Supporters of Perot Say They’re Close : Politics: County organizers estimate they have at least 10,000 signed party registration forms. State group says it will meet today’s deadline.

SANTA ANA — A day before today’s deadline, Orange County organizers of H. Ross Perot’s drive to qualify his new Reform Party for the 1996 California ballot said they are certain they will succeed.

“I think we will have shocked everyone with what we have done,” said Joan Vinson, a party spokeswoman.

In Orange County, volunteers and paid staff had collected at least 10,000 signed party registration forms through the end of the weekend from voters “unhappy with the existing choices,” she said.

In addition, there are an unknown number--likely in the thousands--of registration forms being mailed directly to the registrar of voters’ office in Santa Ana or the secretary of state’s office by voters who obtained them through the mail, in newspaper inserts or from post offices during the four-week blitz to put the new party on the ballot.

The Reform Party must register 89,007 voters in the state by the deadline today to qualify for the ballot in 1996. The results of the drive will be known by Nov. 15, the secretary of state’s self-imposed deadline for confirming that all the party’s prospective members are qualified to vote.

Statewide officials of the Reform Party said results elsewhere in California are similar to those in Orange County, where a flood of newly completed registration forms has been gathered in the past week from people at malls, swap meets and shopping centers.

As of Monday morning, the Reform Party’s statewide drive had collected 84,500 registration forms and turned them in to voter officials, Vinson said. That total does not include forms sent in independently by voters or people registering for the first time.

A week ago, the secretary of state’s office said the Reform Party had registered a total of 10,217 voters statewide, with 715 of those coming from Orange County.

Former Republican Party members make up the vast majority of Orange County voters who have filed to switch to the Reform Party, Vinson said. That would confirm the fears of GOP strategists, who say Perot gained most of his vote in the county in 1992 by taking from George Bush’s Republican base.

In the last election, when Perot was running for President, nearly a quarter of Orange County’s voters cast ballots for him, providing more than 10% of the independent candidate’s 2.3 million votes in the state. Perot received 232,394 votes here, compared to then-President Bush’s 426,613 and Bill Clinton’s 306,930. In garnering 24% of the vote, Perot bested his statewide figure of 21% and his national vote of 19%.

Noting that most voters in the county are Republican, Thomas A. Fuentes, county Republican Party chairman, downplayed the significance of losing several thousand registrants to the Reform Party.

“The Perot candidacy has lost its following in the broad community,” he said. “There may still be an element that holds to a rump mentality for a new party, but the ups and downs of irrationality by Perot in his last campaign has deflated any real political momentum for them in this community.

“You could probably get 10,000 signatures for anything in front of Orange County supermarkets, so it does not pose much of a concern to us.”

A spokeswoman for the county registrar of voters’ office said officials may have some totals for the Reform Party “by the end of the week, but it is likely to take longer than that” to come up with a final tally.