Tensions between Perry and Bush camps

The blunt, brash governor with a Texas drawl says he’s not worried about the flood of scrutiny that has greeted his emergence as an instant front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. News organizations and political opponents are mining his decade-long gubernatorial record in Austin, investigating everything from cozy ties with business interests — supporters have been the recipients of aid and appointments — to his stances on immigration and Social Security.


“I’ve taken the heat before, and I’m not particularly worried about this barrage,” Perry said in an interview with USA TODAY during a day of campaigning to friendly audiences in Iowa, where he hopes a victory in the opening caucuses next year will help catapult him to the nomination. He defends his record and dismisses the suggestion that damaging disclosures might undo his remarkable political rise.


He’s not worried, he said, because only one issue really matters to Americans in this election. It’s the one he plans to ride first against his Republican rivals and then against President Obama.




“I’ll be asked about a hundred different issues a thousand different ways,” he said in the interview Friday, one of only a few he has done since announcing his candidacy last month. “But it is about who has the record, who has the vision to get Americans working again.” That’s what “Republicans, independents and even I think a number of Democrats … are looking for.”


As he told those at a county GOP dinner in Jefferson, a coffeehouse crowd in Newton and workers at a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Atlantic, he can cite job-creation statistics in Texas that are the envy of the nation’s other 49 governors. The Lone Star State has accounted for 40% of the jobs created in the United States since June 2009.


Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, also has chastised Perry for branding Social Security “a Ponzi scheme.”


Perry responded to that by saying, “If Vice President Cheney or anyone else says that the program that we have in place today, and young people who are paying into that expect that program to be sound and for them to receive benefits when they reach retirement age, that is just a lie.”


These were just the latest tiffs in a spat that goes back to 1995. Perry was the state’s agricultural commissioner and Bush was the newly sworn-in governor. Perry lobbied for the appointment of his wife’s brother, Joseph E. Thigpen, to a vacancy on the 11th Court of Appeals in Eastland. Bush turned him down.


Bill Ratliff, who was Perry’s first lieutenant governor, said Perry blames Rove for denying the request. “It created some friction between the two and Karl got blamed.”


Bill Miller, a veteran Austin political consultant, confirms Ratliff’s recollection.


“The staff always takes the blame,” Miller said. “Karl absolutely was the surrogate.”


In a letter on commission stationary and dated Dec. 17, 1994, Perry wrote a recommendation to Clay Johnson, Gov.-elect Bush’s director of appointments.


“Let me, for the sake of ‘truth in advertising,’ share that Joseph is my brother-in-law,” Perry said. “He is an outstanding talent who has the ability to be a distinguished jurist.”


The appointment would last only the two years remaining on the vacant seat’s term, then the judge would face an election. “I obviously will campaign vigorously for him in 1996,” Perry said of Thigpen.


Bush spokesman Freddy Ford did not return messages seeking comment on the matter. Mark Miner, Perry’s campaign spokesman, said the request “has no bearing on the good relationship between President Bush and Governor Perry.”