Rick Perry’s Campaign May Be At The Beginning Of The End
Rick Perry's campaign is already showing signs that it may not last long.
Rick Perry’s campaign seems to be in crisis as The Washington Post reports has stopped paying his campaign staff:
Former Texas governor Rick Perry’s presidential campaign is no longer paying its staff because fundraising has dried up, while his cash-flush allied super PAC is preparing to expand its political operation to compensate for the campaign’s shortcomings, campaign and super PAC officials and other Republicans familiar with the operation said late Monday.
Perry, who has struggled to gain traction in his second presidential run, has stopped paying his staff at the national headquarters in Austin as well as in the early caucus and primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, according to a Republican familiar with the Perry campaign who demanded anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.
Perry campaign manager Jeff Miller told staff last Friday, the day after the first Republican presidential debate, that they would no longer be paid and are free to look for other jobs — and, so far at least, most aides have stuck with Perry — according to this Republican.
“As the campaign moves along, tough decisions have to be made in respect to both monetary and time related resources,” Miller said in a statement. “Governor Perry remains committed to competing in the early states and will continue to have a strong presence in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.”
Katon Dawson, Perry’s South Carolina campaign chairman and head of a six-person staff there, said, “Money is extremely tight. We all moved to volunteer status.” But, he added, “Our team is working as hard as it was last week.”
News that Perry campaign had stopped paying its staff in South Carolina was first reported late Monday afternoon by the National Journal. News that the campaign was not paying any staff was first reported Monday night by CBS News.
The Perry campaign reported raising $1.14 million in the second quarter of this year and on July 15 reported having $883,913 on hand. The campaign is scaling down its expenditures to bare essentials – commercial plane tickets and hotel rooms for the candidate and an aide or two — and hoping for a breakthrough moment, perhaps in the Sept. 16 debate, that could boost fundraising.
Meanwhile, a group of Opportunity and Freedom super PACs promoting Perry’s candidacy — which are in far healthier state financially, having raised nearly $17 million by mid-July — are planning to compensate for the shrinking campaign.
Austin Barbour, senior adviser to the super PAC, said the group would step up “to aggressively support the governor in a number of different ways.”
“We’ve got plenty of money,” Barbour said. “That’s what I know. And we’re going to put that money to use in Iowa to make sure the governor is in the top three there. The super PAC is not going to let Rick Perry down.”
Barbour added, “He’s going to get one breakout performance at a debate and he’ll really jump up in the polls. Voters need to see him perform very well at a debate…This is a very fluid field, things will change a lot, and we will continue to be very patient.”
Perry’s supporters are trying to put a positive spin on this by noting that at least some portion of Perry’s staff has apparently decided to say on in an unpaid role for now, but there’s no doubt that this is bad news for the former Texas Governor. From the moment he entered the race, the ghosts of his failed campaign in 2012 hung over him and many wondered if he would ever be able to live that particular disaster down. While Perry has been an earnest campaigner since getting in the race, he has not seen anywhere near the level of support that accompanied his entry into the race in during the 2012 cycle. At the end of the reporting period that ended on June 30th, Perry’s campaign had raised a pathetic $1.1 million, which far short of the $17 million that he rose in just the first 49 days of his campaign back in 2011. Additionally, Perry has struggled significantly in the polls. With only a handful of notable exceptions, Perry has not polled above 3% in any national poll since he entered the race and his polling in the past month declined so badly that he was unable to make the cut for the prime time debate last Thursday. Given that his performance in the early debate was nothing to write home about, and that he was largely out shined by Carly Fiorina. it’s unlikely that he will rise high enough in the polls high enough to be included in the prime time debate in September. All of this points in one inevitable direction for Perry, and it isn’t a pretty one.
It’s still possible, of course, that Perry could find a way to bounce back from all of this. Candidates have been in situations not dissimilar to his in the past and managed to turn things around, after all, and there is certainly at least enough time for that to happen. The most notable recent example of that, of course, is John McCain whose campaign was in a very bad spot of its own in the summer of 2007 only to turn things around and win the nomination in 2008. That seems unlikely to happen in Perry’s case, though. Unlike Perry, McCain was facing what ended up being a fairly weak field that was unable to take advantage of the political climate of the time. Perry has a host of opponents who are just as qualified as he is and come without much of the same baggage. More importantly, though, it seems rather apparent that the Perry has not outlived the impression he created in 2011. It comes up almost every time his name comes up in discussions of the state of the race, and it was quite prominent on social media during the early debate on Thursday, as if everyone was just waiting for Perry to make another mistake. Fair or not, first impressions are often hard to overcome and Perry clearly doesn’t seem to have overcome his. Until he does, he’s unlikely to be one of those names we see at the top of the Republican field.
The beginning of this end was four years ago on a debate stage when he convinced most of the country he’s too dumb to be prez. All he’s doing now is convincing everyone that he’s dumb enough to be the last person in the country to figure out that Rick Perry is too dumb to be prez.
A question on libertarian philosophy – would any good libertarian hang around a losing campaign unpaid?
Destined to be just another member of Trump’s posse.
Who, by the way, really did nothing special herself.
She does, however, endorse a family leave policy that is actually worse than that of Afghanistan. So like the rest of the Republican party she wants to make the US into a 3rd world nation…and make life harder on women.
Not possible Doug. It was over before it began.
Well, that’s mighty white of them.
