In South Carolina, moments to remember on the GOP trail

On Thursday morning, in a Hyatt Place hotel wedged between the highway and a strip of fast-food joints in North Charleston, S.C., Texas Gov. Rick Perry flashed a thumbs-up to the assembled press and exited the national stage. While some members of Team Perry exhibited levels of strain (“Don’t touch my stuff!” a sound technician screamed at a reporter in the back of the room), other Perry staffers treated the event like a bittersweet graduation ceremony.

Catherine Frazier, a deputy press secretary for Perry’s campaign, posed for pictures with the embedded network reporters she had driven around Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. The group talked about what the future held for them (Florida for the embeds, some rest back in Austin for Frazier) and wished one another luck. They reminisced about the time one of the embeds, CBS News and National Journal reporter Rebecca Kaplan, took offense when Perry suggested a paisley-patterned dress might look good on her, (“Maybe I was too harsh” she said with regret). Frazier recalled the time earlier in the week when she informed the reporters that a fuse in the Perry van had blown, so they couldn’t recharge their equipment on the road. The reporters took it in stride, she said, telling her it was fine as long as the problem was fixed by Friday.

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Watch highlights of the Republican presidential candidates' speeches after Newt Gingrich was declared the winner of the South Carolina primary. (Jan. 21)

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“But Friday never came,” Frazier said.

A few minutes later, Ray Sullivan, a close adviser to Perry, came down to help reporters understand the chronology of Perry’s decision to drop out.

“I flew in with the governor last night from Greenville and he made some comments on the plane that made me curious,” Sullivan said from within the center of a scrum of reporters. “And he said, ‘I know what I’m doing, I’ve got it taken care of.’ So needless to say, that makes people in my position curious.” Then he revealed that they stopped off at Wendy’s, and as they waited in line to order hamburgers, he prodded Perry, who told him he was dropping out. Some reporters dropped off to write their stories while new ones joined, repeating the same questions as those who came before them. “What did he order at Wendy’s?” one reporter asked. “Where were you sitting at Wendy’s?” inquired another.

Sullivan later said he didn’t think there was anything strange about the presidential campaign coming to an end in a fast-food restaurant.

“Rick Perry is a very normal, down-to-earth guy, so it’s not at all surprising,” he explained. “There’s nothing terribly unusual about it.”

Frazier approached Sullivan to discuss the cost of a flight change back to Texas, and a Perry aide in cowboy boots rolled a rack full of Perry’s clothes and bags out through the lobby. Ken Herman, a reporter with the Austin American-Statesman, pursued, capturing the moment on his flip camera. When one of the bags, emblazoned with the name “Rick,” fell off the rack in the parking lot, Herman exclaimed, “There is a God, and he likes people with tiny video cameras.”

* * *

In the corner of the parking lot where Perry’s bag fell, former candidate Herman Cain’s campaign bus driver, Rhett Evans, sat behind the wheel checking the day’s itinerary.