Perot, Ross, 1930-2019

Henry Ross Perot; born Henry Ray Perot, June 27, 1930, Texarkana, Texas, U.S.; died July 9, 2019 (aged 89), Dallas, Texas, U.S.; 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; Perot joined the Boy Scouts of America and made Eagle Scout in 1942, after 13 months in the program. He was a recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award; From 1947 to 1949, he attended Texarkana Junior College, then entered the United States Naval Academy in 1949; Perot said 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 married Margot Birmingham of Greensburg, Pennsylvania in 1956; After he left the Navy in 1957, Perot became a salesman for IBM; He left IBM in 1962 to found Electronic Data Systems (EDS) in Dallas, Texas; 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 1984, General Motors bought a controlling interest in EDS for $2.4 billion; 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 dollars 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; 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; After a visit to Laos in 1969, made at the request of the White House,[12] in which he met with senior North Vietnamese officials, Perot became heavily involved in the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue; On February 20, 1992, Perot appeared on CNN's Larry King Live and announced his intention to run as an independent if his supporters could get his name on the ballot in all 50 states. With such declared policies as balancing the federal budget, opposition to gun control, ending the outsourcing of jobs and enacting electronic direct democracy via "electronic town halls," he became a potential candidate and soon polled roughly even with the two major-party candidates; n the 1992 election, he received 18.9% of the popular vote, about 19,741,065 votes, but no electoral college votes, making him the most successful third-party presidential candidate in terms of the popular vote since Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 election; In 1995, he founded the Reform Party and won their presidential nomination for the 1996 United States presidential election. His vice presidential running mate was Pat Choate; Perot and his wife Margot (née Birmingham), a graduate of Goucher College, had five children (Ross Jr., Nancy, Suzanne, Carolyn, and Katherine).[7] He left 19 grandchildren. With an estimated net worth of about US$4.1 billion in 2019, he was ranked by Forbes as the 167th-richest person in the United States; Perot died on July 9, 2019, less than two weeks after his 89th birthday in Dallas, Texas, from leukemia

<p>Ross Perot, in full Henry Ross Perot, (born June 27, 1930, Texarkana, Texas, U.S.—died July 9, 2019, Dallas, Texas), American businessman and philanthropist who ran as an independent candidate for U.S. president in 1992 and 1996.</p>

<p>He was the son of a cotton broker. Perot attended Texarkana Junior College for two years before entering the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, in 1949. He was commissioned in the U.S. Navy in 1953 and served until 1957, after which he worked as a salesman for International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).</p>

<p>In 1962 Perot quit IBM and formed his own company, Electronic Data Systems (EDS), to design, install, and operate computer data-processing systems for clients on a contractual basis. EDS grew by processing medical claims for Blue Cross and other large insurance companies, and in 1968 Perot took the firm public in a shrewdly managed share offering whose skyrocketing prices yielded Perot, the majority shareholder, several hundred million dollars. EDS continued to prosper under his leadership, and in 1984 Perot sold the company to General Motors for $2.5 billion worth of special-issue stock and a seat on GM’s board of directors. Perot’s criticism of GM’s management prompted them to buy back his seat for $700 million in 1986.</p>

<p>In 1969 Perot mounted an unsuccessful campaign to free American prisoners of war being held in North Vietnam. In 1979 he sponsored efforts to rescue two EDS employees who were being held in prison in Iran.</p>

<p>In 1992, while a guest on CNN’s Larry King Live, Perot announced that he would enter the 1992 U.S. presidential election as a candidate if supporters would file petitions enabling him to be on the ballot in all 50 states. With Democratic front-runner Bill Clinton suffering from personal scandals and facing a tough primary race from Jerry Brown and with the incumbent Republican president George H.W. Bush weakened by a faltering economy, support for Perot initially earned widespread popularity, particularly among voters dissatisfied with traditional party politics. Perot reached out to both Democrats and Republicans, hiring former operatives from each party to advise his campaign. Polls in May and June showed Perot leading both Clinton and Bush, but in July he unexpectedly dropped from the race. He later returned to the campaign trail, however, and selected James Stockdale as his vice presidential running mate. Perot ran a nontraditional campaign, focusing on 30-minute infomercial-style advertisements and appearing on the stump to deliver speeches only rarely. His policies focused on opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA; supported by both Bush and Clinton) and on elimination of the country’s budget deficit and national debt. Spending some $65 million of his personal fortune, Perot won 19 percent of the popular vote in the November election. After the election he organized the nonpartisan political pressure group United We Stand America.</p>

<p>In September 1995 Perot established the Reform Party, which he hoped to build into a major political party. The party’s broadly defined platform called for campaign reform, congressional term limits, balancing the federal budget, overhauling the health care and income tax systems, and placing restrictions on lobbying. Running as the Reform Party nominee in the 1996 U.S. presidential election with Pat Choate as his vice presidential nominee, Perot received 8 percent of the popular vote, while the Republican candidate, Bob Dole, took 41 percent, and Clinton was reelected with 49 percent of the vote and 379 electoral college delegates. Following the election, Perot distanced himself from the Reform Party, and, on the eve of the 2000 presidential election, he endorsed Republican George W. Bush over the Reform Party nominee, Pat Buchanan. In 2008 Perot launched a blog, Perot Charts, that focused on fiscal policy.</p>