Forced to cut back spending on his 2016 presidential bid, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry pleaded for money Tuesday to replenish his empty campaign coffers while assuring supporters he plans to stay in the race.
“We are continuing the fight & we will win! Donate today,” the governor tweeted out.
His campaign told The Washington Times he plans to stay in the race even though his fundraising has slowed and he’s in the bottom half of a field of 17 candidates in current polling.
“He’s committed to competing in the early states and will continue to have a strong presence in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina,” Campaign Manager Jeff Miller said in an email. “He is also looking forward to his trips to South Carolina this Thursday and to Iowa next week.”
“There are many people both in Austin and the early states continuing to work to elect Rick Perry as president,” Mr. Miller added.
Veteran advisers not associated with the Perry campaign say he probably will be able to generate enough money to keep the lights on in his campaign’s offices, at least through October, and conceivably could stage a comeback like the one John McCain made in winning the 2008 GOP nomination after finding his campaign dead broke at one point.
And Mr. Perry, 65, has something going for him that the Arizona senator and war hero did not: a super PAC (actually three of them, in Mr. Perry’s case, each bearing the words “Opportunity and Freedom” as part of their name).
“In the age of super PACs, candidates who fail to raise money for their campaigns can survive longer than before the advent of these super political action committees,” said Kellyanne Conway, a veteran GOP presidential campaign pollster and strategist.
There is no limit on how much anyone can give to a super PAC. But the help that a super PAC can give a campaign is limited and, by law, indirect.
Mr. Perry’s campaign announced Monday it will no longer be able to pay staff in any of the states in which it has had operatives at work, and that those staffers are free to seek employment elsewhere. But they were also encouraged to stay the course with the man who was governor of Texas for 14 years and an icon of conservatism for many on the right.
Mr. Perry will aim to refill his campaign’s war chest through earned media on the stump.
Potential donors may be encouraged by any bump he gets from the announcement by Nancy Reagan that he’s one of 16 GOP hopefuls officially invited to one of two same-day, back-to-back CNN debates at the Reagan Library in California next month. Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore is the only one among the 17 who participated in Thursday’s Fox News debate not invited to the CNN affair.
Republicans say that hard times have accompanied the Perry campaign from its birth, and things have been tight since. One reason is it raised a modest $1.14 million between his June 4 announcement and the June 30 Federal Election Commission campaign filing deadline for the second quarter.
His three Opportunity and Freedom super PACs raised $16.8 million through June 30. And the filings show he spent money faster than the top-tier rivals during the period.
Most of the super PAC money came from two wealthy Dallas contributors, Darwin Deason and Kelcy Warren, who can give the PACs money for as long as they like but, under federal campaign finance laws, can’t give any more to the Perry campaign.
That puts a crimp in campaign travel and other “ground game” expenses that are central to a presidential nomination bid.
Mr. Perry’s 2012 nomination run was plagued by mistakes, some of which were said to have been occasioned by health problems. Many GOP voters were rooting for him to make a political recovery this time around.
But the competition was fuller, deeper and stiffer this time. He’s competing for the evangelical vote with former Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister and TV talk host, and with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a conservative star whose father is an evangelical minister. Also, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is an evangelical with an evangelical preacher for a father.
The top competitors for the evangelical vote in 2012 were the lesser-known Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum.
• Ralph Z. Hallow can be reached at rhallow@gmail.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.