Taking a Look at the Governor, Back When He Was a Democrat

A raging liberal he was not... He was one of a handful of freshman “pit bulls,” so named because they sat in the lower pit of the House Appropriations Committee, where they fought to keep spending low.

But Mr. Perry cast some votes and took a few stands that seem to be at odds with his fiscal conservatism today. The most vivid example is his support of the $5.7 billion tax hike in 1987, signed by Gov. Bill Clements, a Republican, opposed by most Republican members. The bill passed the House by a 78-70 vote.

Another political move Mr. Perry made back then: he was a top Texas supporter and organizer in 1988 for Al Gore, who ran as a Southern conservative rather than the populist reformer he eventually became as the 2000 Democratic presidential nominee.

“I came to my senses,” Mr. Perry likes to say when asked about his Gore days.

The gap was obvious by 1989, his last year in the Legislature, when Mr. Perry carried a workers’ compensation insurance bill that angered Texas trial lawyers, then a powerful force in state politics. That same year, The Dallas Morning News named Mr. Perry one of the state’s 10 best legislators, but he was criticized by another publication.

The liberal Texas Observer called Mr. Perry the “Benedict Arnold of the Democratic Party” for siding too often with Mr. Clements.

“If The Texas Observer ever says anything good about me, then I’ve been hit on the head and they can send me back home,” Mr. Perry said.

Thank you for the ping! I put this bit of info together for the Rove-Perry crowd to show the real connection between the two but it tells a bit more about Perry.

["Perry was part of the "Pit Bulls", a group of Appropriations members who sat on the lower dais in the committee room (or "pit") who pushed for austere [Texas] state budgets during the 1980s."] Source

Karl Rove claims Rick Perry as his candidate in Perry's FIRST campaign for the Texas Agriculture Commission. [From what I’ve found this was their only collaboration]

Perry was a Texas Democrat (not a liberal Democrat). He switched to the Republican Party in 1989. In 1990 Perry won the election (against Jim Hightower) to head the Agricultural Committee (a post Perry was well suited for as having come from a cotton farming family -- raised and worked the land -- and had a degree in Animal Science from Texas A&M). He was reelected in 1994 to that office in a landslide (62%). He did not seek reelection for a 3rd term and ran for Lt. Gov of Texas (1998), winning in a 3 way race, in a hard fought campaign against John Sharp (D).

["Perry thus became the state's first Republican lieutenant governor since Reconstruction, taking office on January 19, 1999 until his ascension to the governorship on December 21, 2000 upon the resignation of then-Governor George W. Bush."] Source

In that 1998 campaign year, the G.W. Bush camp (which included Karl Rove) was campaigning for W's reelection for Texas Gov (1st elected in 1994) and was at odds with Rick Perry's hard nosed campaign against John Sharp for Lt. Gov. Karl Rove told Perry to soft peddle to lift Bush's numbers in minority groups, Perry refused. Bush won reelection as Texas Governor. Perry won office as Lt. Gov. (arguably a stronger office than TX governor).

["Bush won by 1.4 million votes, Perry by fewer than 70,000. There were harsh words afterward; Rove and Dave Carney, a top Perry strategist, now are bitter foes."] Source

Then there was this in the TX Monthly about the 2010 governor's race:

October 2009: “....It would not be surprising to find that Karl Rove had a hand in this somewhere. The Bushies are definitely in the Hutchison camp, and there is no love lost between them and the Perry camp. The tension (according to Perry team members whom I interviewed on this subject last year) dates all the way back to Perry’s race for lieutenant governor in 1998, when Rove insisted that Perry stick with a positive message even while he was being pounded by John Sharp. Meanwhile, in the view of the Perry camp, Rove was trying to turn out Hispanic Democrats who would vote for Bush, even though that meant they were likely to switch back to the D column to vote for Sharp. The Perry team decided that they had to fight back, Rove or no Rove, and they went rogue, going after Sharp hard. It worked.

...If that animosity weren’t enough, after Bush was named the winner in December 2000, Perry was insistent that the president-elect vacate the governor’s mansion so that Perry could move in, notwithstanding that Bush wanted to stay a day or two longer before leaving for Washington. I heard that firsthand from the Bushies at the time....” -- Texas Monthly

********

Basically, in the 2010 GOP primary in TX for the governor's office, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutichison was hoping to come home to Texas as Governor. Her election was being backed by the Bush family and all their power players were lined up against Gov. Rick Perry, with Karl Rove serving as Sen Hutchison's adviser against Perry. Source

Rick Perry won a 3rd term as Governor of Texas in 2010.

There is some new information in this article. It also helps explain how ideologically easy it is for a Texas Democrat to transition to a Republican.

While a Tennessee democrat transitioned from a southern democrat to a LIBERAL.

…..“Gore won a seat in Congress in 1976 "with 32 percent of the vote, three percentage points more than his nearest rival." He won the next three elections in 1978, 1980, and 1982 where "he was unopposed twice and won 79 percent of the vote the other time."

In 1984, Gore successfully ran for a seat in the U.S. Senate, which had been vacated by Republican Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker. He was "unopposed in the Democratic Senatorial primary and won the general election going away," despite the fact that Republican President Ronald Reagan swept Tennessee in his reelection campaign the same year.

During his time in Congress, Gore was considered a "moderate" (he referred to himself as a "raging moderate") opposing federal funding of abortion, voting in favor of a bill which supported a moment in silence in schools, and voting against a ban on interstate sales of guns. His position as a moderate (and on policies related to that label) shifted later in life after he became Vice President and ran for president in 2000…”…… Source

Moving over comments from my duplicate thread:

_______________________________________________________________________________

To: BuckeyeTexan

“I came to my senses,” Mr. Perry likes to say ...

As did Ronald Reagan, Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, David Horowitz, Michael Medved, David Mamet, Andrew Breitbart, Michael Savage, et al. The list is endless.

2 posted on Thu Jul 14 2011 19:20:58 GMT-0500 (CDT) by Texas Eagle

_______________________________________________________________________

To: BuckeyeTexan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_the_environment

Al Gore was an environmental wacko going back to the 1970’s.

And as Texas Chairman of Gore’s campaign, Perry knew this.

3 posted on Thu Jul 14 2011 19:24:12 GMT-0500 (CDT) by Snickering Hound _______________________________________________________________________________

To: BuckeyeTexan

Good for him. At least he found out that he did Not belong to the Democrat party. And it seems his actions have proven that.

I sure hope they do not find any weaknesses or skeletons in Perry’s past -because at this point liberals -and even conservatives -are going after potential GOP candidates like red meat!

4 posted on Thu Jul 14 2011 19:25:37 GMT-0500 (CDT) by Anita1 _______________________________________________________________________________

To: Texas Eagle

I’m offended, sir. You forgot to mention me in your list. As a young boy I lived in awe of FDR and was devasted by his loss. Maturity and an “all expense paid tour of the Pacific” changed me. I’m proud of my journey as were those listed.

6 posted on Thu Jul 14 2011 19:55:26 GMT-0500 (CDT) by CaptainAmiigaf _______________________________________________________________________________

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.