H. Ross Perot, the feisty Texas technology billionaire who rattled US politics with two independent presidential campaigns in the 1990s that struck a chord with disgruntled voters, died on Tuesday at the age of 89, his family said.
"Ross Perot, the ground-breaking businessman and loving husband, brother, father and grandfather, passed away early Tuesday at his home in Dallas, surrounded by his devoted family," the Perot family said in a statement. A family spokesman said leukemia was the cause of death.
Perot's fortune was estimated at $4.1 billion by Forbes magazine in April 2019.
Perot was a natural salesman who made a fortune in computer services but he was an unlikely and unconventional politician.
He was short with buzz-top haircut, spoke with a folksy Texas drawl and had protruding ears that even he joked about. He was blunt and assertive and his success in business made him accustomed to getting his way.
Perot was so gung-ho that when two of his employees were jailed in Iran in 1978, he organized a team of commandos from his employees and hired a former Green Beret colonel to break them out.
Perot leaped into the 1992 presidential race as an independent and quickly found a lode of Americans turned off by the Republican and Democratic parties.
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