Rick Perry (R)

Presidential candidate (since August 2011), Governor of Texas (since 2000)

(Daniel Barry/Getty Images)

Why He Matters

Perry, already Texas' longest-serving governor, won an unprecedented third four-year term in 2010. But it isn't just Perry's record-setting reign that has him sounding like the leader of his own republic.

Perry, a southern Democrat-turned-Republican, ignited a furor when he told an anti-tax "Tea Party" crowd in April 2009 that the federal government "has become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of our citizens and its interference with the affairs of our state" and suggested that Texas may consider seceding from the rest of the country.

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Background

At a Glance

Career History: Former Chairman, Republican Governors' Association; Lieutenant Governor of Texas (1998-2000); Texas Agriculture Commissioner (1990-98); state representative (1985-90)
Birthday: March 4, 1950
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Alma Mater: Texas A&M, degree in animal science, 1972
Spouse: Anita Thigpen Perry

Religion: United Methodist
State Office: Office of the Governor, State insurance Building, 1100 San Jacinto, Austin, Texas, 512-463-2000
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Path to Power

James Richard "Rick" Perry is a fifth generation Texan, a son of tenant farmers, Ray and Amelia Perry, who grew up in the west Texas town of Paint Creek, north of Abilene.

Perry was an Eagle Scout and attended Texas A&M, where he won a spot as a "yell leader," a male cheerleader, and earned a degree in animal science in 1972.

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Perry enlisted in the Air Force after graduating and flew C-130 transport planes in the Europe and the Middle East. He left the Air Force in 1977 as a captain and returned to Texas to grow cotton with his dad.

Early Political Career

Perry's dad was a Democrat who served on the Haskell County Commission and the local school board. And before long, the son followed his father into politics.

Perry ran, as a Democrat, for the Texas House from a district centered in his family's home county in 1985 and won. He was re-elected three more times and became a member of the influential Texas House Appropriations Committee. Perry was among the younger lawmakers known as the "pit bulls" for their efforts to slash state spending. In 1989, however, Perry was passed over for a leadership position and switched to the Republican Party.

Perry made his first bid for statewide office as a Republican, running for Agriculture Commissioner in 1990 against the colorful incumbent Democrat, Jim Hightower. Perry enlisted the help of a Texas political consultant with a growing reputation, Karl Rove, the man who would go on to become the top political aide to George W. Bush. Rove got the state Farm Bureau to back Perry, helping him narrowly defeat Hightower in an election year that was far less kind to other statewide Republican candidates.

Perry easily won a second four-year term as agriculture commissioner in an increasingly Republican state.

Lieutenant Governor

When Texas' legendary Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock (D) announced his retirement in 1998, Perry joined the race to replace him. Under the Texas constitution, the lieutenant governor, who presides over the state Senate, wields more power than the governor and Perry's race against Democratic state Comptroller John Sharp was intense.

Perry got campaign help from former President George H. W. Bush, whose son, George W., was sailing toward re-election as Texas governor. The senior Bush cut television ads for Perry telling fellow Texans, ''You have an opportunity here to elect a man to perhaps the most powerful position in the state of Texas. Everyone in our family strongly supports him. You have a good man. My heart is where Barbara's is, where George's is, in the Perry corner.''

Perry beat Sharp by 68,700 votes out of 3.7 million cast and much of the credit for that squeaker went to conservative Texas businessman James Leininger, who in the final week of the campaign guaranteed a $1.1 million loan to Perry. Perry, in a dead heat with Sharp, pumped the money into an advertising blitz and pulled ahead.

Texas Governor

Perry had barely settled into the lieutenant governor's office when Gov. George W. Bush announced in 1999 that he would run for president. Under Texas law, the lieutenant governor assumes control when the governor is out of state and Bush would be out of state a lot.

The ascending Perry quickly drew political heat. A fund-raising letter he sent to lobbyists directing them to pledge their contributions to his campaign as well as $25,000 from each of their clients was denounced as heavy handed.

Then Perry was caught on videotape stepping out of his car to talk a state trooper out of giving his driver a speeding ticket. ''Why don't you just let us get on down the road?'' Perry asked the trooper, who let the driver go with a warning. Perry later said he regretted leaving the car but denied pressuring the trooper to drop the ticket.

Perry proved much more of a partisan than Bush. Democratic lawmakers complained that Perry had broken the unwritten rule in Austin by campaigning against incumbent Democrats in the state legislature.

Perry, too, saw things as more partisan. But he saw himself as a victim, rather than a perpetrator, of partisan sniping. "The day George Bush left here, the muzzles were taken off," Perry said at the time.

Perry was finally sworn-in as Texas governor in December 2000 after Bush was confirmed as president. In 2002, he sought a four-year term of his own, running against Democrat Tony Sanchez, a political novice from Laredo with a family fortune estimated at $600 million.