What an amazing coincidence for two independently managed organizations to operate with such apparent synergy!
@Argon: Yup! No coordination at all here, none at all, no sirree, move along folks move along, nothing to see here.
And Dr Carson and Ms Fiorina, Rev Huckabee and Mr Santorum proceed as if they are actually potential presidents. Gov Perry obviously still carries the stain he spread on himself 4 years ago but he did actually serve as governor of Texas for 14 years.
Such is the state of the party of Lincoln and Grant and Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower (and, well, Coolidge and Hoover). Much as I despise the present so-called-conservatives and their damned ‘movement’ I’ve got to say it’s a damn shame.
I guess that’s why we can’t have nice things.
Here’s the scary thing. If he hadn’t jumped in the race last time and had such a spectacular debate meltdown, which he attributed to recovering from back surgery or something, Perry might very well have been the dominant front-runner this time around.
Mike
Brilliant sub-title from Jon Chait;
@JohnMcC: I always like to remind people (James) that Eisenhower was an aberration in the Republican Party.
… oops.
@JohnMcC:
Yeah and I was dog catcher of Potosi MO for 4 mos…. Not really, but if I had I would have about the equivalent qualifying experience. Seriously, Gov of Texas is worse than a jar of warm p!ss.
What a shame. I really thought the glasses would put him over the top this time.
So I guess the Impressive Glasses of Intellect didn’t, err, work when it came to impressing donors?
Quelle surprise!
Rick Perry has always struck me as a slightly concussed Pomeranian thinking that he’s a pit bull.
@grumpy realist: Maybe a Mustache of Understanding would have worked.
@gVOR08:
It would be interesting to see how Eisenhower’s policies would poll among present-day Republicans. On the one hand, they were waaaaaay to the left of the current Republican base. On the other hand, as we’ve seen with the Kenyan Muslim, even Obama’s policies get much more favorable polling from Republicans than you would expect — as long as you don’t say whose policies they are, or give them identifiable labels like “Obamacare”.
@gVOR08: I did so NOT need that image….
@DrDaveT:
Well yeah…because Obama is actually a Conservative…as opposed to today’s Republicans, who are flaming radicals.
Seriously; Supply-side economics? On what planet does that f’ed up theory qualify as Conservative?
The Iraq War? On what planet does invading and occupying another sovereign nation for no reason qualify as Conservative?
Hobby-Lobby? On what planet does allowing an entity to pick and choose when the corporate veil applies qualify as Conservative?
These people are out there….
@gVOR08: Wow, you never know what you’re going to turn up when you allow curiosity to lead you. The ‘Ike is an aberration among Repubs’ thought is one that I’d always sort of ‘known’ and your song on that theme lead to wikipedia.
He’d been adamant about avoiding politics while leading the combined armies in Europe, as is well known and one of his greatest contributions to the war. But I’d never heard that apparently Truman wanted to see a Dem win the WH is ’48 so badly that in ’47 he offered to run as Ike’s VP if Ike would head the Dem ticket. And in ’48 when some Repubs in New Hampshire ran as delegates for the Repub convention as Ike supporters he released a statement: “…lifelong professional soldiers in the absence of some obvious and overriding reason (should) abstain from seeking high political office.” When he finally succumbed to the ‘Draft Eisenhower’ movement and accepted the Repub nomination it was because he disagreed vehemently with Sen Taft’s isolationism.
A story I heard years ago about Ike’s tenure as President of Columbia University has always amused me. His relationship with the faculty was always difficult; a military career is bound to be poor preparation for leading a congress of intellectuals who consider themselves each one to be a giant in their own fields. Apparently at one meeting he felt he had to remind the assembled professors that they were “employees of this University”. Whereupon someone reminded him, “General Eisenhower, we ARE this University.” The friend who told me that story went on to be a prof at Auburn.
Old farts tend to ramble. Thanks for your attention.
Rick Perry in hipster glasses is analogous to
Michael Dukakis commandeering a tank.
@JohnMcC:
He’d successfully led Patton and Montgomery while reporting to two masters, FDR and Churchill. Anyone who says Eisenhower had no political experience does not understand what he did in WWII. On the other hand, he could, and did, fire American generals, which he couldn’t do with academics.
@gVOR08: I’ve always felt that the closest analogue of a university dealing with its professors is Europe under the Schism when you had multiple freewheeling mad Popes running around excommunicating each other. Frankly, the Medicis taking over the Papacy was a step UP in the process….
So now we are going to see Republican theories about democracy and campaign finance in action.
Perry is broke…but the PAC supporting him has about $17M on hand…and it comes almost entirely from just 3 donors.
Welcome to the US of A…where money is speech and speech ain’t free.
If this is the beginning of the end, as Doug claims…then it’s going to be a long slow descent.
OT…….
Tuesday is Republican Foreign Policy Day:
Trump –
Bush embraces the Bush Doctrine –
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/08/11/jeb-bush-wants-to-bring-back-the-bush-doctrine/
Hey. Where’s Perry?
@C. Clavin:
Hmmmm… Ida Know, when JEB! says this: “In all of this, the United States must engage with friends and allies, and lead again in that vital region.” it sounds to me like he is agreeing with Obama’s Iran policy.
Oooooppps, wait a minute, no guns, no bombs, no dead Ayrabs, no ‘Coalition of the Willing’… My bad.