Perot to visit Penn next week

Long-shot candidate blitzesLong-shot candidate blitzescollege campuses; will speakLong-shot candidate blitzescollege campuses; will speakand amswer questions in Irvine Taking a break from his regular appearances on CNN's Larry King Live, Reform Party presidential candidate Ross Perot will address Penn students during a speech at Irvine Auditorium next week. Perot is expected to address issues including the deficit, Medicare, Social Security and health care reform before taking questions from the audience. The event -- to take place Wednesday, October 30 -- will begin with a short musical concert at 6:30 p.m., according to full-time Reform Party volunteer David Shrier, a Penn graduate. Perot will speak at 7:30 p.m. "This is going to be a monster appearance," he said. "We're expecting there to be an overflow crowd at the speech." Perot's visit comes as recent polls show the candidate trailing President Clinton by almost 50 percentage points. Only six percent of the respondents to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll conducted October 19-20 identified Perot as their likely presidential choice, with 55 percent picking Clinton and 34 percent supporting Republican candidate Bob Dole. The visit was organized by second-year Medical student Scott Kush, who had originally invited all three presidential candidates to Penn for a planned debate on health care. Kush, a Perot volunteer in 1992, explained he was "thrilled" when Perot expressed interest in appearing. "He's a great speaker with an incredible grasp of the issues," he said. "He has a very realistic perspective on the problems facing America." Kush added that he hopes the visit will change many students' perceptions of Perot. "A lot of people have a bad image of him based on what they see in the media, but very few of them have actually heard him," Kush said. "He's really trying to change the American political system and he's gotten a lot of unfair criticism for that." The controversial Texas billionaire -- who, along with running mate Pat Choate, was excluded from this year's presidential and vice-presidential debates -- has been taking his campaign on the road lately, with recent appearances at Purdue and Yale universities. "Both of those speeches were absolutely packed, with hundreds of people standing outside listening to him over loudspeakers," Shrier said. "Since this is going to be a widely-advertised regional event, we're expecting the same thing at Penn." According to Shrier, the cornerstone of Perot's campaign strategy -- as in 1992 -- has been his many television appearances. Shrier explained the standard strategy was "interrupted," however, by network refusals to sell Perot network and cable television airtime for his half-hour political "tutorials." "Perot had originally wanted to purchase four spots per week, per network," he said. "But he went to the networks, cash in hand, and they turned him down." Shrier added that network refusals to sell Perot the air time was "enough to make someone believe in conspiracy theories." "It makes so many pieces of the puzzle fit together -- being kept off of the networks whose corporate owners are the same companies which are illegally supporting Clinton and Dole," he explained. According to Shrier, Perot is buying air time for a "saturation campaign" of 30-second commercials on the four major networks, as well as regional and national cable stations, such as MTV. Perot's appearance at Penn next Wednesday is free to the public on a first-come, first-serve basis.