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 running 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.
Please! A president that has more experience than the Community Organizer! Snoopy!