by Mike Allen
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Perry’s entry into the race on August 13 was the biggest threat so far to Team Romney. The candidate himself seemed nonchalant. “He just kind of shrugged and said, Welcome to the race,” said Tagg Romney, the oldest of his five sons. “He was like this not just in public but in private.… One reason Dad is an effective problem solver is that he sees the downside in everything.… The reason he is so good at saving companies is that he thinks through all the bad things that could happen and he plans for the worst. And so he doesn’t get as down.”
Romney’s inner circle was feeling decidedly downbeat about the entry of a big-state governor with a common touch who had never lost in ten prior elections. But then campaign strategist Stuart Stevens came to headquarters holding a copy of Perry’s campaign book, Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington. Stevens announced: “Folks, you gotta read this book. He’s going to eliminate Social Security. He wants to return it to the states. No Republican has ever won on that.” Before long, the Romney aides were downloading the book from Amazon, looking for more incendiary views that could be used against Perry in the upcoming debates.
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The Republican debate on September 7, staged at the Reagan Library in California beneath the looming presence of Ronald Reagan’s Air Force One, was Romney’s fourth debate in 2011 and his seventeenth presidential debate since 2007. In a nondescript conference room at his Boston headquarters, Romney had practiced three times, for two hours each time, while his inner circle, including Stevens, Russ Schriefer, Rhoades, and Beth Myers, a veteran loyalist who was said to be inside Romney’s brain, zinged questions and thought up answers. The prep team had been stripped down from the 2008 debate prep sessions, which had “looked like an introductory economics course at college,” recalled an adviser. Gone were the practice lectern and the giant briefing book. No one “stood in” for the opposing candidates. Even the businessman’s dress code had been abolished. Romney wore jeans and an open-necked shirt.
On the day of the debate, campaign manager Rhoades decreed that the candidate needed to be “chillaxed,” so Romney was isolated for a quiet pregame meal with his family. “We don’t talk politics. We don’t talk about the debate. We just talk,” said Tagg.
The debate was Rick Perry’s first on a national stage. He arrived at the Reagan Library at the last moment, worrying the MSNBC hosts. Perry finally burst into the hall declaring, “The new kid on the block!” As the debate began, the Texas governor, appearing onstage with a bright blue tie puffing from his enormous chest, was all swagger. Not backing off from Fed Up!, he assailed Social Security as a “monstrous lie” and a “Ponzi scheme.”
Perry boasted about his record creating jobs in Texas and turned on Romney to remind the audience that his rival not only came from a liberal state but had proved less effective than one of his liberal predecessors, Governor Michael Dukakis, the 1988 Democratic presidential nominee. “Michael Dukakis created jobs three times faster than you did, Mitt,” Perry said.
Romney smiled. “Well, as a matter of fact,” he replied, “George Bush and his predecessor created jobs at a faster rate than you did, Governor.”
The large audience burst into laughter.
Perry complained of feeling like a “piñata” as the other candidates batted away. With die-hard-right conservative audiences, the Texas governor won applause by defending his record of overseeing 234 executions (Brian Williams of NBC: “Have you ever lost sleep over that?” Perry: “No, sir, I’ve never struggled with that at all.”) But at a later debate in Orlando, he lost points with the audience by saying his opponents were heartless for wanting to deny college tuition tax breaks to the children of illegal immigrants. He looked tired and stumbled over his applause lines. Nodding at Herman Cain, the former businessman who was beginning to make his mark at debates with his “9-9-9” tax plan, Perry said he’d like to “mate him up” with Newt Gingrich. Standing next to Perry on stage, Romney gave a convincing mock wince. He coolly remarked that the debate that evening had produced a “couple of images I’m going to have a hard time getting out of my mind.”
