Who's in Charge Here?

By S.C. GWYNNE WASHINGTON

TO LOOK AT ROSS PEROT'S ALL-NEW campaign team, you would not suspect that this man was girding himself for a four-week dash at the presidency of the United States. Gone are the professional pols and veterans of national elections who rode in on Perot's skyrocketing polls in June only to resign or be forced out in the campaign's spasm of self-destruction in July. In their place today stands a collection of old friends, obscure aides, in-laws and former military men chosen more for their unblinking allegiance to the chief than for their political acumen.

Welcome to amateur hour. Indeed, amateurism is now celebrated by Perot insiders as a boon in a season of finely crafted political double-talk and slick negative advertising. "This is anything but a professional organization," admits Orson Swindle, the top Perot lieutenant, called in to refurbish the sagging effort in the dark days following Perot's withdrawal. "We're all amateurs, but that's not a disadvantage. We've got the enthusiasm of the volunteers."

With so many neophytes in such critical positions, they will need all the enthusiasm they can muster. At the top of Perot's new brain trust is a tiny coterie of true believers: Swindle, running mate James B. Stockdale, legal adviser (and son-in-law) Clayton Mulford, media chief Murphy Martin and press secretary Sharon Holman. The 55-year-old Swindle has some seasoning in a political campaign, having been a congressional district chairman in his native Georgia during Ronald Reagan's 1980 race.

Swindle, a friend of the candidate's since 1973 and the conduit for Perot's orders to the field, is in many ways a perfect Perot operative: competent, self-effacing, obedient and intensely loyal. A former fighter pilot and POW like Stockdale, who ran Reagan's 1980 California campaign, Swindle served as an Assistant Secretary of Commerce.

In spite of his ostensible position as Perot's main adviser, Swindle has not been given the title of either campaign manager or political director. The rest of the inner circle are more like conventional field operatives, jumping when they receive Perot's frequent calls from his 17th-floor office in a Dallas high-rise, 2 1/2 miles from campaign headquarters. Clayton Mulford's main job since February has been to help get Perot on the ballot in 50 states and make sure the campaign complies with federal election rules and reporting requirements. Press secretary Sharon Holman, 45, has worked for Perot since 1969 and most recently worked for his son Ross Jr. producing videos and brochures for the family's big Alliance Airport project. The last of the key players, former Dallas TV anchorman Murphy Martin, 67, a longtime Perot crony, has played a key role in producing the 25 television and radio ads that are now ready to run nationwide.

Most of the team Perot assembled last spring have dissociated themselves from the candidate. Dallas lawyer Thomas W. Luce III, Perot's confidant and loyal spear carrier for 20 years -- the man Perot reportedly blamed for his earlier troubles -- has returned to corporate law. Ed Rollins, Ronald Reagan's former campaign manager, is back in Washington working as a political consultant. Hamilton Jordan, Jimmy Carter's chief of staff who was hired with Rollins in June to run the campaign, has gone back to his corporate life at Whittle Communications in Knoxville, Tennessee. James Squires, former editor of the Chicago Tribune and Perot's press secretary until July, has returned home to Kentucky to raise horses. Mort Meyerson, Perot's chief business aide, who once played a major role in the campaign, is busy running Perot's computer-services company. John White, the principal architect of Perot's economic plan, returned last week to his job with Eastman Kodak in Rochester, New York. He has no connection with the campaign and doesn't think Perot should run, concerned that a Perot loss could drag the plan down with him.

Though many of the original staff members left with some bitterness, they continued to collect large sums of money from the Perot campaign even after they departed. In July and August, according to financial documents filed with the Federal Election Commission, the Perot campaign paid Thomas Luce and his company $402,377.47; Hamilton Jordan received $154,872.18; Ed Rollins $97,032.34; James Squires $36,084.40; and John White $22,939.00. Rollins said last week that in addition to the money he had already received, Perot offered him $500,000 not to talk to the press about the campaign. Rollins, who has written and spoken out against his ex-boss, says he declined the offer.

Perot's payouts have hardly been limited to his senior staff. According to FEC records, some of the smiling souls sporting Perot buttons and canvassing the country are workers hired from temporary agencies. They had to be taken on, according to a campaign spokesman, because so many of Perot's early volunteers left in disgust after the candidate pulled out in July. In California, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Illinois and New York, Perot has spent at least $430,000 to keep his volunteer networks manning the telephones and walking the streets. Which goes to show that in politics as in business, you get what you pay for.

With reporting by Julie Johnson/Washington and Richard Woodbury/Dallas