Correction:
Earlier versions of this story incorrectly referred to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) as a former senator. Hutchison has announced that she will not seek reelection next year, but she plans to complete her current term. This version has been corrected.
Video: Texas Gov. Rick Perry's decision to sign an executive order mandating girls in the state receive the HPV vaccine to prevent cervical cancer drew criticism at the GOP debate Monday night.
Religious conservatives in Texas were stunned in 2007 when Republican Rick Perry became the first governor in the country to order young girls to get a vaccine against a sexually transmitted virus that can cause cervical cancer.
The vaccine would encourage promiscuity, according to many conservatives, who had long supported Perry’s views against abortion and same-sex marriage.
Gov. Rick Perry (R-Tex.) wasted no time going after President Obama, saying, "We don't need a president who apologizes for America." (Aug. 15)
It soon emerged that Perry was close to one of the lobbyists who was pushing for the order and who worked for the vaccine’s New Jersey-based manufacturer. That lobbyist, Mike Toomey, had served as Perry’s chief of staff and has since helped found a super PAC aimed at boosting Perry’s bid for the presidency.
Perry, who long defended the vaccine mandate, reversed his position on the issue as he launched his GOP presidential bid, calling the order “a mistake” and saying he agrees with the Texas legislature’s decision to overturn it.
“The fact of the matter is that I didn’t do my research well enough to understand that we needed to have a substantial conversation with our citizenry,” Perry told reporters on the campaign trail in August.
The issue surfaced again at a GOP presidential primary debate Monday night, when Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum raised the vaccine question.
Perry reiterated his belief that he made a mistake by issuing the executive order, which allowed parents to opt out. “If I had it to do over again, I would have done it differently.”
The episode illustrates the difficulties Perry faces in navigating competing Republican interest groups, and it resurrects allegations of cronyism that have dogged the Texas executive throughout his political career.
“At the time that he did this, it just had everybody scratching their heads,” said Andrew Wheat, research director at Texans for Public Justice, an Austin-based watchdog group that has frequently locked horns with Perry. “He wasn’t known as a crusader for women’s health. There’s no explanation that seems to make sense other than that Toomey’s got his ear and he got Perry to do this favor for him.”
Perry campaign spokesman Mark Miner dismissed the criticism. “Governor Perry has always stood on the side of protecting life, and that is what this issue was about,” he said Tuesday. “These allegations are false and have no merit.”
The vaccine in question, Merck’s Gardasil, protects against the human papillomavirus, or HPV, the most common sexually transmitted infection. HPV causes genital warts and can lead to cervical cancer, a disease that strikes about 10,000 American women a year and kills about 3,700.
The federal government approved Gardasil in June 2006, and medical authorities began recommending that all girls get the shots at ages 11 and 12, before they are likely to be sexually active. Boys have since been added to the recommendations as well.
Merck launched a multimillion-dollar lobbying and marketing effort to encourage that the vaccine — priced at about $360 for an entire treatment — be made mandatory for schoolgirls. But anti-vaccination groups and many religious conservatives pushed back, citing health and morality concerns, while Merck came under fire for its aggressive tactics.
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