Political anger fades for ex-Perot followers

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PORTLAND – Most mornings, Don Nech trucks down to the rusty piers skirting this historic fishing town. After the boats come in, he loads up 90-pound cases of lobster, their feelers protruding from the boxes like needles from a pincushion.

It’s hard work. It’s cold and it’s wet. It smells bad. And worst of all, it pays worse than his last job, lost when his company moved a factory abroad.

All that would seem to make Nech the perfect man to respond to the populist call of Reform Party presidential candidate Pat Buchanan this election year. Nech is a free-trade victim. He’s blue-collar to the core. He lives in America’s most independent state. And he voted twice for Ross Perot.

But Nech, like many who once flocked to Perot, has gone mainstream. And this election, he’s voting for Democrat Al Gore for president.

“The economy’s going good; we’re on the right track. It’s global, now, and we have to get better,” said Nech, 53, as he walked across the dock with a box of agitated lobsters, gulls screaming overhead. “I just worked for the wrong company.”

The anxiety and outrage that turned Perot into the most successful third-party candidate in modern political history has all but disappeared in the waning days of the 2000 election.

The Democrats’ recent hand-wringing about Green Party candidate Ralph Nader’s charge is more a reflection of the tightness of this year’s presidential race than a sign of a new third-party uprising, experts say. In most national polls, Nader draws between 4 percent and 5 percent. That’s just about half what Perot got in 1996, with a lackluster campaign, and about a quarter of his national draw in 1992.

People who voted for Perot defy easy categorization. They came from the left and the right, rich and poor. Many were first-time visitors to the ballot box, swept up by Perot’s charisma and frustration with a failing economy. With Perot gone and jobs plentiful, experts say many of those people are likely to find little of interest in either Vice President Gore or Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

“Perot pulled in fringe people who don’t like either party, and who don’t vote under normal circumstances,” said Charlie Cook, a nonpartisan analyst. “I don’t see anything inherent in either Bush or Gore that will pull those people out.”

All that makes it difficult for pollsters to figure out where, exactly, the 8 million people who voted for Perot in 1996 are headed this year.

Some have dropped out altogether and don’t show up in polls of registered voters. Many are undecided. But the bulk, experts believe, have returned to mainstream candidates, particularly Bush.

A national Los Angeles Times poll in September of registered voters showed 81 percent of those who voted for Perot in 1996 were backing mainstream candidates this year. Bush was leading Gore among those Perot voters by a 2-1 margin.

There is no better place to witness the fading of the Reform movement than in Maine, the most independent of independent-minded states. Maine championed Perot’s cause longer and harder than any other place, awarding him the largest percentage of votes in the nation in 1992 and 1996.

In 1992, Perot virtually tied the Republican nominee – then-President Bush – with about 31 percent of the Maine vote, about twice the level he received from the state in 1996.

It’s a state that twice has elected independent governors, including current Gov. Angus King. Its two senators are Republican; its two House members, Democrats. Recent polls show it also has more undecided voters than most states. In a poll of registered voters last month, 42 percent were voting for Bush, 37 percent for Gore and 11 percent remained undecided.

There is a lingering sadness among longtime Reform Party members here, a longing for what was and what might have been.

One of the great ironies of recent presidential politics is that, after surviving two elections on outrage, hand-painted signs and an eclectic collection of devoted volunteers, the Reform Party withered as a political force the very year it finally received official recognition and $12.5 million in federal election funds.

The collapse culminated at the party’s national convention in Long Beach, Calif., in August, when the party split into two rival factions, one that nominated conservative commentator Buchanan as their candidate, and another that selected transcendental meditation proponent John Hagelin.

A judge declared Buchanan to be the rightful nominee and awarded him the federal election funds. But neither man is receiving enough support to register more than 1 percent in national polls.

That leaves many Perot die-hards unsure of where their support will lie this year.

Maine residents Joseph A.E. Garand and Joe Zuchara were there at the very beginning, in 1992. Zuchara spent weekends parked in front of mini-malls throughout the state, handing out fliers paid for with his own money. Garand drove around town with a box bearing Perot’s name strapped to the top of the car, honking the horn to draw attention.

“I had a great time, but it’s all over now,” Garand, 65, said one recent night as the two men gathered around his blue and white checkered kitchen table outside tiny Sanford, about 35 miles southwest of Portland.

The men tried to figure out which candidate, exactly, they were going to choose.

Indecision, indecision. Garand, an Air Force veteran and retired aircraft mechanic, likes Nader.

Zuchara, a 46-year-old security consultant, said he may not make up his mind until he enters the voting booth.

The only thing both men were set on was that they would support a third party by voting for anyone but Gore or Bush.

“I don’t think realistically they can win,” Zuchara said of his third-party choices. “But you have to vote your conscience.”

Bush’s and Gore’s failure to excite much of the electorate is the main reason that many former Perot backers are simply planning to stay away from the polls.

Even in Maine, where a bigger percentage of voters turned out in 1996 than in any other state, it’s not hard to find folks who are simply sitting out this cycle, bored at what they see as a lack of distinction between the two major-party candidates.

One is Al Jensen, 37, who was sitting on the back of his friend’s car at a converted gas station that serves as Portland’s Greyhound bus stop.

A construction worker who voted for Perot in 1992, Jensen was on his way to vacation in Florida. And though he couldn’t afford the money for a plane ticket, he was making enough to take some time off.

That alone was enough to make Jensen think that things were pretty OK this year. And it was enough to convince him there was no real need to vote.

Perot, he said, had spoken to him. Talked the language of the working man. But Bush and Gore? Just two guys in suits talking over his head.

“I’m sitting this one out. I don’t like either man,” Jensen said as his friend, 35-year-old machinist Ray Louder, nodded.

“I’d just like to see a regular guy run for president,” Louder said. “Someone that’s not a politician.”