Ross Perot has passed on to his reward

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DALLAS (AP/Gray News) — H. Ross Perot, the colorful, self-made Texas billionaire who twice ran for president, has died.

Family spokesman James Fuller says Perot died early Tuesday. He was 89.

Two-time presidential candidate and billionaire Ross Perot was best known for predicting that thousands of American manufacturing jobs would be lost if Congress approved the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.

He received about 19 percent of the national vote in the 1992 race for the White House, leaving many to believe he undermined the re-election chances of fellow Texan, President George H.W. Bush.

Perot was born on June 27, 1930, in Texarkana, TX, and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1953. Perot and his wife Margot moved to Dallas in the late 1950s where he worked as a salesman for IBM. In 1962, he started his own data processing company that grew into a venture that at one time employed tens of thousands of people. In 1984, he sold that company, EDS, to General Motors for $2.5 billion.

At the request of the governor, Perot became involved in Texas state politics in the early 1980s by proposing reforms to the public school system. He also worked to try to free American POWs in Vietnam.

In 1992, Perot said on the Larry King Live show that he would run for the White House. He swiftly climbed in the polls to a near tie with Democrat frontrunner Bill Clinton and Bush, who was wounded by a slumping economy. He championed term limits for Congress, balancing the federal budget and reforming government.

But Perot dropped out of the race in July only to re-emerge in the fall. He never regained his earlier poll numbers and didn’t win a single state. Clinton won the presidency.

He again ran for the White House in 1996 as the Reform Party nominee but finished a distant third with 8 percent of the vote, well behind the GOP’s Bob Dole and Clinton, who was re-elected.

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