Perry Will Start Republican Presidential Bid With Speech in South Carolina
Texas Governor Rick Perry
Brandon Thibodeaux/Getty Images
Texas governor Rick Perry.
Texas governor Rick Perry. Photographer: Brandon Thibodeaux/Getty Images
Texas Governor Rick Perry, an early Tea Party supporter, plans to step into the Republican presidential campaign this weekend in South Carolina and New Hampshire, according to a spokesman.
Perry, 61, will make his bid official tomorrow, according to Mark Miner, the governor’s spokesman. Perry’s entry follows weeks of toying with the idea and will coincide with the Iowa Straw Poll in Ames that will test the campaign strength of Republicans already in the race.
“As a three-and-a-half term governor, he has more gravitas than Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin, who appeal to the most conservative part of the party,” said James Riddlesperger, a politics professor at Texas Christian University, in an earlier interview. “But he also has some cachet with the center.”
The longest-serving U.S. governor likely will campaign on his record of presiding over job growth in Texas and on curbing growing federal power, Riddlesperger said. Perry is set to speak tomorrow at a conference sponsored by RedState.com, a self- described “conservative” group in Washington. He’s set to go from there to New Hampshire, site of the first 2012 primary.
Perry’s appearances will divert attention from those competing in the Iowa straw poll. He isn’t on the ballot, though supporters can write in his name.
Palin Hovering
Bachmann, a U.S. Representative from Minnesota, is a declared presidential candidate. Palin, the former Alaska governor and the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, has hovered over the race -- much as Perry had done -- without yet entering. She plans an appearance at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, and has said she plans to announce by next month whether she will seek the White House.
The governor wasn’t on the stage in last night’s televised debate in Ames that featured eight of the Republican contenders.
Perry will need to eclipse Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who has led most surveys of likely Republican voters. In campaigning, Romney touts his experience creating jobs as a venture capitalist. He is a co-founder of Boston-based Bain Capital LLC, a private-equity firm with about $65 billion in assets that has invested in companies including Dunkin’ Brands Group Inc., AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. and Bright Horizons Family Solutions LLC.
Fundraising Appeal
Perry’s fundraisers sent out e-mails yesterday appealing to donors to help them “very rapidly” collect the first $1 million to get the presidential campaign started, the Washington Post said. Robert Miller, a lawyer and lobbyist at Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell LLP in Houston, has estimated Perry will need $40 million to compete in the race.
In an Aug. 10 speech, the governor told a National Conference of State Legislatures meeting in San Antonio that “over the last two years, 40 percent of the net new jobs created in the U.S. were created in Texas.”
Perry, who began his political career as a Democrat in the 1980s, also noted that Texas picked up 4.29 million residents during the past decade. It has led big U.S. states in job growth, according to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce report in June that credited the state’s low taxes, predictable regulation and diverse workforce.
Job Growth
Texas added more than 900,000 jobs from December 2000 to December 2010, according to the U.S. Labor Department. It ranked 45th in the U.S. in terms of the state and local tax burden on income in fiscal 2009, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit group in Washington.
At last night’s debate, when asked about Perry entering the race, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich cited his “great record” on jobs and termed him “a very formidable person.”
Two other candidates took shots at Perry.
“I’m very pleased he’s coming in because he represents the status quo,” said U.S. Representative Ron Paul of Texas.
“That’s just one more politician and that makes this business problem-solver stand out that much more,” said Herman Cain, a former chief executive officer of Godfather’s Pizza Inc.
The governor’s anticipated entry into the crowded campaign for the chance to run against President Barack Obama next year follows months of thought that Perry said on July 19 was prompted by his wife, Anita. “‘Get out of your comfort zone,’” she told him, he said in a briefing for reporters in Austin.
Family History
Perry and Anita Thigpen, who met at an elementary school piano recital, were married in 1982 and have two adult children. The daughter of a general-practice doctor, Anita worked in health care after graduating from college with a nursing degree and earned a master’s in the subject.
Helped by Texas political consultant Karl Rove, Perry won his first statewide race in 1990, for agriculture commissioner, after switching to the Republican Party in 1989. Elected lieutenant governor in 1998, he took over the top spot in December 2000 after George W. Bush, another Rove client, resigned the office ahead of his swearing in as president.
“Government doesn’t create jobs, otherwise the last two and a half years of stimulus would have worked,” Perry told the state lawmakers gathered in San Antonio, taking a swipe at Obama’s spending program to boost employment. “Government can only create the environment that allows the private sector to create jobs,” the governor said.
Axelrod Responds
“He’s been the beneficiary of things that he had very little to do with,” David Axelrod, the Chicago-based adviser to Obama, said of Perry today on ABC’s “Good Morning America” television show. He cited the oil-industry boom and U.S. military growth.
“Governor Perry also was the beneficiary of $17 billion of money from the Recovery Act, though he’s been quite critical of it,” Axelrod said. “It has helped him balance his budgets.”
Axelrod said Perry’s record is one of “decimation, not of progress,” in education and health care.
“Perry has considered attracting business to Texas as his job one,” said Peggy Venable, state director of Americans For Prosperity, a nonprofit organization based in suburban Arlington, Virginia, that promotes limited government. “We weren’t number one in attracting business under Governor Bush. This has all happened since Governor Perry.”
About 550,000 Texans earned the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour last year, compared with 174,000 in California and 264,000 in New York, according to Labor Department figures. The state’s low wage rates reflect a young workforce that is poorly educated compared with the U.S. average, along with a low cost of living, said Lori Taylor, who teaches economics at Texas A&M University in College Station.
Poverty Rate
“Texas has created a large number of jobs, but it also has one of the highest poverty rates and some of the lowest benefits,” said Dee Simpson, Texas legislative director for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, a union that has mostly supported Democrats since the 1970s.
Perry dismissed talk of a presidential bid until May 27, near the end of Texas’s legislative session, when he said he was “thinking about” a run. Prospects for his entry improved when his longtime political adviser, Dave Carney, quit Gingrich’s campaign, part of an exodus from the former speaker’s staff.
In his 2010 book, “Fed Up,” Perry attacked expanding federal power over states, a key Tea Party tenet. “Perry was the first major politician that got in on the deal with the Tea Party and it’s paying off for him,” Simpson said.
Raised as a Methodist, Perry now attends Austin’s nondenominational Lake Hills Church, where services feature rock-inspired music. The governor makes his Christian faith part of his public persona and promoted an all-day event in Houston on Aug. 6 as a “call to prayer for a nation in crisis.”
To contact the reporter on this story: David Mildenberg in Austin at dmildenberg@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Tannenbaum at mtannen@bloomberg.net
Rate this Page