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But not easy either. Perot spent more than $60 million of his own money on his race for the presidency. He had tens of thousands of volunteers collecting more than 1.5 million signatures across the land. Powell's friends assert blandly that "money would be no problem." One former Pentagon official who now works in corporate America boasts, "I could raise $50 million in one month just from the ceos I know." Says another supporter: "There'd be stories about people sending in nickels, dimes and quarters just to help out, but you'll get all the big money you want to get." If Powell ran as a genuine independent, he would not receive federal campaign funds and would thus have to raise tens of millions of dollars to compete evenly with the major-party nominees.
Building an organization would be even harder than raising the money. Yet the Perot experience is an instruction manual. Perot said he'd run if drafted, which kicked off a huge volunteer effort that he did not join until later. Despite a recent decision not to create a formal political party, Perot's United We Stand America is still very active. Other Perot alumni have split off who would find a Powell candidacy appealing and would lend expertise and manpower. And the experience of less impressive independent candidates suggests that ballot access is not an insurmountable problem. George Wallace in 1968 and John Anderson in 1980 bolted from their parties late in the game and managed to be on every state's ballot. Lenora Fulani did the same in 1988, running on the utterly obscure New Alliance ticket.
There are already several "Draft Powell" organizations in the field, operating without his blessing or his opposition. But their level of intensity does not put one in mind of Desert Storm. There are two committees registered with the Federal Election Commission, one based in California and one in suburban Washington. Andrew DiMarco, a California lawyer, calls his outfit the Draft Committee for Colin Powell's Army. So far he's collected 13,400 signatures urging Powell to run, but his drive is going into low gear until Powell gives some clearer sign of his intentions. The other committee is the Exploratory Draft Colin Powell for President Committee, led by a group of black Republicans. They have sent a letter to Powell urging him to run, appointed regional and state coordinators and printed bumper stickers and buttons, and they vow to collect 20,000 signatures per state by the end of the summer.
Both these groups are predominantly Republican, as is a third organization run by Charles Kelly, a retired Washington banker and former minor official in the Eisenhower Administration. His main effort is to talk to business friends about giving money to a Powell campaign, to preach the Powell gospel to influential Republicans and to organize a shadow national committee. None of this is big league enough to represent a real political force, but that's not surprising given that they have no real candidate to support -- yet.