Politics 1-800-Pound Guerrillas

Call it the Touch-Tone Rebellion, the Phone P-for-Protest Uprising or the 800-Number Insurrection.

Just six months ago, a mad-as-hell voter enraged at the mess in Washington and disgusted by compromising politicians in both parties would phone his favorite radio-talk-show host to vent his throw-the-bums-out spleen. Now that same populist rage is dialing right into the political system -- right into the volatile center of the 1992 presidential race -- and mainstream politicians from Bill Clinton to George Bush are all but cursing the invention of toll-free telephone numbers.

Jerry Brown, the flamed-out former California Governor, derided by Democratic insiders as a flake, a fake, a maverick and a mountebank, regained political legitimacy last week by edging out Clinton 37% to 36% in the Connecticut primary. "It's a miracle," Brown proclaimed. "It's not about me. It's about the grass roots rising up against the bounced checks, the congressional pay raises, the corrupt status quo."

Brown's amazing resurrection is linked to his small-contributions-only 800 number, which has kept his ascetic, spare-couches-and-coach-seats crusade alive with $3.5 million in pledges and $2 million in actual contributions. Brown may be only the vessel of protest against big-money politics and Clinton's too-slick-for-his-own-good image. But after months lost in what Brown calls "the dark hole of media nonexistence," he is suddenly running nearly even in the Clinton campaign's private polls handicapping the decisive April 7 New York primary.

Yet the new king of phone-call frenzy is neither an insurgent Democrat like Brown nor a Republican conservative like the fast-fading Pat Buchanan. That honor belongs instead to billionaire Texas businessman H. Ross Perot, who positions himself as a modern-day Cincinnatus called from the boardroom by the little people clamoring for him to mount an independent campaign for the White House. In what may be the cleverest antipolitics fandango in an antipolitics year, Perot insists, "I have no desire to be President. My personal feelings are, anybody intelligent enough to be able to do the job would not want the toughest, dirtiest, most thankless job in the world."

With instant credibility that comes from the biggest political bankroll since Nelson Rockefeller, Perot boasts his own 800 number, which was flashed on the screen during an appearance on the Phil Donahue Show. The response was so intense last week (Perot partisans claimed 500,000 calls in a 24-hour period)* that the fledgling campaign had to obtain 1,100 extra phone lines from the Home Shopping Network. What Perot is asking for is not money but commitment. He has said he will run only if his supporters circulate petitions and navigate the election laws to get him on the ballot in all 50 states. With petition deadlines in states like Texas just six weeks away, the obstacles are formidable but far from impossible, especially with enough money.