Posted on 08/17/2011 6:59:46 AM PDT by nixonsnose
Gov. Rick Perry, a no-apologies conservative known for slashing government spending and opposing all tax increases, is about as Republican as you can get.
But that wasn’t always the case.
Perry spent his first six years in politics as a Democrat, in a somewhat forgotten history that is sure to be revived and scrutinized by Republican opponents if he decides to run for president.
A raging liberal he was not. Elected to represent a slice of rural West Texas in the state House of Representatives in 1984, Perry, a young rancher and cotton farmer, gained an early reputation as a fiscal conservative. 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 Perry cast some votes and took a few stands that seem to be at odds with the fiscal conservatism he champions today. The most vivid example is Perry’s support of the $5.7 billion tax hike in 1987, signed by Republican Gov. Bill Clements but opposed by most of the GOP members. The bill passed by a relatively close 78-70 in the Texas House. Even without adjusting for inflation, the legislation triggered the largest tax increase ever passed in modern Texas, according to Dale Craymer, president of the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association. Today, taking inflation into account, it would be worth more than $11 billion.
The Tribune thanks our Supporting Sponsors Craymer said the new taxes were used to plug a massive budget shortfall, with the money representing about 20 percent of the general revenue raised during that two-year budget period.
Almost a quarter century later, Perry, as governor, was faced with a similarly sized budget shortfall. But he took a markedly different tack in 2011: He opposed any new taxes, and signed a budget that made the first reduction in overall spending on public education since at least 1949.
Perry spokesman Mark Miner said votes taken decades ago don’t undermine the governor’s overall record, which he said includes the largest property tax cut in state history, enacted in 2006.
“You can pull votes from the 1980s, but the overall track record is one of fiscal responsibility and conservatism,” Miner said.
As a House Democrat, Perry also co-authored legislation aimed at tripling the amount of money state legislators are paid, House records show. In a 1989 interview with the Abilene Reporter-News, Perry cited the financial hardships Texas legislators faced trying to make a living back home while making a yearly salary of only $7,200 as part-time lawmakers. Voters rejected the proposal in a statewide referendum.
Perry said he could make ends meet only because his father tended to the farm while his wife worked as a nurse in Haskell, her hometown.
“I really don’t know how people in the insurance business or the real estate business do it. That’s one reason I voted for the pay raise,” Perry told the newspaper. “I think all the people of Texas ought to be able to serve.”
Miner said Perry no longer favored giving legislators a pay increase.
Another political move 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,” Perry likes to say when asked about his Gore days.
Perry can trace his political heritage back to a great-great grandfather, D.H. Hamilton, a former state legislator from Trinity County. Perry’s own father, Ray Perry, served as a county commissioner in Haskell County for almost 30 years. They were Southern Democrats, from the party that produced politicians like Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Baines Johnson.
In 1984, Rick Perry, then a young rancher and former Air Force pilot from Paint Creek, about 60 miles north of Abilene, was recruited by fellow Democrats to run for a House seat vacated by Rep. Joe Hanna, according to interviews and news articles. Democrat John Sharp, the former state comptroller who was Perry’s old college buddy, recalls getting a call from Clyde Wells, then the chairman of the Texas A&M System Board of Regents. Wells wondered who might make a good replacement for Hanna.
“I said: ‘Yeah, there was a guy in my outfit who’s from Haskell. Let’s find out if he’s still in the Air Force,” Sharp recalled saying of Perry. “Three weeks later he was in the race.”
Perry easily won and quickly became known as a rising star in the Texas House.
Then-House Speaker Gib Lewis, D-Fort Worth, decided to appoint several freshman lawmakers to the House Appropriations Committee — members he knew he could count on to keep spending low.
“All of them were very conservative guys and had a good head on their shoulders, and that’s how I picked 'em,” Lewis recalled. “When he first came to the Legislature it was predominately white, Democratic, conservative. He was one of them, and I was, too.”
No matter the label beside his name, the news coverage of Perry’s early years reveals the same ambition and enthusiasm for public office that the governor has brought to the national stage as a potential presidential candidate.
In one of the first lengthy newspaper profiles ever written about Perry, in the Abilene Reporter-News, fellow Rep. Cliff Johnson, now a lobbyist and longtime friend, said of the of the West Texas farm boy: “He’s one of the top two or three (representatives) of the freshman class. I think the sky is the limit.”
Perry’s wife, Anita, told the paper a few years later: “He breathes politics.”
At the beginning of his six-year run in the state House, Perry shot down the notion that he might switch parties despite his conservative leanings that put him at odds with his party leaders. After former U.S. Rep. Kent Hance of Lubbock defected to the Republican Party in 1985, Perry told the Abilene paper he was “disappointed,” saying he planned to “change my party” rather than defect to the other side.