After the Reagan debate, Romney adviser Ron Kaufman watched the video. Kaufman, a Washington lobbyist, was staying in the unfamiliar surroundings of a Courtyard by Marriott (“because we’re the cheap guys,” noted Kaufman, approving of the savings). Kaufman was practically purring over Romney’s timing. He compared him to Tom Brady, the veteran New England Patriots All-Pro quarterback. Romney’s crack about Perry and his job-creating predecessors had been rehearsed at debate prep, like almost all candidate quips, but Romney had found just the right moment to use it. He had come off sounding like Johnny Carson, Kaufman thought. Romney was not famous for making people laugh, but he was, without doubt, much improved over his 2008 debate persona, which had been stiff and humorless. Stuart Stevens had not hired anyone to coach Romney on his body language. He thought that “Do this, do that” instructions just made candidates self-conscious.
One political operative, a woman who had worked for George W. Bush and other leading Republicans, noticed something else about Romney. He seemed somehow more commanding, more manly, than he did four years ago, at once more relaxed and confident. On the other hand, she said, about half the Republican base “doesn’t want him.”
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After entering the race in August, Perry immediately shot to the top of the polls, and for a moment at least, it looked as though he might be the man to beat Romney. At the Orlando debate, one of the organizers was startled when Perry appeared at the “mic check,” the ritual pre-debate walk-through for the candidates, looking worn out before the debate had even begun. The Perry camp was complaining that the debate time had been lengthened to two hours to accommodate another candidate, former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson. Appearing less than excited about the prospect of performing before a live audience of five thousand and a national TV audience of five million, Perry grumbled something to the effect of “It’s 24/7 from now until next November,” the organizer recalled. “He didn’t say, I’m getting tired. It was just sort of, Wow, this takes a lot of energy. It was, I’ve got to be doing this 24/7 for the next fourteen months, geez.” The organizer was surprised that Perry would be so open, griping on a stage surrounded by people he didn’t know (but who knew plenty of reporters).
The reviews of Perry’s debate performances in the mainstream press and the blogs were devastating. While Romney won A grades, Perry was given Cs and Ds. The Texas governor was soon dropping precipitously in the polls. As the debates followed one after another—the Reagan Library on September 7; Tampa, Florida, on September 12; and Orlando on September 22—Perry’s swagger faded into an odd passivity. More ominously, his fundraising began to freeze up.
David Carney, Perry’s chief strategist, was dismissive of the debates as a noisy sideshow. A former top Perry fundraiser was not so sanguine. “Dave Carney did not think the debates were very important because, in Texas, they’re not. In Texas, it doesn’t affect your major donors. If you have a bad debate, they don’t care,” she said. The Perry operation had raised more than $15 million quickly, about half from Perry’s deep Texas well of supporters. But after the Tampa debate and “definitely” after Orlando, the money was “flatlining,” said the fundraiser. The fundraiser, who left the campaign in early October, was an old pro who had worked on the national level in several elections before joining the Perry team when he announced. She found the Perry operation to be surprisingly provincial. At first, she was working out of the chief finance officer’s private home “with dogs running around,” she recalled. (“We would go out to the pool to take calls to get a little peace and quiet.”) When she offered suggestions, she was told, “That’s not how we do it here.” She would answer, “Well, you’ve never run for president before, but okay.”
She liked Perry. “He’s the most charming person you ever met. The first time I ever met him, I was really stricken, he has this—just this political gift that I’ve kind
of heard about and never really seen up close, that everybody says Bill Clinton had. It’s the ability to connect with people immediately, and he does that very, very well. He’s warm and affectionate and he’ll work the room and hug everybody. He’s very good at finding things to connect with people on, if it’s sports or dogs or hunting.”
Perry, she said, liked to keep things at the “fluff/friendly level.” But that approach did not go over so well with some big donors, who expected answers on “big questions” and who felt entitled to spend time with the candidate, quizzing him.
In September, three days before the Orlando debate, the fundraiser took Perry to meet with some big donors in Florida. “They came prepared,” she recalled. “They were savvy, they were smart, and so they would come with lists of questions for him, and that surprised him.” She imitated Perry’s twangy voice asking, with genuine puzzlement, “Why do they need to know my position on global warming? Don’t they just like me?” She added, “Because I think everyone in Texas just likes him.”
