Populism in American history can be traced through the Boston Tea Party in 1773, the presidency of Andrew Jackson from 1829 to 1837, and the formation of the Populist Party in 1892, when heartland farmers demanded the federal government regulate railroads and boost grain prices. With the populists’ help, former Nebraska congressman William Jennings Bryan won the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in 1896 following his “Cross of Gold” speech praising farmers and miners while chastising businessmen and urban elites.
Populism upended the Republican Party when Arizona senator Barry Goldwater ran for president in 1964 calling for limited government, lowered taxes, and repeal of the Civil Rights Act. He lost in a landslide but appealed to Southern conservative Democrats, whom Republican Richard Nixon courted in 1968 and 1972 in a geographic realignment that led to Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980.
By 1992, more voters described themselves as independent (36 percent) than Democratic (33 percent) or Republican (28 percent).1 A charismatic Texas billionaire named H. Ross Perot appealed to white non-college-educated voters by chastising the country’s stultifying political class, promising to eliminate the national debt, and saying he would curtail the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs to Mexico, which he called a “giant sucking sound.”
In many ways, Perot was Trump before Trump, not only in having a populist agenda, but also in adeptly using alternative forms of media. Trump would have Twitter; Perot made 30-minute television infomercials and launched a dial-in number for an electronic town hall. One of Perot’s many folksy and memorable quotes was, “War has rules, mud wrestling has rules—politics has no rules.” With the slogan “Ross for Boss,” he led the polls over President George H. W. Bush and Arkansas governor Bill Clinton in June 1992 and ultimately received 19 percent of the vote.
Whether it was Perot or someone else, the electorate was displaying a hunger for an alternative, someone outside the two-party system. Leftist activists, frustrated with Clinton’s “New Democrat” centrism, established a Green Party in more than two dozen states and encouraged consumer rights activist Ralph Nader to run for president in 1996 and 2000.
Perot’s success in 1992 led him to found the Reform Party. In 1996, he captured only 8 percent of the vote but created a national party infrastructure. Whoever would be the Reform Party presidential candidate in 2000 was entitled to $12.6 million in federal matching funds for the general election campaign.
Starting in 1999, a range of political candidates began circling, including paleoconservative populist Pat Buchanan, leftist Lenora Fulani, fiscally conservative former Connecticut governor Lowell Weicker, socially liberal former wrestler Jesse Ventura, retired four-star general Colin Powell, actor Warren Beatty—and Trump. Perot, according to his former campaign manager Russell Verney and former running mate Pat Choate, had not ruled out running again himself.
Roger Stone: Trump liked Perot. Like everybody else, his confidence in Perot was undermined when Perot dropped out of the race [in 1992], claiming the Bushes had tried to disrupt his daughter’s wedding, and then dropped back into the race. Recognize there was a time when Perot was leading both of his opponents in the polls. There was a window in which we may have elected somebody who was not a Republican or a Democrat. Russell Verney was a very capable guy who had run Perot’s campaign.
Russell Verney, former Reform Party chairman: Perot in ’92 focused on economic and government reform issues. Reducing deficit spending and cutting the national debt were major. Fair trade was major. Campaign finance reform and a lot of other government reform issues including the IRS were issues. I also managed his campaign in 1996.
Ralph Nader, Green Party presidential candidate in 1996 and 2000: Perot wasn’t a complete candidate. He wasn’t well versed in some stuff, but he certainly was about not messing around in other people’s backyards, even though he was big on helping POWs. He didn’t think they should have been sent there in the first place.
Russell Verney: Perot needed his family to get his business started, but he wound up creating EDS [Electronic Data Systems], which had over 200,000 worldwide employees, and then a second, similar company, Perot Systems, which eventually had another 100,000 employees worldwide.
Pat Choate, Reform Party politician: The two parties control the debates. Ross only got in in ’92 because H. W. [Bush] agreed to let him in. In ’96, Clinton and Dole refused to let Perot and me into the debate. The moment it was impossible to get into the debate, he was just dead meat. If Perot had run in ’96 as a Republican, he could have won the presidency. This is something that Mike Poss, then Perot’s chief of staff, in ’95, and I argued with Perot about at some depth. We argued that it was possible to take over the Republican Party and that if we took over, the Republicans would fall in line. Perot didn’t want to do that. He wanted a clean party, start from scratch.
Russell Verney: As a result of the 1996 election results, Perot was eligible for public funding in 2000, and he assigned that right to the Reform Party once he created it. Therefore, whoever we chose to be our nominee would be eligible for that money. Nobody besides the Republicans and Democrats had ever qualified for general election funding.
The Reform Party blossomed before 2000. Former professional wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura had won the election for mayor of the Minneapolis suburb Brooklyn Park in 1991, but the state’s political establishment largely ignored him. The love many Minnesotans had for him, however, was noticed by political activist Dean Barkley, who had formed the state’s Independence Party, which would become affiliated with the Reform Party.
