Rick Perry and His Eggheads by Sasha Issenberg
Author:Sasha Issenberg [Issenberg, Sasha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-98677-1
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2011-08-23T00:00:00+00:00
In the spring of 2005, Carney stood in an empty Mexican restaurant called the Oasis on Austinâs Lake Travis, in front of what amounted to Perryâs extended political family, and prepared to introduce a quartet of strangers. A crowd of about forty people were seated, auditorium-styleâa group that included the core campaign staff for 2006; a retinue of outside consultants and vendors; Perry and his wife, Anita; and their kitchen cabinet of informal advisers, many of them former aides.
Those who worked for Perry considered him âa dream client,â as Baselice put it: eager to make fund-raising phone calls, willing to defer to his advisers on strategic questions, and happy about following their orders. He also showed his personal gratitude to those who served him. After 2002, to congratulate them on his victory, Perry invited members of his core team (including Carney and his wife) to join him climbing Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas. A little over a year later, he rounded up many of the same advisers (including Carney again) for a retreat in the Bahamas, an outing that was nominally devoted to school-finance policy but was more hands-on in its treatment of scuba-related issues. (The trip triggered an ethics investigation when it was revealed that the expenses had been paid by political supporters. Perry was eventually cleared of wrongdoing.) âThe joke is weâre like the mafiaâyou only think you get out,â says Deirdre Delisi, who managed Perryâs 2002 campaign before becoming his gubernatorial chief of staff. âPerry inspires a lot of loyalty in terms of people who have worked with him and stayed, whether theyâre officially in it or not.â
The campaign was preparing for what it expected to be a difficult primary against Carole Keeton Strayhorn, the state comptroller and former Austin mayor. The rivalry was already intense between Perryâs world and Strayhornâs, and early in the day Carney had set the tone by claiming, âWeâre going to rip her leg off and beat her over the head with it!â The statement jarred Republican operative Bill Noble, who had expected to be attending more of a planning session than a pep rally, one where there would be an open exchange of ideas about strategy but little need to fire up Perryâs loyalists. Then he saw how Carneyâs bluster was received by four strangers in their midst. âI just looked over at them, and there was this look of shock,â says Noble. âIt turns out it was for effect.â
Carney appeared intent on unsettling everyone at the Oasis restaurant that day, both the eggheads and the political hands they would be encountering for the first time. The daylong retreats were a ritual for Perry campaignsâand many in attendance were veterans of past retreats Carney had organized before the 1998 and 2002 racesâbut this was the first time he had prepared a syllabus. Carney had ordered fifty-five copies of Get Out the Vote!, and everyone who was to attend the retreat received one with orders to read it.
Perry would likely
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