The “worst example,” she said, was with Al Hoffman, a North Palm Beach businessman who was ambassador to Portugal in the George W. Bush administration. Twice serving as finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, Hoffman had the clout and connections to raise some $5 million for the Perry campaign, and his endorsement was worth even more as a signal to other big donors and fundraisers. “There could not be a bigger get,” said the fundraiser. Hoffman had “stayed on the sidelines and has not been crazy about Perry,” she said, but she persuaded him to meet with the candidate on his swing through Florida for the Orlando debate.
Hoffman came to a meeting with Perry brandishing a four-page list of sixteen questions, expecting a respectful audience and response. “[Hoffman’s] absolutely worth all the time in the world,” said the fundraiser. “Other candidates have said, Hey, come on the plane with me for a week. Let’s really spend time together.”
Perry chafed at even spending an hour with Hoffman. “I think he was tired and just feeling like, I have been in the race a month and I’m really ahead in the polls, and why are these people still demanding answers of me that I don’t have yet?” said the fundraiser.
Usually candidates go to Ambassador Hoffman at his Palm Beach mansion, so the fundraiser was a little embarrassed to insist that the ambassador come meet Perry in a conference room at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach. (It wasn’t even a full conference room, she recalled, but “some little corner of it.”) She maneuvered to get more face time between Perry and Hoffman, making Perry twenty minutes late for a photo op. Perry just seemed peeved. “Sixteen questions?” Perry asked. “Can you believe the nerve? Can’t he go read about my positions on these things?” he said to Dave Carney, who seemed equally put out to have to kowtow to Hoffman.
At the meeting, Hoffman “kind of dropped the idea that, Well, sometimes I travel with the candidate. He didn’t ask, but he kind of let him know that he usually gets more than a thirty-minute meeting at the convention center,” said the fundraiser.
Later, on the plane flying—without Hoffman—from Palm Beach to Orlando, Perry turned to Carney and said, with a laugh, “He wants to come on the plane with us and talk. I don’t think that’s going to be happening.” Carney chuckled and said, “Yeah, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” By this time, the frustrated fundraiser was actually agreeing, because, as she put it, “the more time Ambassador Hoffman could have spent with Perry, the worse he would have come off.” Hoffman stayed neutral.
* * *
Courtship is the nature of politics. Voters, opinion makers, and donors must be wooed. Big donors like Al Hoffman like it that way. “Yeah, you’re always young and beautiful if you can raise the money,” Hoffman, seventy-seven, said. “You know, it’s sort of like a woman still proving that she’s attractive. Sort of gives you a great flattering sense of, I’m still there, I haven’t lost my magic touch.” Hoffman was forgiving toward Perry when he spoke to us. Notwithstanding all the macho bluster between Carney and Perry on the plane, according to Hoffman, the Perry camp had tried to get him on the plane after all, but he had begged off because of a medical procedure.
Perry, though, at times could be a winning courtier. In late September, a veteran political operative watched as Perry appealed for support from Steve Forbes, the magazine publisher who had run for president in 1996 and 2000 on a flat tax platform, When Perry entered Forbes’s conference room at the Forbes Building in downtown Manhattan, “I expected more of a Texas swagger, but it wasn’t there, not at all. There was no phoniness and no bravado at all,” said the operative, who was at the table. Perry seemed knowledgeable, in a low-key, even humble way. The political operative, a Forbes adviser, observed the mating dance between Perry and his target: “Typically, when it’s not going well, [Forbes] won’t say much. He kind of backs off, will talk in more generalities. Here he spoke a lot, asked a lot of questions, and then got into very minute detail. When he gets into the details, then you know he’s got him. And it wasn’t on the tax reform. In this case it happened to be on monetary policy and the gold standard versus a benchmark or basket of commodities. They were really getting into it, and it was like, ‘Oh God, he’s got him.’ ” Perry’s flat tax plan, announced a month later, was heavily influenced by Forbes.
