Backers of Bush and Perot Trade Shouts at Rally : Encounter: President’s supporters taunt those of the independent candidate in St. Louis. Police move in quickly, make no arrests.

ST. LOUIS — A rally of Ross Perot backers turned into an angry shouting match Sunday when two busloads of Bush campaign workers showed up and began to taunt them just hours before the first presidential debate was to begin.

Police moved in to separate the groups, and there were no arrests from the 10-minute encounter.

“Where was Ross two weeks ago?” the backers of President Bush began chanting as the buses pulled into the parking lot where the Perot volunteers were holding a noisy tailgate party.

“Three more weeks,” the Perot group shouted back.

Knots of backers from both camps stood toe-to-toe, screaming at each other and waving placards. But the confrontation was broken up before it turned ugly.

The Bush buses were apparently directed to the parking lot by security forces at Washington University, where the debate was taking place.

Later, Orson Swindle, Perot’s campaign director, laughed off the confrontation, saying the Bush people “were probably just looking for a home.”

Swindle was one of about 15 Perot aides who showed up in St. Louis on Sunday to act as “spin doctors,” bolstering Perot’s pint-sized advance team.

Though invited to the debate by Clinton and Bush, Perot was clearly being treated as an unwelcome interloper by the other two campaigns, Perot’s aides said.

For instance, only after several days of heated negotiations did the debate organizers agree to provide a pre-debate “holding room” for Perot. His aides were relegated to a cramped room in the basement of the university field house.

“Everybody has been very gracious and cordial, but they are treating us like they really would be happier if we just went back to Dallas,” said Dan Routman, who helped in the negotiations.

Perot himself, who eschews political consultants and insists on writing his own speeches, took a rather cavalier approach to the debate, unlike Bush and Clinton, who rehearsed for days ahead of the historic three-way contest.

Unlike Bush and Clinton, Perot did not do a pre-debate walk through of the fieldhouse, test the sound systems or have the lights adjusted.

“Why should he?” asked Perot spokeswoman Sharon Holman. “He’s seen a podium before, he’s been on television before.”

In stark contrast to the huge, happy, spontaneous crowds that attended every Perot rally last spring, only a couple of hundred people attended the Sunday afternoon rally in St. Louis.

While dozens of staff members fanned out to prepare the way for Bush and Clinton, Perot had only six people in his advance team.

“I know we are just learning as we go, but when the debate commission offered me 100 telephone lines, I could only laugh,” Holman said.

“If anybody wants to call out, let me know,” she joked.