“I want the left hand side of the party to make the right hand side of the party comfortable,” Perry was quoted as saying. Hance, now chancellor of Texas Tech University, said he remembers telling Perry, “‘Good luck on it. I don’t think you can do it.' … And sure enough he couldn’t.’’
The gap was obvious by 1989, his last year in the Legislature, when Perry carried a workers' compensation insurance bill that angered the Texas trial lawyers, then a much more powerful force in state politics. That same year The Dallas Morning News named Perry one of the state's ten best legislators, but he was ripped by another publication.
The liberal Texas Observer called Perry the “Benedict Arnold of the Democratic Party” for siding too often with Clements, the Republican governor, and not enough with his Democratic colleagues.
“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,” Perry quipped.
Rumors that Perry would defect to the GOP — and run against populist Democratic Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower — picked up steam by late 1989. On Sept. 29, 1989, he made it official at a Capitol press conference. At his side were GOP chairman Fred Meyer and U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm, a former Democrat who was aggressively courting would-be converts.
“I intend to vote the same convictions,” Perry said. “The only difference is there will be an R beside my name.”
Perry’s timing, now legendary, could not have been better. He was one of only two Republicans elected to nonjudicial statewide office in 1990. Eight years later, Republicans swept every one of them.
“Perry has been a risk taker,” said Hance, the party-switcher who became Texas Tech chancellor. “And if you look at Perry’s timing in every race, he’s been the golden guy.”
Chris Hooks contributed to this report.
Got any FACTS, or just more ignorant parroted lies?
///
he DID post facts, which he took the time to look up, in #19. i’ll assume you missed them accidently.
but i was previously a Perry supporter, and planned to vote for him. (you can look me up. i said many times here, that Perry would be a good president)
what changed my mind, was Perry supporters like YOU.
who do childish and vicious personal attacks, instead of honest discussion.
so then i went and did some research, and found that Perry is pro Amnesty, against the AZ law, pro dream act, campaigned for Gore
(who WAS a flaming liberal, and even if he disguised it somewhat, i expect Perry was smart enough to know that,
if he not just endorsed Gore, but CAMPAIGNED for Al Gore),
pro mandatory vaccination of 6th grade girls for STD
(even over the objections of CONSERVATIVES),
pro-Islam
(an EVANGELICAL quoting from the Quran, that denies Jesus,
and is the reason so many of our troops have been killed?),
and more.
i would like to see some SPECIFIC FACTS, on why anyone actually thinks Perry is conservative!
There is a lot about Perry that doesn’t qualify as conservative.
A Perry thread means Reagan being dragged through the mud, Reagan last voted for a Democrat President in 1948, the WWII era.
Perry was wanting to replace President Reagan with an Al Gore Democrat just as Reagan’s administration was on the verge of Cold War victory in 1988.
Reagan was not voting against himself in the 1980s and fighting to have Al Gore terminate his Reagan Revolution.
It makes a difference which historical period someone was a Democrat in, 1988 is a heck of a lot different than 1948.
In 1984 Reagan won 64% of the Texas vote, you must have been very confused during the 1980s to keep defending the Democrat opposition to Reagan.
A stupid quote, and not true.
In 1984 when Perry was signing up to become a Democrat leader and the rest of Texas was supporting Reagan, Perry was 34 years old, he was not a kid, in 1988 when he was fighting for Gore he was 38, in 2008 when he was fighting for Giuliani, he was almost 60 years old.
Actually, it should be named The Texas Trial Lawyers Tribune
“If you’re not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you’re not a conservative at forty you have no brain.”
I agree with your take on that hackneyed quote. If Churchill truly originated it, instead of just repeating it, I would have to say that it proves Churchill was as capable of expressing a shallow idea as well as a sagacious idea.
That's just an asinine statement.
Right. Along with all the other imperfect GOP candidates. The reality is that none of them are perfect personally, or on every issue. I find Sarah Palin shallow-thinking and incredibly annoying. Bachmann is starting to sound shrill with the "one-term President" soundbite. Perry used to be a Democrat and there's the Texas DREAM Act abomination. Romney is an unreliable waffler on social issues, and has RomneyCare. Newt is a narcissistic egomaniac, etc. etc. etc..
Okay, it ain't the best pool of candidates we've ever seen. But they're all miles better than the guy currently occupying the Oval Office. There's nothing wrong with healthy intra-party debates, but at some point, we have to stop letting the perfect be the enemy of the "a hell of a lot better than the Marxist in the White House."
There is no defense for someone devoting their political activism to replacing President Reagan with a President Al Gore.
