PRO — He pushed through tort reform to limit lawsuits against doctors, which encouraged the continued expansion of major medical centers around the state. He also set up an enterprise fund that gave businesses nearly a half a billion dollars in grants and financial incentives over the last eight years to encourage their expansion.
For homeowners, he cut real estate taxes to make the state’s already cheap housing a bit more affordable. And a few months ago, with the state facing a $27 billion deficit in its two-year budget, Perry called state lawmakers into a special session and insisted lawmakers not raise taxes. The Republican-dominated Legislature complied, slashing billions of dollars in aid to public schools.
CON – Perry, an Air Force veteran — which gives him an additional piece of ammunition against his Republican counterparts and Obama — was nonetheless embroiled in a controversy that pitted his eagerness to gain Texas jobs from a Chinese firm with national security concerns exprsessed by the Bush and Obama administrations.
In 2008, the governor announced that telecommunications firm Huawei Technologies would base its U.S. operations in Plano, Texas. In a video of that October 2010 event — now playing on YouTube, courtesy of the governor’s office — Perry praised the company’s “really strong worldwide reputation” and its chairman, Ren Zhengfei, whose straight talk he said reminded him fondly of West Texans.
While Perry focused on Huawei’s ability to create jobs in a sluggish economy, national security experts in both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations had concluded that the global telecom giant poses a potential cyber-security risk to the U.S. military and businesses. Three times since 2008, a U.S. government security panel has blocked Huawei from acquiring or partnering with U.S. companies because of concerns that secrets could be leaked to China’s government or military.
Perry campaign spokesman Mark Miner said that “if there are national security issues surrounding this company, they should be fully looked at.” He characterized Perry’s main involvement with Huawei as just “a ribbon-cutting for a company that was creating jobs here.”
PRO – Those who say Perry is too far to the right may be surprised to learn that he supports the DREAM Act, a pathway to citizenship and opposed Arizona’s controversial immigration law. That may lead to some land mines along the GOP primary campaign trail. But it could prove significant in moderating his image during a general election.Perry got about 39 percent of the Hispanic vote in his last election. In addition, he appointed a number of Hispanics to state offices and judgeships. (He also backed Al Gore – the old Al Gore, centrist Al Gore of the 1988 Democratic campaign –serving as Gore’s Texas campaign chairman. The irony there is pretty thick.)
CON – His ardent support for the death penalty – Texas is the execution capital of the U.S. – reached questionable levels in 2009. The governor abruptly dismissed the chairman and two members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission investigating the controversial execution of Cameron Todd Willingham who was convicted in an arson death case. Before the execution, Willingham’s lawyer had asked Perry to grant a stay based on a report from Dr. Gerald Hurst, a leading fire expert, who had concluded that “there is not a single item of physical evidence in this case which supports a finding of arson.” Willingham’s request, however, was denied. The ousted chairman, Sam Bassett, told the Houston Chronicle that he had heard from Perry’s staffers that they were “concerned about the investigations we were conducting.”
PRO – His prayer rally earlier this month, which drew 30,000 people, showed how adept Perry is at mixing politics and religion. The governor insisted the rally was not about politics but he granted interviews to dozens of Christian publications and radio stations leading up to the big event. Wearing his Christian fundamentalism on his sleeve will certainly help him in the Southern GOP primaries.
CON – The rally included some preachers and evangelicals with fringe views. One group backing Perry portrays homosexuality as a moral threat to the country. One of its top representatives has drawn criticism for a variety of anti-Muslim and anti-gay remarks.
Another Perry supporter is the infamous John Hagee, a San Antonio pastor who has suggested the Holocaust was a plan by God to prompt Jews to reclaim the Promised Land. Some other pastors who endorsed the rally are known for anti-Catholic slurs.
PRO or CON? Perry’s voice and speech patterns sound an awful lot like George W. Bush. Except maybe with a little bit more twang. He also has a folksy way of talking to average voters. At the same time, he’s already shown that he can go over the top in this plain-spoken approach, such as when he suggested the other day that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke would probably get an old-fashioned beating if he stepped foot in Texas.