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Perry was not lazy, exactly. He could be very substantive when he had to be. But by the standards of modern presidential campaigning, he was a little too laid-back. Perry could be a lot of fun on the plane, recalled the fundraiser. He would crack jokes (“bad jokes … there was one about the fraternity and the animal”) and tell stories and look at family pictures on his iPad. His staff would “do silly things on the plane with him, like ask him who he thought was more attractive, Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Aniston. He said Angelina Jolie was evil, so he voted for Jennifer Aniston.” Perry also “prayed a lot.” The one thing he didn’t seem to do much of was work. The fundraiser never saw him read the paper or newspaper clips. Debate prep was relaxed, almost offhand. The fundraiser recalled one session when Perry and Carney discussed the flaws in “Race to the Top,” President Obama’s education reform plan:
“Carney said to the governor, Are you good on Race to the Top? And he said, Yeah, I think so, and then he launched into what would be his answer, and Carney suggested a tweak or [would] point this out. The governor tried it again and gave an answer, and they carried on about their day. That was the five minutes of debate prep that day.”
The Perry campaign had come into Orlando confident that the candidate would win the state GOP straw poll scheduled two days after the debate. At the debate, sponsored by Google and Fox at a giant arena near Walt Disney World, the fundraiser sat behind a group of Florida politicians and moneymen invited to join Anita Perry, the governor’s wife, near the front. After a few of Perry’s rambling answers, the fundraiser noted that Dean Cannon, the Speaker of the Florida House, was hanging his head. The fundraiser tried to cheer louder for Perry, “trying to make up for this, like his answers were actually good.”
Perry, who has long suffered from a bad back, underwent serious back surgery six weeks before he announced his campaign—spinal fusion and nerve decompression, including an injection of his own adult stem cells. As the campaign launched, he was suffering excruciating back pain. Medication could have contributed to some of his goofy on-camera lapses, and may have been part of the reason for a giggly speech in New Hampshire that went viral when an opponent posted an edited video making him look drunk. (When asked about pain medication and its possible effect on his performance, Perry told a San Francisco Chronicle reporter, “No. I have had spine surgery on the first of July, but you know, I ran this morning. I would’ve taken you out. It’s a beautiful run down this river.” One Perry official said, “What do you mean, ‘What about meds?’ He jogs three miles, four days a week. People who have back problems don’t take medication and jog three miles every four days.”)
A former campaign
aide recalled: “Look, the guy is in extreme back pain all the time, and everybody could see that [at the disastrous debate in Orlando]. It’s a real physical problem for him.” For photo opportunities at fundraisers, aides were allowed to schedule just fifty “clicks” (individual photos with donors), rather than the seventy-five to a hundred that they would have preferred, “so that he doesn’t have to stand for more than thirty minutes,” the former aide recalled. “Because it’s standing still that hurts. If you watch him make a speech, he moves around a lot—he’s like an evangelical preacher, and part of that is because of his back. It’s more comfortable to be moving, but if you have to stand still and upright, it hurts like hell after about thirty minutes.” Most debates ran ninety minutes, posing a constant challenge of endurance as well as of oratory.
“I could even see that at the end of the photo ops. [He was saying,] Get these people in and out of here quickly, like I’ve got to move. I just think he was in excruciating pain having to stand for more than thirty minutes,” recalled the aide.
Perry was also suffering from insomnia. The fundraiser thought he should be taking sleeping pills, but was told he was not. (Perry later publicly admitted he had been tired, but Carney denied to us that the governor was having back trouble.)
The night after the debate, the fundraiser was sitting at the bar in the Peabody Hotel, nursing her wounds, when Rick Scott, the governor of Florida, approached. “Rough night last night?” asked Scott. The fundraiser tried to rally by saying that “Perry knocked it out of the park at CPAC [the Conservative Political Action Conference] today, so hopefully that helped a little bit.” Governor Scott just shook his head and said, “He lost a lot of votes last night. He lost a lot of support here last night.” The next day, Perry was surprised in the straw poll, losing badly to Herman Cain. It was the beginning of Cain’s unexpected surge in the national poll.