2002 Gubernatorial Race

Sanchez was an oil man who once ran a savings-and-loan and a Democrat who gave generously to George W. Bush's gubernatorial and presidential campaigns. (Bush later named Sanchez to the Board of Regents at the University of Texas.) Sanchez spent $20 million of his own money to beat another Mexican American, state Atty. Gen. Dan Morales, in a 2002 Democratic gubernatorial primary for the right to face Perry.

Perry had no primary challenger, mainly because he had anticipated a challenge from Sen. Hutchison and took early steps to block the senator from running. Perry called a meeting of the state's top Republicans and immediately asked them to support his candidacy. Perry then asked them to call Hutchison and encourage her to stay put in the Senate, where the chamber was evenly divided between the two parties and every GOP vote was needed. Hutchison stayed.

Perry began his campaign against Sanchez with a television ad claiming that Sanchez' defunct Tesoro Savings and Loan had been used by Mexican drug lords to launder $25 million in drug money. In a second ad, Perry linked the Mexican drug dealers - and by extension Sanchez - to the murder of a law enforcement agent.

Sanchez denied any wrongdoing and ran ads of his own claiming Perry was indebted to Texas businessmen, including the former chairman of Enron, Kenneth Lay, who was appointed to the state's public utility commission a day after making a $25,000 campaign contribution to Perry.

Perry rolled over Sanchez on Election Day and went on to win reelection in 2006 in a five-way race that included independent candidate Kinky Friedman, the Texas novelist.

2010 Gubernatorial Race

Sen. Hutchison officially kicked off her race to replace Perry in August 2009. She had the support of much of establishment Washington behind her, and attacked Perry as having overstayed his welcome and for making "irresponsible" decisions.

But Perry soon shot to a big lead by embracing the anti-Washington rhetoric embraced by the Tea Party activists, capitalizing on Hutchison's ties to the Texas and national establishment. He beat Bill White in November.

The Issues

Perry has built a record as a fiscal and social conservative appealing to Republican voters, particularly evangelical conservatives. Perry has always stressed a desire to shift more political power from Washington to the states on issues ranging from environmental cleanup to the drug war.

He's a vocal opponent of abortion rights and same-sex marriage. He supports tort reform, school vouchers and the death penalty. Facing a $10 billion Texas budget shortfall in 2003, he called for cuts in state spending in all programs except education. He has sought cuts in property taxes and is a regular critic of federal tax policies. But in 2004, Perry proposed increasing so-called sin taxes, including a $5 tax on admission to adult entertainment venues, to help fund schools.

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Obama Stimulus Package

Perry created a stir in early 2009 when, as a guest speaker at anti-tax "Tea Party" rallies, he suggested that the federal government was becoming so repressive that Texas might consider seceding. But Perry had raised the states' rights issue a week before those high-profile rallies when he announced his support for a Texas House resolution declaring that any federal rule with strings attached - like President Obama's economic stimulus funding - should be "prohibited or repealed."

The stimulus package is a favorite foil as Perry sharpens his limited-government, anti-tax rhetoric. Yet, while Perry publicly toyed with the idea of rejecting stimulus money bound for Texas, he eventually agreed to accept $16.5 billion of the $17 billion, rejecting only the money for jobless benefits that he said could increase costs for the state. The Republican-led state legislature is already working on legislation to force Perry to accept that remaining $555 million.

Death Penalty

Perry supports the death penalty in a state that has executed more convicted criminals than any other - either before the death penalty was determined to be unconstitutional in 1972 or after it was reinstated in 1976.

But Perry drew international attention in 2001 when he vetoed a bill that would have banned the execution of the mentally retarded. He did so at a time when a number of other governors, including Florida's Jeb Bush, were endorsing such bans. Perry said the court system already protected the mentally ill and claimed Texas never executed anyone who was mentally retarded. Supporters of the ban later identified six men executed between 1990 and 2001 who had I.Q.s below 70, the threshold for determining mental retardation.

HPV Vaccinations

Perry upset Texas conservatives in 2007 by issuing an executive order requiring girls entering 6th grade to be vaccinated with Gardasil, a drug made by Merck & Co. that protects against the sexually-transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer. He was the first governor to do so.

Conservatives said the order contradicted the state's abstinence-only sex-education policies and overrode parental decision-making. Perry drew additional criticism when it was revealed that he and aides discussed requiring the vaccinations the same day Merck, its sole manufacturer, donated $5,000 to Perry's campaign. Moreover, Perry's former chief of staff, Mike Toomey, was a Merck lobbyist in Texas.

Three months after issuing the order, Perry allowed a bill overturning that order to become law.

Homosexuality

Perry defended Texas' sodomy laws, which banned sex between homosexual couples, as "appropriate" even as the U.S. Supreme Court was preparing to declare it unconstitutional in a 2002 case brought by two Houston men.

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