1,602 times.^(10)
  • In the 1980s, he was covered 388 times by the NYT for various things:^(10)
    • business deals, like EDS being bought by GM, and Perot being difficult as a member of the GM board of directors. So difficult that GM bought back his shares for $700 million to get him off the board.
    • buying a copy of the Magna Carta in 1984
    • opinions about Texas public schooling
    • a failed attempt (over a couple years) to pay an American Indian museum $75 million if they moved to Dallas
    • an NBC TV miniseries about the EDS rescue from Iran
    • In 1986, traveling to North Vietnam to propose negotiations with the US about the fate of missing US military personnel
    • for secretly putting up ransom money for American hostages overseas in coordination with Oliver North (who would go on to star in the Iran Contra Scandal).
    • a highly unusual deal in 1988 for his new company, Perot Systems Corp., to study efficiency for the US Postal Service and cut a share of any cost savings. The contract was cancelled before taking effect by the General Services Administration, which was overturned in Federal Court, then renegotiated, and eventually Perot and the USPS gave up and called the whole thing off.
    • donating $41 million for cancer research
  • I found one article on March 2, 1987, that mentioned Ross Perot as a potential Presidential candidate:

H. Ross Perot, the Texas billionaire, gave a rousing speech to the nation's governors last week, and some of his listeners thought he sounded like a man running for President.

Like Lee A. Iacocca, the Chrysler chairman who also leaves the impression at times that he is flirting with a Presidential campaign, Mr. Perot is talking a lot these days about the need for leadership in both politics and business.

Both men disclaim harboring any political ambition. But their passionate delivery has led some who have heard their speeches to discount the disclaimers. In fact, the denials have only fueled the speculation about their intentions... ^(4)

Hopefully that gives you a sense of the type of media character he was.

(continued...)