Dean Barkley: I first ran for office in 1992 as an Independent. When Ross Perot decided to run for president, I paid a lot of attention to what he did. I helped form the Independence Party, and in ’96, I was running for U.S. Senate to get major party status in Minnesota. That’s when I met Jesse Ventura. He was a talk show host on KSTP, and he had just won the mayor’s race in Brooklyn Park. The Democrats and the Republicans both ganged up on him, and he called them the Republahcans and the Awfulcrats, and the Crips and Bloods. I called into his show quite a bit to get some free press. I asked him if he would join me at a Fourth of July parade in Annandale, Minnesota, my hometown. A third of the way through that parade, I first noticed the Ventura phenomena, where everybody was cheering for him and ignoring me. The lightbulb went on, and I said, “Gosh, I wonder if this could be turned into political power?” I said, “Jesse, the wrong guy’s running. Next time, you’re going to run.” He laughed and said, “No, I’m not going to move to Washington,” and I said, “Well, in two years, we’ve got a governor’s race.” I worked on Jesse after my ’96 campaign. I finally convinced him to run for governor when his wife reluctantly said, “Alright.”
Jesse Ventura, Minnesota governor 1999–2003: I always vote third party. The Democrats and Republicans, they cause the problems. They don’t solve them.
Dean Barkley: We put him anywhere and everywhere there was a crowd, the Minneapolis Aquatennial or the St. Paddy’s Day parade, put him in my little ’69 Camaro convertible. Usually in a parade like that you almost have to go up to people and have them take your literature. He was being mobbed. We have a national CBS crew following us. I said to the crew, “What’s this about?” They answered, “We want to see what this wrestler is gonna do.” That’s when we first got the inkling that it was more than just a Minnesota story. When we made Jesse available, the media would show up. I always told Jesse, “Tell the truth, and if you don’t know the truth, just admit you don’t know and you’ll figure it out. And that’ll make you completely different than your opponents.” We had two career politicians, [St. Paul] Mayor Norm Coleman and Attorney General Hubert H. “Skip” Humphrey in their little gray suits saying the typical crap you hear from Democrats and Republicans. Little canned speeches they say no matter what the question is without answering the question, and it was the perfect foil. You’ve got Jesse the big bad wrestling guy in there who tells it like it is. Traditionally they’d say he didn’t have a chance. But it was status quo versus somebody different.
Ventura, running as a Reform Party candidate, the successor to Barkley’s Independence Party, won 37 percent of the vote, edging out Republican Norm Coleman (34 percent) and Democrat Hubert Humphrey III (28 percent), earning headlines around the country2 and demonstrating the Reform Party had the power to elevate outsiders to high office. Roger Stone was among those who recognized that the Reform ticket held promise for the right presidential candidate in 2000. Trump happened to be friendly with both Perot and Ventura, one through business connections and the other through wrestling promotions.
Jesse Ventura: Six of us, after the election in Minnesota, we were sitting in my kitchen the next day with the afterglow, and we all looked around the table and started laughing. “What the hell do we do now?” Because we had no experience. We were now going to run the state of Minnesota.
Roger Stone: The local Reform Party people, they had pulled off a miracle. It was a three-way race with three heavyweight candidates, including Skip Humphrey, Hubert Humphrey’s son, who was the state attorney general.
Dean Barkley: After he won, my God, the attention Ventura got. The whole world paid attention to what the hell happened in Minnesota.
Roger Stone: Donald did not have a high regard for the other potential candidates in 2000, Al Gore and George W. Bush. He had known Jesse Ventura for many years, because Jesse did WrestleMania at Trump Plaza.
Jesse Ventura: Trump’s link to wrestling was we had the fastest sellout he’s ever had at his big Trump place in Atlantic City. He held WrestleMania IV and V [1988 and 1989]. Big money. Donald likes that. He likes the high profile. He likes to be seen at things like that. He treated all of us wonderful, all the talent.* He’d come in and shake our hands and talk to us all. He’s a very personable guy.
Dean Barkley: It was show. It was entertainment. And it was manipulating crowds. Trump liked the limelight, and that’s what pro wrestling was, a big dog-and-pony show that marketed itself well, and people liked it.
Roger Stone: They had a good relationship and very similar views, anti-interventionist and so on.
Pat Choate: Trump was a person who had money, and he was a New York personality in the tabloids at that point. Anyone who has a lot of money and is a personality and is media savvy is someone you would take seriously.
Perot tapped into the dissatisfaction with trade policies that led to a decline of manufacturing jobs, and a Washington-based political class that didn’t seem to care. Ventura’s success in Minnesota signified that the Reform Party could attract populist leaders who could win elections by speaking to the public’s anxieties. Seizing the Reform Party helm was a rare and tempting opportunity.