Who Is Rick Perry?
He is a fifth generation Texan, the son of hardscrabble West Texas tenant
farmers – Democrats, but conservatives through and through. He grew up in a farm
town too small to be on the state map. Life was so hard that he was six years
old before his house had indoor plumbing. His mother sewed his clothes,
including the underwear he wore to college.
He is an Eagle Scout. After Paint Creek High School , he attended Texas A&M,
graduated, and was commissioned into the Air Force where he became a C-130
pilot.
Now 61 years old, he has won nine elections to four different offices in Texas
state government. In the first three elections he ran as a Democrat then
switched to the Republican Party. He is currently the 47th governor of Texas – a
position he has held for 11 years, the longest tenure of any governor in the
nation.
He has never lost an election.
Rick Perry was the Lieutenant Governor to whom Governor George Bush handed over
the office after winning the 2000 Presidential election. Since then, Perry won
gubernatorial elections in 2002, 2004, and 2010, the last time by 55% against a
field consisting of a Democrat, a Libertarian, a Green Party, and an
Independent.
Since he became its Governor, Texas – a right to work state that taxes neither
personal income nor capital gains – has added more jobs than the other 49 states
combined. In the last two years, low taxes and little regulation led his state
to create 47% of all jobs created in the entire nation. Five of the top ten
cities with the highest job growth in the nation are in Texas . People follow
jobs, so in the last four years for which data are available, Texas led every
state in net interstate migration growth.
Perry signed ground-breaking “loser pays” tort reform and medical litigation
rules that caused malpractice insurance rates to fall. Some 20,000 doctors have
since moved to Texas .
Texas boasts 58 of the Fortune 500 companies – more than any other state. Since
May 2011 Texas resumed its pre-recession employment levels. Only two other
states and the District of Columbia have done that.
Texas ships 16% of the nation’s export value. California trails at 11%. Of the
70 companies that have fled California so far in 2011, 14 relocated in Texas .
In this year’s Texas legislative season, Perry got most of what he wanted. With
no new taxes, a fiscally lean state budget was passed leaving $6 billion in a
rainy day fund even as other states around the country struggled to balance
budgets and avoid more deficit borrowing. A voter ID bill passed that was
designed to prevent ballot box fraud and illegal voting. A bill passed that
makes plaintiffs pay court costs and attorney fees if their suits are deemed
frivolous.
Perry scored points even in his legislative failures. He failed to get sanctuary
cities banned – Texas towns in which police cannot question detainees about
their immigration status. The blame fell on the legislature. Perry also failed
to get a so-called “anti-groping” bill passed that would put Transportation
Security Administration agents in prison if they touch the genitals, anus, or
breasts of passengers in a pat down. Federal officials threatened to halt all
flights out of Texas airports and the bill died in special session. That
endeared Texans even more to TSA employees living in Texas .
Perry jogs daily in the morning. He has no bodyguard with him, but his
daughter’s dog runs by his side and he carries a laser-guided automatic pistol
in his belt. Last year while jogging in an undeveloped area, a coyote paralleled
his jogging route, eyeing his dog. He drew his pistol and killed the animal with
one shot, leaving it where it fell. “He became mulch,” Perry said. Animal rights
groups protested, but Perry shrugged it off. “Don’t come after my dog,” he
warned them.
Recently, Obama asked Perry to delay the July 7 execution of Humberto Leal in
order to comply with the International Court of Justice in The Hague and the
Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. Perry refused. Therefore Obama asked
the US Supreme Court to delay the execution because it would damage US foreign
relations. The Court refused 5-4 and Perry ordered the execution to go forward
as scheduled. Over the howls of diplomats, politicians, and the UN, Leal was
administered a lethal injection at 6:20 p.m. Before he died, he admitted his
guilt and asked for forgiveness.
The case has special implications for Perry, who is considering a run for the
presidency in 2012. Even his critics resent federal interference in a Texas
execution, which is related to a state, not a federal, crime – an alcohol and
drug-fueled rape and murder 17 years ago by an illegal whose family brought him
into the country 35 years ago as a child. The interference hinges not on the
man’s guilt, which Leal’s advocates acknowledged, but on a technicality –
failure to inform Leal that he could have gotten legal representation from the
Mexican consulate in lieu of the court-appointed attorneys who represented him.
Independent Texans saw Obama’s interference as another intrusion of federal
power into the affairs of a state, which could cost Obama support in other
states.
Needless to say, Perry is a hard-edged conservative and a ferocious defender of
10th Amendments rights (“The powers not delegated to the United States by the
Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States
respectively, or to the people.”) – an explicit restriction of the federal
government to only those powers granted in the Constitution. Perry accuses the
federal government, especially the Obama administration, of illegal overreach.
Perry said “no thanks” to the feds whose stimulus offered taxpayer dollars for
education and unemployment assistance. The strings on “free money” from
Washington , he said, would restrict Texas in managing its own affairs. Perry
even depleted all state funds to fight recent wildfires before asking Washington
for disaster relief. His request has been ignored, which comes across as an
unvarnished federal power play, further pitting Perry and Texans against the
federal government.
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