Helping Perot Is No Tea Party,Top Aide Says

Platt Thompson isn’t just the head of Ross Perot’s Idaho campaign. He’s also in charge of California.

“They’re not contiguous at all, but when you work for Ross …” said Thompson, a 42-year-old former Texan who moved to Boise five years ago.

When Perot tapped Thompson for the California post 18 months ago, Thompson told Perot he didn’t want to move to California. “He said, ‘Well, fine, commute.”’ So now Thompson is a regular on United Airlines, zipping down to Los Angeles and traveling around California for at least half of every week.

“You’re responsible for 54 electoral votes, that’s one out of every eight Americans,” Thompson said. “You gotta bring it home.”

Thompson volunteered in Perot’s 1992 campaign, and was hired full-time by Perot’s organization, then called United We Stand, in early 1993.

What’s Perot like as an employer? “He’s a piece of work,” Thompson says admiringly.

“Last year, I think it was early December some, he calls up, says, ‘Platt, you need to go to North Dakota.’ I said, ‘Oh, man, Ross, it is so cold in North Dakota right now.’ He said, ‘Well, it was cold at Valley Forge, too.’ Next time I talked to him it was from Fargo.”

Loot from Newt doesn’t go to group

House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s Boise campaign fund-raiser for Helen Chenoweth this week was part of a two-day campaign swing, with each stop including an event for charity. Gingrich’s public schedule said of the Boise stop, “This event will benefit Hope House.”

As it happens, the only benefit Hope House got was the opportunity for its kids to sing for Gingrich and Chenoweth, and for the kids and staffers from the home for troubled youngsters to meet with him. Plus, they got in free to the $100-a-plate campaign breakfast, which featured muffins and fruit.

Gingrich’s next stop, in Seattle, raised $10,000 for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, along with more than $30,000 for Rep. Rick White. The stop after that raised $5,000 for the St. Francis Medical Center Foundation in Santa Barbara and thousands more for Rep. Andrea Seastrand.

Rich Galen, communications director for Gingrich’s political office, said Gingrich doesn’t write off the trips and includes the charities only because he wants to. Some charities just want attention or the speaker’s ear, he said, while others schedule fund-raisers.

“It was just a matter of calling the Hope House to his attention,” said Khris Bershers, spokeswoman for the Chenoweth campaign.

The fund-raiser brought in $64,000 for the campaign.

Why they dropped the Y

Excluding women or men just doesn’t fly in Boise, where even the hoity-toity Arid Club was pressured into accepting female members some years back.

So it seemed natural when Boise’s YWCA decided it should no longer admit only women as members.

By excluding men, “We were eliminating 50 percent of the population that could help us with our services and our needs,” said Janice Johnson, executive director.

This isn’t a health club. The Boise organization runs a women’s shelter and two transitional houses for women in crisis, contracts with the state to provide job preparation and placement for welfare recipients, operates a rape crisis counseling and support program, helps men and women file protection orders, works against domestic violence and child abuse and operates a thrift store. And more.

But the national Y’s constitution prevented males from joining. They could pay the same fee as women to become “associates,” but weren’t allowed to vote or serve on the board or certain committees.

So the Boise group is no longer the Young Women’s Christian Association. Now it’s called the WCA, the Women’s and Children’s Alliance. And men are full members. About 40 have signed up so far.

Said Johnson, “I think it just takes Idahoans to make this kind of strong decision.”

, DataTimes MEMO: North-South Notes runs every other Saturday. To reach Betsy Z. Russell, call 336-2854, fax to 336-0021 or e-mail to bzrussell@rmci.net.