The Rick Perry super PAC is prepared to invest resources before the spring is out to boost the former Texas governor’s expected 2016 candidacy.
Opportunity and Freedom PAC adviser Austin Barbour told the Washington Examiner on Friday that the group could move quickly to begin providing air cover and other political support for Perry, who has yet to officially announce for the Republican presidential nomination. Fundraising to underwrite those activities is the immediate priority, but Barbour indicated that PAC organizers made sure there was a market for financiers before the group launched.
“We’re going to have the support we need to do everything we can to aggressively support Gov. Perry if he decides to run,” Barbour said during a telephone interview. “There have certainly been past Perry supporters who have shown interest.”
As a 527 organization, Opportunity and Freedom PAC can accept donations in unlimited amounts. The PAC cannot coordinate with Perry’s political operation nor, if he runs for president, his campaign. Barbour said the group would operate in a similar fashion as Restore our Future, the independent super PAC that backed Mitt Romney in the 2012 Republican primary. The launch of Opportunity and Freedom PAC was first reported by CNN.
Barbour, who advised Romney in 2012, declined to reveal his playbook for the Perry super PAC.
But the Mississippi-based strategist suggested that the group would seek to burnish Perry’s Image and help him connect with Republican primary voters by shining a spotlight on his modest upbringing and rise from tiny Paint Creek, an unincorporated community in north central Texas, to a 14 year stay in governor’s mansion in Austin, the state capital.
Perry sought the White House in 2012, and after entering the primary late was initially a frontrunner for the nomination before stumbling badly. Poor performances in the televised debates fed perceptions that he wasn’t prepared for the presidency, a sentiment that has carried over into the 2016 contest. The Texan has scraped the bottom of recent polls gauging support for the potential field of candidates.
Barbour said Perry has a record as governor that few likely candidates can match, while noting that he has undergone two years of intensive study on domestic and foreign policy that place him head and shoulders above the field when it comes to projecting competency and leadership in the Oval Office. Barbour predicted these factors would help propel Perry into the top tier in the coming months.
But he said what really distinguishes the governor from the rest is Paint Creek.
Perry was raised there in a small, no-frills house and in a family that didn’t have much money, facing many of the economic challenges that American voters have been living with since the market crashed in 2008. That’s the narrative Opportunity and Freedom PAC intends to focus on telling as the campaign unfolds, Barbour said.
“It’s a tremendously powerful story that will resonate with voters,” he said. “It all has to start with Paint Creek. We’ve got to tell that story. It will connect.”