"Rick Perry is NO fan of the Bush family, they despise him"
"Sarah Palin supports him for President". (Look at my photoshopped picture of the two of them together)
"He's ALWAYS been a conservative. Texas Democrats were the CONSERVATIVE party in the 1980s, it was the Reagan Republicans who were liberals back then"
"Perry is a limited government Republican who reduced spending in Texas"
"He got elected Lt. Governor on his own by defeating an entrenched incumbent. George Bush had NOTHING to do with it"
"Rick Perry has NEVER raised taxes in Texas"
"Perry is a tough, secure-the-borders guy. It's the federal government's fault there's illegal immigration in Texas, Rick Perry did everything he could to prevent illegals from coming here"
Why do you Perry haters fans always tell lies? Why don't you support your choice with facts?
You and I have had this argument before, and you are immune to logic and reason. Despite your claims of being a Texan and knowing Texas politics, you obviously know nothing about Texas Democrats in the 80’s, so further discussion with you is a waste of time. You may continue to troll the Perry threads with your claptrap - I will continue to correct you as I have the time and the inclination.
Some have said that when Perry said that the Arizona law “wasn’t the right direction for Texas,” he was taking a position against strict enforcement of immigration laws. Not so – what he actually said was,This was posted on FR previously, I guess you missed it: Seventeen (17) things that critics are saying about Rick Perry It is a fairly objective examination of those things you are asserting and more. With facts to back up what it says.
“I fully recognize and support a state’s right and obligation to protect its citizens, but I have concerns with portions of the law passed in Arizona and believe it would not be the right direction for Texas.”
His concern was related to the portion of the Arizona law that required peace officers to inquire about citizenship status. Perry believes that the best solution is to allow officers the discretion to ask if they deem it necessary to carry out their duty.
“Texas has a rich history with Mexico, our largest trading partner, and we share more than 1,200 miles of border, more than any other state,” Perry said. “As the debate on immigration reform intensifies, the focus must remain on border security and the federal government’s failure to adequately protect our borders. Securing our border is a federal responsibility, but it is a Texas problem, and it must be addressed before comprehensive immigration reform is discussed.” Texas has allocated more than $400 million in state funding to secure the border since 2005. In the last legislative session alone, $152 million was earmarked for border security.
Yeah, me as a Texan born and raised, who's stepfather held elective office in Texas, and who has never registered Democrat although I registered about the same time as Perry, and I was voting along with the 64% of Texans voting for Reagan while Perry was joining up to become a leader in the Democrat party and in four more years to fight to replace Reagan with Al Gore, I of course was voting to continue Reagan's Cold War efforts.
In fact Reagan had such an effect on me and Perry that at almost the same exact time, Perry was motivated to become a Democrat leader, and I was motivated to go back into military service and was even seeking mercenary work to help Reagan's Cold War efforts.
Am I disappointed that in 1988, Perry wanted to end the Reagan Revolution by replacing him with Al Gore, at that important moment when the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse? You betcha!
Both statements are true. Perry was raised in a Democrat family where his father was a long-serving Democrat county commissioner. It was natural for him to start his political career as a Democrat. He won his first election in 1984 when he was elected to the Texas house and soon became a rising star in Texas democrat politics. An opportunity to advance himself presented itself and he became Gore’s Texas campaign manager in 1988."Rick Perry is NO fan of the Bush family, they despise him"
Those too young to remember wouldn’t recognize the Al Gore of 1988. He opposed the federal funding of abortion, supported a moment of silence in schools for prayer, approved funding of the Nicaraguan contras and was against the ban on interstate handgun sales. Gore’s platform was one that a conservative West Texas Democrat like state representative Perry could support when he signed up to chair the Senator’s Texas campaign.
From the election on, the Gore/Perry partnership began to crumble and the way that their paths diverged in the past three decades speaks eloquently to the way American politics has been reshaped. Gore has sailed left, while Perry’s political odyssey has seen him tack in the other direction — and to the opposing party.
Perry says that the Gore experience helped him to “come to his senses,” and he switched to the Republican party in 1989, fully 22 years ago. Perry switched parties over two decades ago and critics somehow think that bringing it up now is newsworthy? Sorry guys, as we say in Texas, that dog won’t hunt.
If you’re interested in more details, here is a Texas Tribune article titled Rick Perry: The Democrat Years.
1988-Al Gore's Campaign Chairman against the Reagan Administration.
2008-Endorses the pro-abortion/pro-homosexual agenda/anti-gun/New York City Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, for President.
Yea, I’ve been trolling this site since 2006.
Let’s just decide based on facts. This article has some pretty important facts.
I voted for Mccain because I had to.
I’ll vote for Perry because I want to.
If we narrow our candidated to those in 100% agreement with us, the only ones left will be me and you
(and I’m not sure about you).
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